Weird Animals

see here tom
The 100 Most Fascinatingly Disgusting Members Of The Animal Kindom

Oops! Tho I think he's kinda cute, not disgusting at all

How about a frog that can turn itself into a heart?

http://s3.amazonaws.com/readers/scienceray/2008/07/01/201653_26.jpg

HYPNOTOAD LIVES.

http://blogs.nature.com/news/hypnotoad2.jpg

BIONIC TURTLE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-ErWsA5guU&feature=player_embedded

I mean tortoise, I know the difference.

The upside is you live a ridiculously long and healthy life, can’t develop cancer, feel very little pain, never get lonely and have great skin right to the end.

The downside is you breathe stinky air, rarely go outside, tend to get cold, don’t see well, live in a monarchy and can’t count on having sex. (Also, you’re a naked mole rat.)

NOT JUST A PHALLUS DENTATUM ANYMORE.

(Did I get the Latin right?)

omg @ phallus dentatum

vagina dentata v. phallus dentatum

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/octopus-chronicles/2012/01/05/why-is-the-new-deep-sea-antarctic-octopus-so-pale/

it's great to be back, leee!

(belated lol looks like we both read Ed Yong's blog).

<a href=https://plus.google.com/photos/108851026326071355993/albums/5694712457955114465/5694712462177328802>;Okinawan Ribbon Eel</a>.

D'oh.

And now for the fish that lives in a sea cucumber's butt:

Not content with simply living in unmentionables, the pearlfish has evolved its own anus to become as close as possible to its head. It may seem rather silly to have all that goings on near to where you dine, but it means that the pearl fish only has to poke the front half of his body out of the sea cucumbers bits to get rid of his business. Of course it must have taken some time for this unwanted house guest to evolve a bum hole up to where his tie should be, which can only mean one thing. The pearl fish has been living in sea cucumbers bottoms for quite a while, which can’t be any comfort to the sea cucumber.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw2DrbhOA-M&t=05m55s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw2DrbhOA-M

'It's a bit like finding a foot-long cockroach.'

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/58229000/jpg/_58229764_p1010514.jpg

giant isopod earlier, bigger, scarier

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Giant_isopod.jpg/220px-Giant_isopod.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Bathynomus_giganteus.jpg/220px-Bathynomus_giganteus.jpg

Not an animal, but still weird (and cool):

Aspens are a good example of how sex can help an organism that usually clones itself to survive. Going by the name Pando (Latin for "I spread"), one particular colony of male aspen trees in Utah is not only the largest organism on earth (weighing in at over 6,000 tons), it is also the oldest, estimated to be 80,000 years old. The organism is actually an entire forest of an estimated 47,000 trees that are all genetically identical, and that are all feeding off a shared root system that covers over 10 acres. The whole thing grew from clones arising from a single tree.

http://io9.com/5885204/worlds-tiniest-chameleon-is-the-size-of-matchs-head

http://i.imgur.com/CTFaz.jpg

Again, not animalia, but there was a fine article on Toxoplasma gondii in the Atlantic this month:

How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy

The subjects who tested positive for the parasite had significantly delayed reaction times. Flegr was especially surprised to learn, though, that the protozoan appeared to cause many sex-specific changes in personality. Compared with uninfected men, males who had the parasite were more introverted, suspicious, oblivious to other people’s opinions of them, and inclined to disregard rules. Infected women, on the other hand, presented in exactly the opposite way: they were more outgoing, trusting, image-conscious, and rule-abiding than uninfected women.

...

Meanwhile, two Turkish studies have replicated his studies linking Toxoplasma to traffic accidents. With up to one-third of the world infected with the parasite, Flegr now calculates that T. gondii is a likely factor in several hundred thousand road deaths each year. I

...

Twelve of 44 schizophrenia patients who underwent MRI scans, the team found, had reduced gray matter in the brain—and the decrease occurred almost exclusively in those who tested positive for T. gondii.

Not weird so much as OMGFGGFG:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/31/article-1165930-03FD1AB7000005DC-269_468x329.jpg

Glass frog:

http://images.mudfooted.com/glass_frog.jpg

More here: http://mudfooted.com/transparent-glass-frog/

Exquisitely beautiful, really.

no dissection needed

And because I want to push that awful worm into the fold, here's another one, i.e., the mantis shrimp:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sEoOWdYLWIo

Make sure to watch till the very end!

Hmm:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rJcg_BSOaQU/UB1D8jAGAMI/AAAAAAAABkE/7zCdjtiDMX8/s1600/kaarmeetujh020812_503_hu.jpg

(Click image, if you dare, to see what the f that is.)

The mite has no anus, and stores its waste in large cells within its gut. Nutting saw these as adaptations for a life spent head-down in a tightly closed space. When the mite dies, its body disintegrates and the waste is released.

http://mblogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/08/31/everything-you-never-wanted-to-know-about-the-mites-that-eat-crawl-and-have-sex-on-your-face/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NotRocketScience+%28Not+Exactly+Rocket+Science%29

SUP

http://i.imgur.com/N0Eoe.jpg

Nudibranch that eats ... crown of thorn starfish or manowar jellies! In addition to being BEAUTIFUL.

http://i.imgur.com/spd42.jpg

http://www.nature.com/news/african-spiny-mice-can-regrow-lost-skin-1.11488

http://shanghaiist.com/2012/10/12/this_ugly_but_amazing_chinese_turtl.php

my christ, four headed alien autonomous penis horror

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKZcf0KBo-U#!

It looks like it's pooping out ET. Oo

Moar penis horror:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/files/2012/10/Seed-beetle-penis.jpg

Better ("better") pic:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/files/2012/10/Seed-beetle-penis2.jpg

Instead, Hotzy and Arnqvist found that the spines puncture or erode the female’s genital tract, allowing sperm to seep into her bloodstream. The duo labelled the sperm of their males with a mildly radioactive chemical so they could track its whereabouts in the female. They found that around 40 percent of the sperm ends up outside the female’s reproductive tract, in other parts of her body. And the longer the penis spines, the greater the leakage.

Why does that help? The sperm obviously aren’t going to be fertilising any eggs in the female’s bloodstream. But seminal fluid contains more than sperm – it’s also a cocktail of other behaviour-bending chemicals. Some make the female more receptive to mating; others seem to induce egg-laying. For the seed beetle, as with many other insects, ejaculation is an act of manipulation as well as fertilisation.

Discus fish parents secrete a highly nutritious mucus all over their bodies that the young feed on until old enough to feed themselves.

Taking liberties here, but:

Rather than the fully-formed, free-living cells we know today, the last common ancestor of all living things (known as LUCA) was a hollow piece of rock.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/0e954b0469c281a9a09eb1378daada3e/tumblr_mh0cpm19zR1s3yrubo1_1280.jpg

Wolffish, derrr.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/2f4d4957e3ee785be0350ccee8bc5e6f/tumblr_mhfynesy4J1s3yrubo1_500.jpg

^^Red-lipped batfish, btw.

Just found this thread to post http://wtfevolution.tumblr.com/ - looks like Leee already got there!

http://25.media.tumblr.com/fcf782ba878b03c484d9bd8395707bb8/tumblr_mhurkyOYo71s3yrubo1_1280.jpg

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2013/02/Nudibranch.jpg

Nudibranch:

Ayami Sekizawa from Osaka City University watched the mating slugs, she noticed something odd. After they finished mating, they would crawl away with their penises still extruded from their bodies. Twenty minutes later, these trailing genitals broke off completely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIUk08iYZKE

Leaf-nosed snake:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-N-smWGi7SUA/UPc6YA5L7GI/AAAAAAAAMqI/VxweN-_7JEE/s320/Langaha_nasuta_female_DB.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ED_exG3qLk&feature=player_embedded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBkWhkAZ9ds

Omfg!

Hyenas: more closely related to cats than dogs!

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1575

once in college, standing around in the quad, i was talking with a girl from europe and she saw something out of the corner of her eye and gasped, "What kind of animal is that!" it was a squirrel, but she had looked at it backwards, believing the tail was the head and neck, and so thought it was some kind of exotic american animal she had never seen before.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/octopus-chronicles/2013/04/19/unusual-offshore-octopods-does-the-worlds-largest-octopus-only-have-seven-arms-video/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw8zl5vrAu8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw8zl5vrAu8

Combining weirdness with cephalopods, <3