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Hello ladies

Wow. Just wow. If you’ve ever seen a nose like this one that didn’t belong to this furry, ginger Bergerac then you’ve really lived.

This, my friends, is the Proboscis Monkey – sometimes known as the Long-nosed Monkey (no shit).

The male Proboscis likes to live surrounded by his harem of giant-conked lovers in an idyllic little arrangement in Borneo.

Interestingly, Indonesians used to refer to the monkey as the Dutch monkey, because they thought it was the spitting image of Dutch colonists, with their big noses and big bellies.

It’s also said that the nose on a Proboscis can grow up to a ‘huge’ seven inches. Seven? Pretty average I’d say.

Argh! Is that an orange ghost?!

No. It isn’t. Nor is it not one of those things that you’re supposed to twat with a mallet in Whack Attack – if you did that you’d be squashing one of the rarest kinds of octopus in the big blue sea, the Dumbo Octopus.

Why Dumbo? No other reason than that biologists think it looks like the big eared Disney elephant, apparently.

Not a lot more to offer in terms of details, since this fellow lives four kilometres under the surface. It’s only real feature is that it blushes sometimes. Probably because it’s pissed off its head on champagne at the circus, hallucinating about pink elephants.

Is it a mole? Is it a rat? I don’t know, but it’s naked

The Naked Mole Rat is also known as the Sand Puppy, but I’m yet to figure out why that is. This horrible rodent is straight out of a children’s horror story, being essentially just tooth and skin.

Experts even say that the Naked Mole Rat doesn’t feel any pain, so good luck sending your cat after it. They can’t even catch cancer.

What I’m basically saying here is that once they figure out how to become a little more organised, they may well take over the world. If they do, you might find the menu at your local Italian a little odd – the adorable Sand Puppy eats its own poo.

What a looker…

If you were asked to name it, I doubt you come could up with anything more appropriate for this critter than Red-lipped Batfish, apart from Miserable Clown-faced Cornish Pasty Fish perhaps, but the lucky people whose job it is to name fish went with the former. Shame.

This fish spends its days swanning around on the ocean floor like a hideous toddler that’s been in its mum’s make-up drawer. They like the dark and the don’t have many friends, partly because they like to eat them.

Apparently the only suggestion anyone has had for those ridiculous clown lips is that the fish can recognise their own kind when it comes to mating. Lovely.

Hagfish you say? Can’t argue with that…

If you’re going to be as repulsive as a hagfish, then you’d better have four hearts and two brains to make up for it. That’s what this ugly little thing has to boast in exchange for an inside out face.

It’s also the only creature that has a skull, but no spine.

Ever the socialite, this fish also likes to secrete a slimy gloop when it feels threatened and can tie itself in knots as a neat party trick.

Some species of hagfish even sport a testicle and an ovary, which is fortunate because something tells me they have a little trouble pulling.

Seriously, that is the worst looking creature I’ve ever clapped eyes on

blobfish1

There are a lot of weird looking animals and the deep seas have got more than their fair share of them. Nevertheless, the beautifully-monikered blobfish must be a challenger for the title of “world’s ugliest bastard”.

How has the blobfish survived? If you looked like the blobfish, you wouldn’t mate. If that’s what its face looks like, imagine its genitals.

Nothing about this fish is glamorous. It is gelatinous and slightly less dense than water, which it helps it bob about without actually swimming properly. It doesn’t really have any muscle and just swallows anything edible which happens to drift by.

That’s not living.

2009: 11/27
CATEGORY: Fish
1 comment

The tarsier’s eyes are pretty weird, but look at his damn feet

tarsier

Much like people who want to make it in ‘business’, a tarsier’s eye is as big as its brain. In the tarsier’s case, this is because its eyes are massive.

They have ridiculously long fingers. The third one is the same length as their upper arms. Two of their toes have bear claws – but not the others, for some reason.

According to Wikipedia, they catch insects by ‘jumping at them’ which seems a primitive and somewhat amateurish hunting technique.

However, if an animals got the decency to have eyes like that, I’ll forgive most things. I would happily buy a tarsier a pint on that basis alone.

Shit! What the fuck was that?

lyrebird

Well, it was either a man saying your name and laughing before starting a chainsaw or it was a lyrebird mimicking the sound of a man saying your name and laughing before starting a chainsaw. Lyrebirds are known for their extraordinary ability to replicate sounds that they hear.

As well as mimicking other birds, lyrebirds can mimic human speech, machinery and even explosions. Staggeringly, they can also play two tunes at the same time. They really are pretty incredible.

The bad news is that if a lyrebird was mimicking a man saying your name and laughing before starting a chainsaw, then it must have heard it somewhere…

Macaroni penguin – that can’t be real

macaroni-penguin

It fucking is. That’s one above. It’s more penguin than macaroni, I’m not going to lie, but the name is genuine.

Apparently the name doesn’t come from the form of pasta. It was given to the penguin by kindly sailors in the 19th centurty who thought that it’s stupid yellow bits looked like some particular fashion of the day. That style was known as Maccaronism.

Macaroni penguins make trumpeting noises and eat krill. That’s not much different to other penguins, but I feel like I need to flesh this page out a bit. Also, chicks eat some of their own yolk shortly after they’re born. Nice.

Sugar gliders – no, don’t know those either

sugar-glider

A gliding marsupial. That’s pretty cool.

Sugar gliders live in trees and are nocturnal. They’re called sugar gliders because they like sweet foods, although their preference is for fruit, rather than cakes or chocolate.

Weirdly, despite living in groups of about 15 and therefore seeming like they might be quite sociable animals, they actually boot their young out when they reach the age of about seven to ten months old. This seems particularly harsh being as they don’t even open their eyes for their first three months of life and spend the first couple of those in the old pouch.

Random Animals Blog