The aquatic creatures favoured as a live snack by Jabba the Hutt are about twenty centimetres long. They consist of a fleshy olive-green elongated abdomen, two muscular toad-like hind-legs, a red-brown head and approximately ten tentacles of length fifteen centimetres and one centimetre thickness. The tentacles do not all converge at one point, but are paired. The mouthparts are anterior to the frontmost of tentacles.
Two bulbous jade-coloured eyes are set on opposite sides of the head. A wide field of view is characteristic of creatures which are not at the top of their native food chain, as prey animals need to watch for threats from multiple directions simultaneously (eg. rabbit; Fett's mount on Panna). Hunting predators are usually optimised for concentrated forward-facing vision with the eyes providing overlapping fields of view, for superior judgement of distance (eg. fox; Panna monster; rancor). The snack squid's eyes do have enough range overlap for some forward binocular vision, so this squid-like animal might be a minor predator rather than a completely passive grazer.
Jabba keeps several in a bowl of water in his hooka pipe system. Perhaps the smoke bubbled through the water flavours the creatures. It doesn't seem harmful to them; they seem to float contentedly, without attacking or interacting with each other, until the Hutt seizes one as a morsel. When alarmed, the creature squeals noisily and thrashes about.
Tales from Jabba's Palace p.49 names the creatures as Klatooine paddy frogs. It is explained that they are kept in a flavoured brandy, which has a depressent effect intended to suppress their natural tendency to fight and killing each other.
... Porcellus returned to the palace hall with a glass bowl of live Klatooine paddy frogs — in flavoured brandy to prevent them from attacking and killing each other, as was the wont of the ill-tempered little creatures. ....
Three of Jabba's food squids, beached on a wooden platform and then returned to the comfort of their water bowl. [STAR WARS Chronicles]
Full-body close-ups of the toad/squid [Behnd the Magic]
This page was constructed and is maintained by
Curtis Saxton.
This page is neither affiliated with nor endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd.
Images included in or linked from this page are copyright Lucasfilm Ltd. and are used here under Fair Usage terms of copyright law.
This site is kindly hosted by TheForce.net.
