The most interesting species on Earth and their peculiar properties

In this theme we can to transfer knowledge about the most unusual creatures, that you know.
“Anolis aquaticus” - lizard, who can breathing under water without gills. It happen using something like aqualung from leather.
" Mudskipper"(I can’t find normal translation) - is a unique fish, who reminds transitional link from fish to amphibians. It have traits from amphibians and from fish. They can live on earth(some time) and under water.
“Synanceia verrucosa” - fish, that you never find, if it don’t moves(I think, we need have this camo in Thrive). I don’t know, for what reason I added it in this list, let it be.
“Opabinia” - creature, that lived in Cambrian. In theory hasn’t got any posterity. Its appearance not similar other animals of Cambrian and animals absolutely. It have 5 eyes and claw-mouth.

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I really like these photosynthetic animals.

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Well holy hell I didn’t think they actually existed

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“Axolotl” - amphibian, that can achieves puberty without transforming to adult form or having undergone metamorphosis.


“Glass frog” - frogs, with dimension of body 20-30mm. Their name speaks for itself, their singularity in their transparent. You can see their organs through its skin.
“Geckos (flat-tailed and leaf-tailed)” - they are masters of mimicry, you won’t see they simply so. Moreover, their fingers allows running on glass vertically or even on ceiling.


Dryolimnas cuvieri” - view of birds, that nothing stands out. That view died out about 136 thousands years ago. But we can see that bird now. How? This was due to the phenomenon iterative evolution. That bird evolved again.

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The farther away the more well-known and banal creatures. Finding of interesting creatures is more and more difficult.
“Chinch-killer” - it lives in Africa. Its distinctive feature is that he decorates himself with corpses of ants. It hunts to lonely ants, enters toxins, that turns the insides into a protein shake. It drinks shake and puts on ant’s exoskeleton. Ants’ smell interrupts chinch’s smell and ants accept it to anthill (it eat’s termites).


“Immortal jellyfish” - very small jellyfish, that can turn into a polyp under adverse conditions, thanks to process “transdifferentiation”. Thus it can escape death from old age or drying out.

“Animalcule” - invertebrate, that can survive under the most extreme conditions falling into a special form of anabiosis. It can survive in extreme cold, thick, radiation, pressures. They can be in anabiosis about 10 years.

P.S. Sorry for double post.
P.P.S. I want to add nominations, like best_camo, best_survivor and other. How do you think?

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No ‘interesting creatures’ thread is complete without my boy the bombardier beetle. This absolute beast has 2 reservoirs in its abdomen, holding some chemicals. When threatened, it can mix both, creating this effect:

Yes that’s right. The reaction between both chemicals is extreme enough for the resulting irritating liquid to spray out of his tail, at a speed of around 10 meters per second, near boiling point. It is strong enough to instantly kill most insects.

Also, let me tell you about some of the most interesting species on this planet: the ant. And not just the ant, the fire ant to be precise. Not only is its bite capable of causing death / coma in people with a weak constitution, their most interesting shtick is how they can use themselves as building material in cases of emergency. They can grab each other in cases of emergency, creating a viscous material which they can even use to create bridges out of themselves to cross rivers, due to their home having a tendency to flood, they can also form a raft this way. The raft is relatively strong, and is capable of even holding a bubble of air underneath for the bottom ants to breathe.

Last of all, there is the mantis shrimp, of which I can best leave the explanation to The Oatmeal

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Kurzgesagt are doing a series on ants atm, I agree they are super interesting.

These are Acetabularia, they’re single cells which only have 1 nucleus and can be up to 10cm tall.

There’s also this Giant Asian Hornet which can have a wingspan of up to 7cm! They kill 30-40 people in Japan each year. They’re in danger of becoming established in the UK and damaging the local bee species.

This thread is awesome :slight_smile:

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The Flying Squirril, which dies if it goes into shock. Even catching one of them kills it…

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1.Cicadas (best_tactic_against_predators)
Cicadas - insects, that developed unique way to haven’t carnivores, that specializes in cicada. Larvas of cicada hide from 2 to 17 years in ground. Nobody can wait some years to eating. Because of what I said earlier, they can attack sown fields large groups and nobody can kill all them,they need mate for 30 days.


2Naked mole rat (unfeeling_and_always_young)
Naked mole rat - unique view of mammals, it have some peculiar properties like cold-blooded, complex organization of the colony and immunity to certain types of pain. They live very long time (about 28-31 years, as human’s 500 years).

3.Electric bacteria (most_unusual_way_of_eating)
Unlike all other living organisms on Earth, electric bacteria use energy in its pure form – pure electricity in the form of electrons derived from rocks, metals, and marine silt . When the other organisms use intermediaries (like glucose, sugar and other).

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I think both Cicades and Naked Mole Rats are super interesting, nice examples @Gotor .

Re cicadas they have prime numbered emergence cycles. So some come out after 13 or 17 years. They do that so the predators can’t line up their breeding cycles with them (for example if a predator bred every 4 years and the cicadas came every 16 it would line up).

The practice a defence strategy called “predator satiation” which means every predator can eat as many cicadas as they can and it doesn’t really dent the numbers of cicadas. It’s the animal equivalent of “fill the moat with out dead”.

Naked Mole Rats are Eusocial meaning, like Ants, they have one breeding Queen and all other females are sterile. However when the Queen dies another female can become Queen (often after a power struggle) and will expand the space between her vertebrae to grow bigger than the other mole rats. I believe it’s one of very few examples of eusociality in mammals.

Also two cool trees. The Tree of Ténéré was a tree in the middle of the Sahara, there were no other trees for 400 miles around. It had survived since the area was much wetter and had roots which went down 40m to an underground water source. None of it’s seeds could survive because they couldn’t get their roots down that far. It was knocked down and killed by a drunk driver in 1973 :frowning:

Pando is a clonal colony of male quaking Aspen trees. It’s thought to share one giant root mass and all the above ground shoots are genetically identical. It covers 43 hectares and weighs 6 million kilograms, it’s estimated to be 80,000 years old. Unfortunately it may need different climate conditions to reproduce which have long since changed so may not be able to have any offspring.

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Here’s a link to a National Geographic website with a photo gallery of weird but cool-looking fish.

(Don’t worry, it’s not not Rick Astley, or is it!?)

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1.Mantis (Life after death)
Everyone knows, female-mantis kills male after the mating period (and some researches says, that females don’t kill males) . But only some knows, that male can fertilizes female after death (when he haven’t got a head).


2.Basilisks (the successor of Jesus)
That lizard can surprise with skill of run on water (as a Jesus). It can run about 4 meters on water,to safe against predators, thanks to a special form of paws and membranes between fingers. When it goes down to water, under paws there’s some air left, that ejections the lizard.

3.Hagfish or myxin (don’t held)
That animals are predators and scavengers, are nocturnal. They are interesting because almost nobody can catch and eat them. They have one interesting thing - glands that create very much mucus, that inedible and very slippery.


4. Cistus mediterranean (flower-phoenix).
This flower can burn, if the temperature of air is 32 degrees of Celsius or more. This is done in order to give the sprouts an extra bed, a fertilizer.

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The dwarf gecko can be as small as 15 mm

The bee hummingbird is the smallest warm blooded vertibrate weighing as little as 1.8 grams and being less than 5 cm tall.

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  1. Kangaroo jumper, moloch
    That rodent can live without water all his life. It lives in America (Death valley).He is able to oxidize the hydrogen of his food, than provides himself with all the water he needs. We can find analogue creature - lizard moloch, and he drinking atmosphere water, thanks to the plates on the body, that collect water at the mouth.


    2.Tree frog (first cryonic aparat)
    Some views of tree frogs can freeze to winter and be in ice about half year. This is because before the freeze, its liver excretes a lot of glucose, that as antifreeze prevents them from freezing and dying.

    3.The flying snakes (soaring snake)
    They can planning about 200 meters. Impressive? They can straightens the ribs and retract belly, and when they planning (with speed 8 meters/second) squirm as on ground.
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…please don’t. Just… don’t. I was perfectly content not knowing of their existence.

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gasp the great axolotl

sixty degrees that come in threes.
watches from within birch trees.
saw his own dimension burn.
misses home and can’t return.
says he’s happy he’s a liar.
blame the arson for the fire.
if he wants to shirk the blame.
he’ll have to invoke my name.
one way to absolve his crime.
a different form, a different time.

!!!nruter yam i taht rewop tneicna eht kaeps i nrub emoc sah emit ym l t o l o x a

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Giant golden orb weaver spiders have females which are up to 10x the size of the males.

In the Herzog documentary Happy People, which I would recommend in general (this version has a different voiceover I think) it shows how incredible hardcore their dogs are. This one runs 100 miles in 1 day through thick snow at the speed of a snowmobile.

Imagine if it was like this for Humans :flushed:

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1.Mimic octopus (sample of mimicry)
Not only mimic octopuses can change the texture of fabrics and skin color, I think, you know. But it can not only that. They can to mimic the behavior and view of other animals (like jellyfish,rays, anemones and other). They one can it. I remember, that they can imitate about 10 ±5 animals.


2.Cancer-click beetle or shrimp-gun (hot stuff)
Do you know, that this animal can click claw, that the vibration can heat up water to about 5000 degree Celsius and emits a flash of light. I think, he need be in this theme. Thanks to that skill, it can kill it’s prey(crustaceans and small fish) at a distance to 2 metres.

3.Platypus (electrolocation)
Duckbills are very strange animals thanks to reproductive isolation. Duck beak, a beaver’s tail, oviposition,venom glands in males. That’s very interesting, I agree. But that basically because they haven’t got any predators. But electrolocation - sixth feel. It evolved because they spend a lot of time underwater. Very interesting. It one with electrolocation among mammals.

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