#weird+animals

[withdreamsofhereafter]

Bats photographed by José G. Martínez-Fonseca | part II

(Part I)

[caprine-bees]

New photo refs for the paleo artists out there, courtesy of Knuckle Bump Farms' naked emu chicks.

Like seriously, look at these guys and their stupid little arms.

[pansy-placebo]

Have any of you ever heard of the hummingbird moths we get in Britain?

So, I thought I saw a hummingbird last year. It was much bigger than a bug could be, I thought, and it hovered around flowers and looked like it had feathers.

I got pretty close but it was never still enough to see clearly. Then, when I told my parents they said "oh! it was probably a moth!" and I was baffled for a long time. Like, how could a moth look like and act so much like a hummingbird?

Until I googled "hummingbirds in the UK" and this fucker comes up:

Everyone, meet the hummingbird hawk-moth; one of the weirdest and coolest cases of convergent evolution on this planet.

This is the kinda thing I'd see in fiction and go "oooh cool, bug hummingbird! Wish we had those on earth!" But we do. We really do have them on earth!! Isn't that nuts?!?!?

[natureisthegreatestartist]

What's this? A takin (Budorcas taxicolor), a nimble ungulate from the Himalayas that's the national animal of Bhutan. I must say I'm rather taken with it.

[rosieandthemoon]

[zooming-glass]

Coelacanths are made of fat

Their flesh is filled with oil and wax, to the point that they're borderline inedible

They have no backbone, instead possessing a thick, hollow notochord; this notochord is filled with oil

They also barely have a brain; of the material in their braincase, 2% is brain tissue. The rest of it is just pure fat

One thing they do have is a lung; really huge one, in fact. Guess what it's filled with. That's right: more fat

They're just all fat

[polychaete-of-the-day]

Today's worm is this incredible Nereiphylla paretti.

Photo by Sylvain Le Bris