Snark (Half-Life)

A snark is an alien creature from the fictional video game Half-Life. They appear in the game as weapons.
Snarks are small, insectile beings of a deep red hue, approximately the size of a human hand.They have a single, green eye on the front of their body. Snarks have four legs, and a pair of pale blue-green pincers on the front of their bodies that they use to attack. In the game, the player is able to use snarks as weapons, by hurling them at enemies, and in the multiplayer version of the game, players can hurl snarks at each other, as in the single-player game. However, unlike in the single-player version of Half-Life, the player can experience what it is like to be killed by a snark. The creatures soon tear through seemingly most organic materials, and so they kill their human victims within a matter of seconds. They are fast and can leap very high, so as to bring down larger opponents.
Snarks seem to be physically and chemically unstable, as they explode into a green goo after a set amount of time after being launched. They can be destroyed by the hornet gun, which causes them to explode.
On the multiplayer game map named Snark Pit (snark_pit), the eponymous snarks are contained within a metal pipe at the top of the area, which is made up of four levels, each of which can be accessed by stairs or ladders, as in other maps on Half-Life. The pipe overhangs successive holes which are in line with each other, and therefore anything dropped or thrown down will fall through the holes consecutively and reach the bottom area within a short amount of time (however, this is not recommended for players, since the impact of the fall will kill a player) The player can activate a button near to the pipe to open it and thus release snarks into the lower areas of the map, meaning that on multiplayer, anyone spawning or respawning at the bottom will almost certainly be chased by snarks. After a set amount of time, the snarks will explode and the pipe will close. For some unknown reason, the player only seems to be able to release the snarks once in a game.