Soulcarrier

Soulcarriers, sometimes called Soulosaurus, are rare but controversial animals used for what some call "a maddeningly greedy purpose".

Description
These creatures are sold mainly in the bigger cities of the world where there is a lot of money in store, such as McLean, Virginia; NYC, New York; Shanghai, China; Moscow, Russia; and Paris, France. The first soulcarrier business started in 2009 at Moscow, but did not get much attention until the soulcarriers were shown what they could do.

Soulcarriers are very strange and unique animals for their ability to make someone "live longer". Once they have bonded, or partnered up, with a person and the person starts to ride the soulcarrier, the soulcarrier will form a mental/telepathic link with the person, which also puts the load of pysical pain felt by the person on the soulcarrier (the rider does not feel the soulcarrier's pain, however). Though stubbing your toe still makes you feel it if you're riding a soulcarrier, the pain is greatly lessened. This is why these animals are called soulcarriers, since they basically keep the mind intact while the body is deprived of the pain it was feeling. With the mind intact, a person who has a soulcarrier can evidently live longer than their expected amount.

The first rider of a soulcarrier happened to be in Moscow when a family purchased a green-eyed soulcarrier (the cheapest, at $10,000 in US money) who had a child dying from a very bad illness. When the child and the soulcarrier bonded, the child lived 2 months longer than they were expected to live - even though they eventually still died. The soulcarrier was turned loose after this, though the seller of the soulcarrier warned them to not do this.

Now, about 1/16 of the total sick, lame, or badly injured people in the world own a soulcarrier. However, there are downsides to owning these passively loving creatures.

Downsides
Soulcarriers are extremely expensive - this is because they are so hard to find, and many that are sold now are tame soulcarriers that were bred in on specialized farming areas. Even the cheapest one, the green-eyed variant, is ten grand at the minimum, and the most expensive being the blue-eyed variant, priced at an average of several million dollars. Few people are able to afford keeping such large and pricy animals.

Also, some terrorists have bought soulcarriers purely for the intent of continuing to reign terror on the planet rather than dying with no legacy. In these cases, about 10% of the soulcarriers in the world end up getting shot on accident because they were being ridden by terrorists. Others turn their soulcarriers loose after they are through with use - even though they could still be kept for the next family member. Soulcarriers form very strong bonds with their first rider and every rider after that - however, some families think that they cannot move on from the death of their first rider, which is not true, and they end up setting them free in the wild. This is a bad mistake, for soulcarriers wandering around in the wild can get shot by poachers that purposefully seek turned out soulcarriers for their extremely soft fur. This has been a bad problem ever since the first family turned loose their soulcarrier.

Being as intelligent as they are, "wild" soulcarriers (those who were turned loose) can usually get away with no harm - but 30 - 40% in 2010 were killed by poachers and hunters seeking their fur for the million-dollar industry of soulcarrier coats and boots. This, thankfully, has dropped to 9% since mid-2014, for many are now being rescued and adopted by new families seeking ones for their dying family members or those seeking a loyal companion, so now there are only a few that die.