What do you think the strangest animal is?

[KAL 9000]

Platypus. Hands-down the weirdest animal ever. Also the coolest animal ever.

[TheKorbinjer]

A mole.

[p1t1o]

Platypus? Star-nosed mole? Weird? They both have two arms and two legs and a face with eyes+mouth+nose! Change the texture map and they are practically human!

The hagfish. Not quite a fish. Not quite an eel. No vertebral column but does have a skull. But no jawbone. Its eyes are so underdeveloped that part of their body musculature covers them. Its defence mechanism is, if you try and eat it, by exuding a precursor from its skin, in moments it can turn 20litres of water (if you are a marine animal, this includes all of the water in your mouth, gullet, and gills) into a thick, fibrous slime. 

And that just off the top of my head!

[kerbiloid]

Tardigrada. Nuff said.
_{Nya... Kawaii...}
 

Spoiler

 

Chalicothere.
A gorillohorse. A horse cousin walking on fists with claws
 

Spoiler

.

Mesonyx.
A carnivorous swinedog with hooves.

Spoiler

... and its cousine, Andrewsarchus.

Spoiler

Of course, Anomalocaris. I like them. It's a shame that they are gone.

Spoiler

And as was mentioned in an earlier theme, the terrible monster - Mantis Shrimp.

Spoiler

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp

 

 

[Tex_NL]

Homo Sapiens.

Homo Sapiens is the only species that violates nearly all laws of biology. It actively destroys its own habitat and completely ignores Darwin's laws of evolution.

[adsii1970]

1 minute ago, Tex_NL said:

Homo Sapiens.

Homo Sapiens is the only species that violates nearly all laws of biology. It actively destroys its own habitat and completely ignores Darwin's laws of evolution.

And we do it all so well...

[GDJ]

Humans or the Octopus.

No skeleton, eight arms, 3 hearts, fairly intelligent with high problem solving skills, and long and short term memories.

[KAL 9000]

The platypus has supposedly unique features/defining characteristics of many other animals, all stuck together on one species. 

Oh, yeah, and it's a mammal that lays eggs.

[Tex_NL]

Just now, KAL 9000 said:

and it's a mammal that lays eggs

AND it's one of the very few mammals that is venomous.

[KAL 9000]

45 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

AND it's one of the very few mammals that is venomous.

AND it can be a secret agent it can sense electricity out of its bill!

[razark]

1 hour ago, Tex_NL said:

Homo Sapiens.

Dang it.  Someone beat me to it.

 

1 hour ago, Tex_NL said:

...completely ignores Darwin's laws of evolution.

Ignore?

We make laws regarding safety.  We're not ignoring evolution, we're actively subverting it.  (And at the same time, bending it to our desires to create plants and animals for food and decorative purposes.)

[Tex_NL]

15 minutes ago, razark said:

Ignore?

We make laws regarding safety.  We're not ignoring evolution, we're actively subverting it.  (And at the same time, bending it to our desires to create plants and animals for food and decorative purposes.)

Yes. Ignore.

What I am about to say is completely unethical but absolutely true. If you can't handle the truth sop reading now. You have been warned!

For the last century the human race is no longer evolving. It has been devolving! When was the last time you saw a short sighted? Or an antelope with a bad knee? You haven't. In the wild genetic defects get weeded out and are not inherited by the next generation because the carrier never reaches sexual maturity. Humanity is 'correcting' these faults and allows them endure. This results in the human race getting ever weaker. In a few generations we will no longer be able to live, let alone survive, without our technology.

P.S.
To avoid derailing this thread more than it already has I will not reply.

 

Edited February 13, 2017 by Tex_NL

[razark]

3 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

Humanity is 'correcting' these faults and allows them endure.

Hence my phrasing it as "subverting", rather than "ignoring".

 

Of course, it's hard for it to happen anyway, since our technology prevents us from having isolated pools where genetic drift can accumulate in the first place.

[NSEP]

Hairy Humans that swing around trees.

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, NSEP said:

Hairy Humans that swing around trees.

Hippie?

[Bill Phil]

What other animal has cities? Rockets? Bows? The Scientific Method? Philosophy? Heavy Metal?

Humans. Are. Pretty. Dang. Weird.

Edited February 14, 2017 by Bill Phil

[p1t1o]

19 hours ago, GDJ said:

Humans or the Octopus.

No skeleton, eight arms, 3 hearts, fairly intelligent with high problem solving skills, and long and short term memories.

Fun Fact: Octopuses (yup, thats right) do not have full conscious control over their arms. They lack the sense of "proprioception" - that is, the "sense" of where parts of your body are. Octopus arms are partially autonomous - it can control them but it only knows what they are doing by looking at them.

[worir4]

4 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Fun Fact: Octopuses (yup, thats right) do not have full conscious control over their arms. They lack the sense of "proprioception" - that is, the "sense" of where parts of your body are. Octopus arms are partially autonomous - it can control them but it only knows what they are doing by looking at them.

That is quite weird. Imagine having autonomous arms. You could just go around slapping people on the face and saying it is not your fault.

 

I also think octopuses are the weirdest. the suckers on its arms are strange 

[p1t1o]

5 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

What other animal has cities?

Ants, termites.

5 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Rockets? Bows?

Bombardier Beetle, Archer Fish

****

Apparently stamina is our big thing. A lot of animals have eyesight, or smell or hearing or whatever that is tens or hundred of times more acute than human senses (strength? forget about it!), but apparently we can out-distance almost any other creature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

21 hours ago, Tex_NL said:

Homo Sapiens.

Homo Sapiens is the only species that violates nearly all laws of biology. It actively destroys its own habitat and completely ignores Darwin's laws of evolution.

I cant remember who said it, but it was, paraphrased, something like "Evolution works on long timescales. Evolution has made us intelligent, but it is yet to be seen whether or not it will be condusive to survival."

Which given what we are doing, makes a certain kind of sense, even though we (currently) think of ourselves as the "rulers" of this planet. Whcih can already be argued as highly subjective, for example, if you define "success" as total biomass (and there is no reason why that is a less appropriate measure than say, technological development) then we are losing to tons of other species already.

Of all the damage we do to the environment and other things, we might put a few species in danger, but mostly just ourselves. Oh? We killed a million elephants?

A million humans are killed just by traffic accidents every year, globally.

(Obvs a million dead elephants is a supreme tragedy (and we didnt kill nearly that many) Im just showing that in evolutionary terms, we are putting far more efforts into species-suicide than we are into harming other species. And Im not talking about war either, war deaths actually are far less than traffic accident deaths!)

****

52 minutes ago, worir4 said:

That is quite weird. Imagine having autonomous arms. You could just go around slapping people on the face and saying it is not your fault.

 

I also think octopuses are the weirdest. the suckers on its arms are strange 

They also taste what they touch (ew!)

I have mixed feelings about octopuses, on the one hand they are super interesting, intelligent, weird creatures. On the other, they can be seen as super-advanced slugs. And I HATE slugs.

Edited February 14, 2017 by p1t1o

[The Raging Sandwich]

Anything below a mile under the ocean.

[monstah]

21 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Tardigrada. Nuff said.

Yeah, I was gonna bring up our lovely @Snark, but you beat me to it.

Creepy, awesome little things!

[DarkOwl57]

Anything that's a bird

[monstah]

5 minutes ago, DarkOwl57 said:

Anything that's a bird

Witches, then?

[TheKorbinjer]

23 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Platypus? Star-nosed mole? Weird? They both have two arms and two legs and a face with eyes+mouth+nose! Change the texture map and they are practically human!

The hagfish. Not quite a fish. Not quite an eel. No vertebral column but does have a skull. But no jawbone. Its eyes are so underdeveloped that part of their body musculature covers them. Its defence mechanism is, if you try and eat it, by exuding a precursor from its skin, in moments it can turn 20litres of water (if you are a marine animal, this includes all of the water in your mouth, gullet, and gills) into a thick, fibrous slime. 

And that just off the top of my head!

Well, I'm an Radioisotope Electric Generator (RTG). So they look weird to me.

:0

slightly radioactive...

[Snark]

On 2/13/2017 at 7:46 AM, GDJ said:

Octopus.

No skeleton, eight arms, 3 hearts, fairly intelligent with high problem solving skills, and long and short term memories.

And the reason they have to eat their food in little bite-size pieces and can't swallow big things?  Because their esophagus runs through the middle of their brain.

And the reason their blood is blue?  Because their hemoglobin equivalent has a copper atom in the middle, instead of iron.

And <lots of other cool stuff>.

Yeah, octopi are neat. 

4 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Octopuses (yup, thats right) do not have full conscious control over their arms. They lack the sense of "proprioception" - that is, the "sense" of where parts of your body are. Octopus arms are partially autonomous - it can control them but it only knows what they are doing by looking at them.

4 hours ago, worir4 said:

That is quite weird. Imagine having autonomous arms. You could just go around slapping people on the face and saying it is not your fault.

Actually, @worir4, that has happened to people in real life, and it's a lot less fun than you might think:

Quote

To illustrate the profound effects of proprioceptive loss, Oliver Sacks documented a clinical case of a woman who lost all proprioception (1985). Sacks declared that the sense of our bodies relies on three things: vision, the vestibular stystem, and proprioception. His client lost all proprioception and could not walk without watching her own legs, or talk without listening to her own voice. She could not truly determine if she had a body. The patient could not perform any motor movements most people would deem natural without relying on environmental feedback to achieve the simplest maneuver. Oliver Sacks' clinical story reflects how much the mind depends on proprioception for even the most rudimentary actions not thought consciously considered.

Sacks' book where he discusses this, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, makes for fascinating reading.

 

Anyway, back on topic:

...My personal vote for weirdest critter, though, has gotta be Dicrocoelium dendriticum.  It has the weirdest, most wonderful life cycle I've ever heard of-- I mean, if I read a science fiction book in which an author made this critter up, I'd be shaking my head and saying "yeah, right, that's believable."

1. It's a parasite that lives in the liver of ruminants such as sheep.
2. Gets excreted in the animal's droppings.
3. There it gets ingested by a snail.
4. Snail leaves the parasite's cysts behind in its slime trail.
5. Ants follow the snail, using the slime trail as a source of moisture.
6. Here's the really cool (and, to me, jaw-droppingly amazing) part:  Inside the ant, the parasite takes control of its brain to make it behave in a very specific way.  It makes the ant leave the swarm, find a tall blade of grass, climb up to the tip, and then just hang on there.
7. Having thus put itself in precisely the location where it's most likely to get inadvertently eaten by a sheep... it gets eaten by a sheep.  And thus the cycle begins again.

I swear, I'm not making this up.

So yeah, that's my vote for weirdest.

 

On 2/13/2017 at 7:26 AM, kerbiloid said:

Tardigrada. Nuff said.

Oh, I'm a big fan of tardigrades, thus the avatar. 

But as far as I'm concerned, they're the coolest.  This topic, however, is about the weirdest.  And to me, Dicrocoelium is even weirder than water bears.