This is a picture my late great-grandfather Henry had in a collection of photos he took from an African hunting trip in 1932. According to my dad, who heard the story behind the photo, this animal was said to be about the size of a calf and had a long neck and long, beak-like snout. I showed the picture to a zoologist, who was unable to identify the animal. No one seems to know what it is.
Pyura chilensis is a creature that not only looks like a rock, but is also completely immobile like one, too. It eats by sucking in water and filtering out micro-organisms. Its blood also produces a rare element called vanadium.
It is born male, but becomes hermaphroditic at puberty. It also reproduces by tossing clouds of sperm and eggs into the surrounding water and hoping they knock together.
Locals of Chile or Peru (where it's found) eat it raw or in stews. They say it tastes “soapy” and "bitter."
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| The vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis, lit. "vampire squid of Hell") covering its body with tentacles. |
Neighbors in a village on Spain’s Canary Islands called the authorities about an abandoned house near them. They were worried as to what might be in the house since it had been abandoned for a long period of time.
What the police found lived up to their worries: A 22-foot wasp nest.
Officials said they don’t believe native wasps would build a nest so large, leading them to speculate it is an invasive species from Africa.
Heikegani ‘Samurai Face’ crabs are native to Japan and have a shell that bears a pattern resembling a human face.
ACCORDING to Dante, the Styx is not just a river but a vast, deathly swamp filling the entire fifth circle of hell. Perhaps the staff of New Scientist will see it when our time comes but, until then, Lake Natron in northern Tanzania does a pretty good job of illustrating Dante's vision.
Unless you are an alkaline tilapia (Alcolapia alcalica) – an extremophile fish adapted to the harsh conditions – it is not the best place to live. Temperatures in the lake can reach 60 °C, and its alkalinity is between pH 9 and pH 10.5.
The lake takes its name from natron, a naturally occurring compound made mainly of sodium carbonate, with a bit of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) thrown in. Here, this has come from volcanic ash, accumulated from the Great Rift valley. Animals that become immersed in the water die and are calcified.
This giant (4-foot-long) killer worm was discovered in an aquarium (Newquay’s Blue Reef Aquarium) in the UK. They found Barry, the giant killer worm, when they were trying to find out what was eating the prize fish and attacking the coral. Experts say that this worm can permanently numb a human with its sting.
A Chinese woman, surnamed Liu, in Shuangcheng, Heilongjiang Province, needed hospital treatment after being bitten on the hand by a snake that jumped out of a bottle of wine.
Ms. Liu bought a live snake and preserved it in wine to cure her rheumatism. However, the snake was still alive after spending three months in an alcohol-filled bottle.
Alcohols containing preserved snakes boasting medicinal properties are common in China. When Ms. Liu opened the bottle to add more spirits, the snake attacked her. She received treatment for inflammation.
A similar case involving a serpent resurrection occurred in 2009 when a Hubei Province resident, surnamed Zhang, was bit two months after he attempted a similar brew. Zhang was not severely injured, unlike a villager from Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in April 2001 who died a day after being bitten from a preserved wine snake.
The goliath tigerfish is one of the most fearsome freshwater fish in the world and said to be a much bigger and deadlier version of the piranha.
The giant fish has 32 teeth that are of similar size to those of a great white shark and has been known to attack humans and even crocodiles.
According to a set of Facebook photos, this eel-like creature was caught in the Raritan River, somewhere in northern New Jersey.
Perhaps most frightening, the rings teeth of displayed in the photo have a very clear purpose: Sea lampreys latch onto their prey, then secrete digestive fluids that slowly eat away and break down the host. The Great Lakes Fishery Commission reports a sea lamprey can be expected to kill upwards of 40 pounds of fish over the course of its life. Survival rates for particular species of host fish can be as low as 15 percent.
Unfortunately, we can't be completely certain this photo really does depict a sea lamprey. "The photo doesn't allow counting of gill openings (seven per side for sea lampreys), but based on size alone, this does appear to be a sea lamprey,” a New York Department of Environmental Conservation spokeswoman told Outside Magazine, according to the New York Daily News.
The species typically grows to 2.5 feet in length, but some sea lampreys have been documented at sizes of up to 3 feet long, reports the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.
Sea lampreys are a native to the Atlantic Ocean and are found along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and the coast of Europe, as well as in the Great Lakes, where it is considered an invasive species.
The New York Daily News adds that appearances of sea lampreys in New Jersey have increased recently, as officials have begun to remove old dams, thus easing the creature's progress upriver.
