A pinnepex is a species of abnormal insect.

History

Season 3

Episode 3x12 - "Hangover": According to Helen Magnus, it was so ugly that it developed a method of concealing itself and was said to be extinct. Its main defense mechanism was to climb onto some other, larger creature and inject it with a special pheromone to cause aggression and the need to protect the pinnepex. If for any reason the pinnepex's current host becomes unable to protect it it'll immediately go in search of a new host. When the pinnepex pheromones leave the host's body they experience a memory loss of whatever they did as the pinnepex host, this is so that the pinnepex's former host doesn't know it exists and doesn't go looking for it later. Shortly after the discovery of Hollow Earth, a pinnepex found its way to the Old City Sanctuary on the body of a mollox. It created havoc within the Sanctuary by jumping from one team member to another while Magnus was away on a business trip to Gstaad; starting with Henry Foss, it then jumped to Kate Freelander, then to Will Zimmerman, then to Bigfoot, and then to U.N. inspector Lilian Lee. After Magnus returned and did some detective work by piecing together the team's collective memories, they were able to deduce that the culprit for their radical misbehavior resulted from the effects of a pinnepex. In order to protect the Sanctuary team during the capture of the creature, Helen Magnus injected herself and her co-workers with a hastily engineered synthetic of the sex inhibiting pheromone of the red bollworm. They were eventually able to contain the pinnepex after retrieving it from its current host Lilian Lee; as Lee was stunned unconscious, it briefly jumped onto Will's head for a few seconds before Magnus picked it off of him with tweezers and placed it into a small vented metal container that was carried away by a fawning Bigfoot.