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10 Animals Evolution Plucked Straight Out of a Nightmare
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10 Animals Evolution Plucked Straight Out of a Nightmare
Kate Lohnes
From frogs that give birth through their mouths to crabs with 6-foot legs, these animals are some of the strangest you’ll hopefully never have to see.
10 Yeti Crab
AP Images
Besides just looking strange, these crabs are exposed to some pretty extreme environments. Discovered in 2010, the yeti crab (Kiwa hirsuta) lives in thermal vents near Antarctica that reach temperatures of up to 720 °F (380 °C). Their white coloring and strange hair patterns are thought to be adaptations to these extreme environments. The thermal vents, while ridiculously hot inside, are surrounded by freezing waters. This forces all the yeti crabs to cram themselves into a small area. (One marine biologist found 600 of these crabs in one vent!) Females, however, must venture into the dangerously cold waters to brood, as the thermal vents are too high in sulfur content for the crabs’ eggs to survive. The mother yeti crab rarely survives the cold water, usually dying of starvation after her children hatch. As for those hairy arms, they are a garden of sorts, growing bacteria that the crab then feeds on.
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9 Velvet Ant
Walter Dawn
This insect may be only ¼ of an inch long, but do not be deceived: it packs quite a terrifying punch. The velvet ant (Dasymutilla occidentalis), despite its name, is actually a species of wasp. Because of high levels of sexual dimorphism, males have wings but females do not, giving the females an antlike appearance. Velvet ants can be found in the hotter portions of the Western Hemisphere. As if the existence of crawling wasps weren’t enough to warrant night terrors, these freakishly fuzzy insects can deliver enough poison in one sting to subdue a cow—which weighs about 2,000 pounds, equivalent to 13 average-sized humans. Not only are the adult velvet ants terrifying, but even as larvae these bugs are nightmarish. When laying eggs, females seek out nests of other ground-dwelling insects. When the eggs hatch, the newborn velvet ants feed on the other insects’ larvae. Yikes!
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8 Red-Lipped Batfish
© Stephen Frink/WaterHouse
Red-lipped batfish (Ogcocephalus darwini) are by no means dangerous, but they are clearly a product of an evolutionary nightmare. This aptly named sea creature is found on ocean floors 3–76 meters deep and is known best for its bright red lips and the difficulty it has when swimming. Yes, you read that right—a fish that has difficulty swimming. Its fins serve as “legs,” of sorts, on which the fish walks across the ocean floor. This striking red-lipped femme fatale of a fish is actually most likely a male—those red lips are thought to attract mates. I guess everyone has a type.
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7 Gastric-Brooding Frog
Retama
Okay, this frog might not look all that grotesque, but it gives birth through its mouth. After the eggs are externally fertilized by a male, the female swallows her eggs. The eggs hatch as tadpoles in her stomach and grow until they become full-size frogs—and then mom regurgitates them up (ew!) over the span of a week. Unfortunately (or fortunately), these frogs went extinct in the 1980s. Scientists, however, are attempting to bring them back to life using a method of cloning called somatic cell nuclear transfer, because who doesn’t love the idea of mouth-birthing Frankenstein frogs.
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6 Blobfish
NOAA
If you haven’t had nightmares about this guy already, you definitely will now. Named the “World’s Ugliest Animal” of 2013, the blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus) has made quite a splash (or maybe a flop) in the scientific and pop-cultural communities since its discovery in 2003. The blobfish is a gelatinous mass that floats above the ocean floor at depths of 600–1,200 meters. They have bones, but, because of the intense pressure they are exposed to at such depths, the bones are very soft and malleable. Since blobfish lack any substantial muscle, they feed only on crustaceans and other edible materials that happen to swim in front of their strange, strange mouths. Although these guys are absolutely ghastly looking on land and in observatories, their low-density flesh has led scientists to the understanding that they aren’t as, well, “blobby” when deep underwater. Their amorphous tendencies may fascinate scientists, but to laypeople the blobfish is just unsettling. Talk about a face only a mother could love.
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