Last time, we featured some of the world’s wackiest animals, but there are so many bizarre beasts on our amazing planet that we couldn’t possibly tell you about them all.
So we’re back, with even more crazy-looking creatures for you to wonder and and learm more about. From the forests to the seas, we’ve scoured the globe to bring you some truly weird and wonderful examples to enjoy...
1. Sea Bunnies
Sea bunnies are a form of mollusc, specifically a nudibranch. The little bunny ears you can see are actually a form of rhinosphore which help them sense the world around them. They eat sea sponges which contain toxins. These chemical-sensing cuties are found primarily in Japan but have also been spotted off the shores of Taiwan, The Phillipines and Indonesia.
2. Sunda Colugo
Until recently, it was believed that this Malaysia-dwelling creature was a form of flying lemur, but closer studying of the animals has revealed that they glide between trees.
What’s more, it is not even a type of lemur, but a colugo, another type of monkey.
They live exclusively in trees (this is called being ‘arboreal’). They are also mostly nocturnal. Mummies keep their babies close to their bodies by holding them against their tummy with a large skin membrane.
3: Venezuelan Poodle Moth
This hellbeast, this spawn of Satan, this abomination made flesh, can only be found in a small area of Venezuala, no doubt where a hellmouth opened up. Its appearance, like a cross between a poodle and every nightmare the human mind has ever conjured up, is very rare, possibly because this is no ordinary creature but an actual, living harbinger of the End of Days.
4: Glaucus Atlanticus
These beautiful beasts are not what they seem; they are actually a form of nudibranch sea slug who, despite being small, feed on venomous sea creatures such as the deadly Portuguese Man O’ War and other siphonophores. They store the stinging nemocysts from the creatures they eat within their own body, to use for their own defence against predators. Humans may well get a very nasty sting if they handled them. They are pelagic which means they float upside down by using the surface tension of the water to stay up, where they are carried along by the winds and ocean currents.
Other apt names for them include the blue angel, the sea swallow and the blue dragon, and you can see why!
5: Lowland Streaked Tenrec
Marvellous Madagascar has given us yet another crazy critter to discover more about, with the adorable Lowland Steraked Tenrec. These small mammals live in family groups in burrows and live on land, although they can be found splashing about in water or digging underground.
They have hard quills located on their backs and mothers and their babies communicate by using them as a sounding device. Rubbing the quills together makes a high-frequency sound. If they feel threatened, their quills stick up straight and vibrate.
The streaked tenrec is the only mammal know to use something called stridulation for generating sounds, which is howsome insects like crickets communicate. Because the streaked tenrec is so rare, however, there has not been a lot of study done into how the tenrec can do this.
6: Red-Lipped Batfish
This grumpy-but-glam-looking fish can be found around the Galapagos Islands and Peru. They are not very good simmers and instead use their highly adapted fins to move around the sea floor.
When they become adults, a dorsal fin on top of their heads becomes a protuberance called an illicium and on top of that is something called an esca, which glows brightly in the dark. The red-lipped batfish uses this to lure other fish to it and it eats the smaller fish which get too close, drawn by the pretty light to its big, red mouth.
There are other species of batfish, including one called the rosy-lipped batfish, but none of them have a mouth as bright as this.
Cheer up, red-lipped batfish, it might never happen!
So we’re back, with even more crazy-looking creatures for you to wonder and and learm more about. From the forests to the seas, we’ve scoured the globe to bring you some truly weird and wonderful examples to enjoy...
1. Sea Bunnies
Sea bunnies are a form of mollusc, specifically a nudibranch. The little bunny ears you can see are actually a form of rhinosphore which help them sense the world around them. They eat sea sponges which contain toxins. These chemical-sensing cuties are found primarily in Japan but have also been spotted off the shores of Taiwan, The Phillipines and Indonesia.
2. Sunda Colugo
Until recently, it was believed that this Malaysia-dwelling creature was a form of flying lemur, but closer studying of the animals has revealed that they glide between trees.
What’s more, it is not even a type of lemur, but a colugo, another type of monkey.
They live exclusively in trees (this is called being ‘arboreal’). They are also mostly nocturnal. Mummies keep their babies close to their bodies by holding them against their tummy with a large skin membrane.
3: Venezuelan Poodle Moth
This hellbeast, this spawn of Satan, this abomination made flesh, can only be found in a small area of Venezuala, no doubt where a hellmouth opened up. Its appearance, like a cross between a poodle and every nightmare the human mind has ever conjured up, is very rare, possibly because this is no ordinary creature but an actual, living harbinger of the End of Days.
4: Glaucus Atlanticus
These beautiful beasts are not what they seem; they are actually a form of nudibranch sea slug who, despite being small, feed on venomous sea creatures such as the deadly Portuguese Man O’ War and other siphonophores. They store the stinging nemocysts from the creatures they eat within their own body, to use for their own defence against predators. Humans may well get a very nasty sting if they handled them. They are pelagic which means they float upside down by using the surface tension of the water to stay up, where they are carried along by the winds and ocean currents.
Other apt names for them include the blue angel, the sea swallow and the blue dragon, and you can see why!
5: Lowland Streaked Tenrec
Marvellous Madagascar has given us yet another crazy critter to discover more about, with the adorable Lowland Steraked Tenrec. These small mammals live in family groups in burrows and live on land, although they can be found splashing about in water or digging underground.
They have hard quills located on their backs and mothers and their babies communicate by using them as a sounding device. Rubbing the quills together makes a high-frequency sound. If they feel threatened, their quills stick up straight and vibrate.
The streaked tenrec is the only mammal know to use something called stridulation for generating sounds, which is howsome insects like crickets communicate. Because the streaked tenrec is so rare, however, there has not been a lot of study done into how the tenrec can do this.
6: Red-Lipped Batfish
This grumpy-but-glam-looking fish can be found around the Galapagos Islands and Peru. They are not very good simmers and instead use their highly adapted fins to move around the sea floor.
When they become adults, a dorsal fin on top of their heads becomes a protuberance called an illicium and on top of that is something called an esca, which glows brightly in the dark. The red-lipped batfish uses this to lure other fish to it and it eats the smaller fish which get too close, drawn by the pretty light to its big, red mouth.
There are other species of batfish, including one called the rosy-lipped batfish, but none of them have a mouth as bright as this.
Cheer up, red-lipped batfish, it might never happen!
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