Hanging from their perches, they appear to be harmless larvae, or perhaps even cocoons that are bound to tree limbs by dozens of thin tendrils. In fact, they are deadly predators.

Their soft, boneless bodies form large sacs which the sliideptras fill with air. They then mix this air with a gas produced by highly specialized glands, creating a deadly contact poison. When a sliideptra, using its extremely sensitive vision, spies its prey (normally small mammals, although sliideptras have been known to attack the larger reptilians of Tel IV), it begins to make a low, humming sound. This sound attracts the prey to an open area directly below the sliideptra's perch.

When the prey is in position, the sliideptra quickly expels the cloud of poison gas, which paralyzes the prey and immediately begins dissolving the connective tissue within the body.

The sliideptra then begins to lower itself down to the prey by unrolling its tendrils (which afford it a range of vertical motion spanning up to seven meters). As the prey dies, the sliideptra hangs just above the carcass and extends its snout. From the snout, it spits thin streams of corrosive saliva which further dissolve the flesh of the prey.

At this point, the sliideptra must wait, hanging patiently above the carcass as the saliva continues its digestive processes. In approximately one hour, the flesh of the prey has reached a semi-liquid consistency, and the sliideptra can begin to ingest it, sucking the material up through its narrow, toothless mouth.

Once satiated, the sliideptra retracts its tendrils and rises back to its perch. The next morning, if the carcass remains, the sliideptra will lower itself and feed again, repeating this process every morning until the carcass has been completely consumed.

Although the sliideptra looks to be easy prey, it has no predators. Attacking a sliideptra when its air sac is full results in the sudden expulsion of poisonous gas, and, in many cases, the death of the attacker. The only way to avoid this type of attack is to strike immediately after the sliideptra has already expelled its poison gas but has not yet had enough time to generate a sizeable dose of poison (which takes about 50 hours). However, even during this vulnerable period sliideptra are rarely attacked because their flesh is as poisonous as their attack gas and any creature that consumes a sliideptra soon dies.

While sliideptra are capable of moving slowly along the tree limbs (moving their tendrils in an undulating motion), they rarely do so, preferring instead to hang from the same perch for their entire adult lives.

The mating behaviors of sliideptras are unusual in that they mate during their larval stage, when they are much smaller and more mobile than adult members of the species. During this short mating period, the juvenile sllideptras - who are hermaphroditic - exchange gametes with one another, but no fertilization occurs. Instead, the gametes are stored within the body and mixed with the creature's own gametes to produced fertilized eggs.

The Empire has collected many sliideptra for use in experiments and research concerning chemical warfare. Their research produced the paralytic grain mold that decimated Keresia, as well as the biological self-destruct mechanism used by many Imperial spies.

The homeworld of the sliideptra, Tel IV, is currently occupied only by a small group of Ho'Din research scientists. They have developed a serum that is effective against the sliideptra poison, but they have not let that information be known since the Ho'Din fear retribution from the Empire if the existence of the serum becomes known.