Martian Wildlife
Mars and its Dreamlands are home to a variety of strange and monstrous creatures. Just a few examples of the creatures that can be found there include:
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"White Apes"
Savage giants with four arms found in the Dreamland of Barsoom. These beasts are sometimes described as resembling a "large white gorilla with extra arms", but in fact actually seem to be savage and feral Gugs.
Hormads - Synthetic Protoplasmic Men
Hormads are are grotesque synthetic organisms originally created by Martian scientists to serve as slaves, workers, warriors, etc. Hormads are grown in giant vats from protoplasmic masses (see Proto-Shoggoths) and hypnotized into generally humanoid forms, though the process is far from perfect, often generating in monstrosities that diverge in shockingly vast degree from any ideal human form.
Plant Men
Plant Men from the polar crater valley Dor are strange creatures between 10 and 12 feet in height, similar in form to humans, with a head and face that are featureless except for a single white eye and a "nose like an open wound", tantacled arms that end in sucking mouths full of grasping talons and needle-sharp teeth used to feed on tender vegetation or blood sucked from living animal and humanoid victims, a body covered in shaggy black tendrils or "hair" resembling earth-worms, and a tail that tapers from a round profile to a flat blade shape at the tip. These strange creatures are herded and controlled by cannibal Therns as a trap for those unfortunate travelers the Therns trick into journeying into the valley Dor: after the Plant Men have drained victims of their blood, slaves gather the corpses and butcher them as meat for the tables of Therns.
Leech of Yoh-Vombis
A strange, nocturnal or subterranean, slug-like parasitic creature which clings turban-like to the top of a humanoid victim's head, dissolves the flesh, skull, and parts of the brain for food, and then controls its host, driving the remnants of its victim down into the darkness of hidden vaults beneath the ruins of Martian cities, to a near-immortal fate worse than death. See Leech of Yoh-Vombis for more details.
Red Weed (Red Creeper)
The Uliri invasion may also brought with them, perhaps accidentally, the "Red Weed" or "Red Creeper", a dense red vine that glows purple at night, tastes vaguely metallic, grows and reproduces explosively in water, and shares the Uliri vulnerability to Earth's bacteria. The Red Creeper seems to have flourished on Mars, where it has flooded the Martian canals, choking whole regions of that dying world off from a much-needed water supply; it is likely that the Red Weed, like the Uliri, are an invasive species alien even to Mars, with the Red Creeper either serving as food for the Uliri invaders, or trailing along with them as microscopic spoors and spreading unnoticed or poorly understood by the Uliri due to their alien disregard for sanitation, disease, and decomposition.
Soraks: Martian Cats
Soraks, strange six-legged Martian Cats, have long flourished in the Dreamlands of Earth and the Martian Dreamland of Barsoom, and are sometimes encountered on waking Mars even today, where from hiding they seem to be carefully watching over and searching the cold, silent sands of their doomed world, as if searching or waiting for something important, or perhaps observing intruders into the virtually dead Martian wastelands merely out of typical cat-like curiosity.
In the distant past of Martian history, Soraks were kept in the households of White Martian royalty, and sometimes worshiped as gods. Today, even Cats from Earth and Earth's Dreamlands tend to find Soraks to be peculiar, aloof, solitary, arrogant, capricious, mischievous, and given to strange ideas, humors, and habits. Martian Cats are said to sometimes serve (at least, to the extent that any cat can be said to "serve" anything) small and eccentric Martian gods, and from time to time Cats from Mars, generally regarded as either mad or as perpetrators of some elaborate Sorak hoax, have been known to travel to Ulthar and even to Earth on the pretenses of trying to recruit Earthly cats into peculiar cat cults working through absurd means toward enlightenment over unearthly cat mysteries.
Still, from time to time, these Martian Cats have been known to break their aloof distance to help cat and human travelers and Dreamers to Barsoom or Mars out of a tight spot for any of a variety of peculiar reasons (such as the opportunity to play a game of riddles, or for company, or to strike a bargain for a favor in return, or just for the creatures' own strange amusement), but these secretive and inscrutable creatures otherwise tend to keep their mysterious motives and goals to themselves.
Soraks originally appeared in Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Barsoom" novels.
Other Martian Animals: Thoats, Calots, Zitidars
Zitidars, a large six-legged draft animal similar to a mastodon, are still bred on Mars by the Uliri and their Red Martian slaves as a food source for the Uliri invaders, fattened on the Red Creepers and stagnant water of Martian canals.
A few feral Thoats, six-legged native Martian riding animals, can still be found in the wild places of Mars, but most domesticated examples seen today can be found only in the Martian Dreamland of Barsoom.
Similarly, Calots (intelligent - and perhaps sentient - ten-legged dog-like creatures with wide frog-like mouths, which once served as the Martian equivalent of dogs) are almost never seen outside of the Martian Dreamland of Barsoom today, though a few examples may still live wild in dark corners of Mars working together in feral packs.
