What do you think the strangest animal is?

[ProtoJeb21]

Far too many, but I'll list a few because I like listing things.

-Mass-murdering Australian bees that wipe out their entire male population within two months.

-Dumbo octopi. They always look like they're sticking their tongues out at you.

-Any and all Anglerfish, frog fish, and related species.

[content removed by moderator]

-Just about every North American species of the Saturniidae moths. Some of those guys look HORRIFYING as caterpillars.

-Snar---I mean tardigrades. How can they not eat for twenty years? They're tiny!

Edited March 13, 2017 by Deddly

[Nikolai]

Hallucigenia, a genus from the Cambrian era that we find in formations like the Burgess Shale.  It's so odd that it was debated for a long time which end was the mouth and which was the anus, as well as which side was the ventral and which side was the dorsal -- not to mention whether its mouth was in its head or whether it had a mouth at the end of each of its tentacles.

 

[Dman979]

17 hours ago, NSEP said:

Hairy Humans that swing around trees.

George of the Jungle?

[Green Baron]

Ediacaran and early Cambrian fauna are my favourites too. Animals from a different world.

Edited February 15, 2017 by Green Baron
The question was about animals ...

[DarkOwl57]

Oh wait this is strangest animals?! My bad; I thought it was BEST animals!

Weirdest is by far that one shark that has a mouth inside it's mouth..... That thing's freaky!

[Camacha]

On 13/02/2017 at 4:27 PM, Tex_NL said:

Homo Sapiens is the only species that violates nearly all laws of biology [...] and completely ignores Darwin's laws of evolution.

We do not. We just think we do. That is one of our specialities: hubris.

That being said, humans are a pretty outlandish species.

[kerbiloid]

Warning: a sad theme.

Spoiler

Helacyton gartleri

 

[Slam_Jones]

On 2/13/2017 at 8:59 AM, Tex_NL said:

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.

 

Yeah man, it's amazing we haven't disappeared yet, I mean we, as a species, have been practicing medicine and fixing broken limbs for millenia.  Surely we would have weakened ourselves to oblivion already!   "Within a few generations" would have been a long time ago.    Humans invented surgery before anesthetics, and humans have been known to perform surgery on themselves.  Show me another animal that can do that.    Plus humans are one of the very very few species capable of persistence hunting (the art of pursuing your prey until they literally drop dead from exhaustion.)

---

On Topic: Anyways  I think Sloths are the strangest creatures.  Not in terms of appearance, but more or less their, well, sloth-like tendencies.  It takes a very specific environment for them to thrive, especially considering they are easy prey for eagles and such.  I guess in that regard, Panda bears are somewhat similar in that they are generally lethargic... except a Panda is much too big to get picked up by an Eagle

Edited February 15, 2017 by Slam_Jones

[Cydonian Monk]

Grackles. Great-tailed Grackles, to be precise. 

Irridescent demon birds that twice a year decide to start prancing and squawking and thieving and murdering and carjacking and chattering and performing strange bird symphonies and otherwise become giant jerk birds. They roll in gangs ten million strong. And they smoke cigarettes while waiting to jump unsuspecting fools in the grocery store parking lots. They'll steal change out of your pockets and food out of your mouths. 

They're just really strange birds. 

[KAL 9000]

Pretty much everything in Australia can kill you.

[p1t1o]

18 hours ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Grackles. Great-tailed Grackles, to be precise. 

Irridescent demon birds that twice a year decide to start prancing and squawking and thieving and murdering and carjacking and chattering and performing strange bird symphonies and otherwise become giant jerk birds. They roll in gangs ten million strong. And they smoke cigarettes while waiting to jump unsuspecting fools in the grocery store parking lots. They'll steal change out of your pockets and food out of your mouths. 

They're just really strange birds. 

Does "Grackle" sound like something from Rick & Morty to anyone else?

[Tex_NL]

19 hours ago, Slam_Jones said:

Yeah man, it's amazing we haven't disappeared yet, I mean we, as a species, have been practicing medicine and fixing broken limbs for millenia.  Surely we would have weakened ourselves to oblivion already!   "Within a few generations" would have been a long time ago.

OK you've got me. I was trying to avoid derailing this thread by not replying but apparently you've failed to see reason.

I was NOT talking about healing injuries and setting broken bones. I was talking about GENETIC defects. Animals also suffer nasty injuries and they too can recover from it. (If they're not eaten first that is.)
Defects like hydrocephalus, spina bifida, myopia, diabetes, haemophilia. The list goes on and on. Many are benign, others are life wrecking. But with modern medicine most can live a (relatively) normal life. A few generations ago the more serious illnesses were rare, sufferers didn't get old and did not pass their illness down to the next generation. Nowadays they do.

A few examples from my personal social circle:
My cousin has a deformity in her hand due to her mother using the wrong medicines during pregnancy. It's nothing too serious, she can do pretty much everything anybody else can but her son has the exact same deformation. When he grows up and has children of his own they will probably have it too.
My co-worker has pretty bad eyes up to the point she's disqualified to ever own a drivers license. But she got lucky, her sister is nearly blind. Her son, a great kid by the way, has the same poor sight. He's barely old enough to start school and already has to miss out on a large part of life.

And these are just too minor examples. But genetic defects like this are on the rise. It starts to become almost uncommon NOT to suffer from one or more genetic illnesses these days.

Edited February 16, 2017 by Tex_NL

[0111narwhalz]

{Morality, Natural Selection, Modern Medicine}

Pick two.

OT: The plasmodial slime molds are pretty weird. Single cells covering square meters? Weird. Also, they're great at planning highway networks.

[Camacha]

6 hours ago, Tex_NL said:

A few examples from my personal social circle:

My cousin has a deformity in her hand due to her mother using the wrong medicines during pregnancy. It's nothing too serious, she can do pretty much everything anybody else can but her son has the exact same deformation. When he grows up and has children of his own they will probably have it too.
My co-worker has pretty bad eyes up to the point she's disqualified to ever own a drivers license. But she got lucky, her sister is nearly blind. Her son, a great kid by the way, has the same poor sight. He's barely old enough to start school and already has to miss out on a large part of life.

And these are just too minor examples. But genetic defects like this are on the rise. It starts to become almost uncommon NOT to suffer from one or more genetic illnesses these days.

Why do you think our ability to compensate these things is not part of normal selection? Why do you think these things do not actually cause a selective pressure? Because they do.

No matter how much we deny it, natural selection still applies to us.

Edited February 16, 2017 by Camacha

[XB-70A]

6 hours ago, Tex_NL said:

But genetic defects like this are on the rise.

Without counting that more than a handful of studies agreed that Homo Sapiens is actually becoming sterile. The whole production rate of spermatozoids by the males is lower than years ago.

------

About the thread and as it's about animals, Ornithorhynchus (as a mammal) has always amazed me with its viviparity and male's venomous capability.

 

Another one just impressed me when I was a kid, the Scolopendra Gigantea.

This piece of s..t already bites me three times in my whole life and the result is I never sleep without a knife on the nightstand when I'm on the islands. Here they truly are the top predators among the insects empire, even attacking some young rats and little birds when they can...

Venom and agility coupled to a pretty bright nervous system for an insect, this is a true predator.

[Vanamonde]

How about we stop getting mad at each other over the fate of the human race and have a light and entertaining discussion of weird (non-human) animals? 

[ProtoJeb21]

On 2/16/2017 at 9:34 AM, KAL 9000 said:

Pretty much everything in Australia can kill you.

And just about everything that Can't is either too stupid or too weird. I mean, Koalas have TINY brains, and they're super friendly! At least...I assume they're friendly.

But another weird animal would have to be the Puss Moth Caterpillar and all its copycats. They look like they have faces! And the PMC sprays acid. Wonderful!

[Cydonian Monk]

43 minutes ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

Koalas have TINY brains, and they're super friendly! At least...I assume they're friendly.

You've clearly not heard about the drop bears. 

[munlander1]

1 hour ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

they're super friendly

I was watching a documentary and saw 2 fighting and one got pushed out of a tree.

[kerbiloid]

On 14.02.2017 at 8:14 PM, Nikolai said:

Hallucigenia, a genus from the Cambrian era that we find in formations like the Burgess Shale.  It's so odd that it was debated for a long time which end was the mouth and which was the anus, as well as which side was the ventral and which side was the dorsal -- not to mention whether its mouth was in its head or whether it had a mouth at the end of each of its tentacles.

This looks like designed in Framsticks artificial life simulator.

On 17.02.2017 at 1:35 AM, XB-70A said:

Venom and agility coupled to a pretty bright nervous system for an insect, this is a true predator.

You can breed zergs. They will be your night guards.

On 18.02.2017 at 2:52 AM, munlander1 said:

I was watching a documentary and saw 2 fighting and one got pushed out of a tree.

Those were Australian kung-fu pandas.

[WinkAllKerb'']

On 13/02/2017 at 4:04 PM, TheKorbinger said:

A mole.

 

On 13/02/2017 at 4:27 PM, 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.

:3  :3 well :3

[ThaZeus]

Any members of the Osedax Genus

They are nasty and cool.

 

[munlander1]

42 minutes ago, ThaZeus said:

They are nasty 

 

I second that.

[kerbiloid]

On 27.02.2017 at 2:45 AM, ThaZeus said:

and cool.

I third this.

[tater]

My dog smiles, that's pretty strange.