The hunting strategy of the winged xendrites is much more like that of amphibians than avians. Using their relatively small legs as hooks and securing themselves with their coiled tails, the xendrites hang from tree branches (or artificial structures when in urban areas) and catch insects using their sticky tongue. Early reports on the xendrites assumed that they were using a sieve or net strategy, flicking their tongues out at random and catching insects by chance, but closer studies have proven that the xendrites are, in fact, choosing specific targets, and they strike these targets with a 98 percent accuracy rate.

The most common reason for the introduction of xendrites into a planet's ecosystem is to control the spread of insect-borne diseases. Unfortunately, the ecological balance of a planet is much more complex than most individuals assume, and the introduction of a new species usually produces more problems than it solves.

The winged xendrites have no natural predators on Xend. Instead, their population is controlled completely by the amount of available food. An increase (or decrease) in the insect population is immediately followed by a proportional change in the population of xendrites.

However, this system of ecological balance - which works so well on Xend - is not sufficient to control the population of xendrites on many of the planets to which they are imported. In most cases, a planet which had previously complained of having too many insects soon finds itself to have far too many xendrites.