Penis worm snake thingies, deep sea goblins and piss spitters, these are some of the world’s most bizarre animals.
5. The Aye-Aye – Or Creepy Finger Banging Lemur
The Aye-Aye is native to Madagascar and is the world’s largest nocturnal primate. Famous for its unusual hunting methods, the Aye-Aye taps on tree trunks with its paws looking for grubs then gnaws a hole in the wood with its forward facing incisors. It then slowly inserts a long middle finger into the hole and plucks its tasty reward. So next time you hear scratching at your front door in the middle of the night it’s probably just an Aye-Aye coming to finger-snatch one of your eyeballs!
4. The Goblin Shark – nightmare of the deep
This charming little deep-sea shark belongs to the family of Mitsukurinidae, a lineage some 125 million years old. It is characterised by its pink flabby skin and long, sword-like snout. The jaws of this beast can protrude to almost the length of its snout, making it easier to swallow things and look even more terrifying. Its teeth are separated into two sections: the front ones are like thin, jagged nails and at the rear they are small and slightly flattened for grinding flesh. Luckily this handsome specimen swims at a depth too low to pose a threat to humans.
3. Atretochoana Eiselti – Or giant cock worm/snake thingy
This thing looks like a big ole dick. But it’s not. It’s not even a snake or a worm. It’s actually a burrowing amphibian species known as caecilian. This unusual creature has no limbs or lungs, leaving it to slither along and exchange gas through its skin. The body consists of a long shaft and a rounded, helmet shaped head. It was thought to be extinct and was only known from two specimens until recently re-discovered in Brazil in 2011. Smaller species of caecilian tend to resemble worms while the larger varieties look like big snakes, which I’m sure most men can relate to. Amirite?
2. Hooded Seal – the inflated sack bearer
This is a bizarre species of seal found only in the central and western parts of the North Atlantic. For the most part this seal looks like any other seal except for the giant, inflatable bladder that hangs between the males’ forehead and over the upper lip like a sort of flaccid, fleshy moustache. During mating rituals the male inflates his forehead sack in a display of dominance. Curiously, the generic name for this species Cystophora means “bladder-bearer” in Greek, which of course the Greeks needed a term for. Don’t you hate it when you’re bearing your bladder and there just isn’t a word sufficient enough to describe the situation? Well, thank Zeus for the ancient Greeks, ‘cos now you know one.
1. TheChinese Soft-shell Turtle – Or leathery piss spitter
These guys get their name because they lack the hard scutes or scales that most turtles sport as part of their carapace. Instead they have a leathery, pliable skin that runs the length of a solid bone on their backs. The bizarre thing about this species is that they secrete urea from their mouths. While it’s technically not piss, it’s pretty much piss and they spit it from their mouths! Apparently it helps them survive in brackish water by reducing the amount of salty water they intake. Either way, it spits piss.
