21 animals you didn’t know existed

June 16, 2013 • 10:33 am

From imgur comes a post on weird creatures: “31 animals that you didn’t know existed” (actually, I count 21; the “31” may be the number of photos). But since there are so many biologists and science buffs here, I suspect some of you may know more than half of them. I’ll post a few below; try to identify them without peeking at the names. Then go to the imgur site to see if you know the rest.

Extra credit if you’ve seen one in the wild, and weigh in below if you have.

I love this first animal, and used to see a specimen every day as a graduate student in Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology when I walked between my office and the Coke machine. I believe Darwin mentioned it in in The Voyage of the Beagle:

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Finally, a lovely bird:

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38 thoughts on “21 animals you didn’t know existed”

  1. I was lucky enough to see the last one, the Royal Flycatcher, fairly often in the American tropics. But it only looks like that when it is really upset. Otherwise it looks perfectly normal. I am sure that is a mist-netted bird in somebody’s hand–that’s enough to upset any bird!

      1. Lou is correct. The Northern Royal Flycatcher is photographed in the hand. It seems to imitates a snake in response to the stress of being captured. I imagine that this is to discourage some predator, who may lay off because it’s a snake?

  4. A number of those mammals look like cleverly-constructed taxidermic spoofs (as in jackalopes).

    Also, eleven (appendages on the snout of the star-nosed mole) seems a strange number for an amount of anything in a mammal or any other creature.

    And the canines (tusks?) on the black tufted deer surely seem more noteworthy for naming purposes than the tuft.

    1. It’s 22 appendages (eleven pairs). This is the only animal on the list that I’ve seen in the wild (along the New River in southwest Virginia).

  5. Of the ones you have here, I have seen the fossa and the gerenuk in the wild – smug smile.

  6. I’m familiar with most (not all) of these critters. But I should be given I work on species conservation. I worked on the advocacy to get the Irrawaddy dolphin listed On CITES App. I at CoP 13. And of course, anyone with young sons will be familiar with fossa because of the movie Madagascar 2!

  7. I’ll just say the guy next to last is fairly common in most of Argentina, though most city dwellers have never seen one of them in the flesh. There are about a million of them roaming free within the Buenos Aires Zoo.

  8. I’ve seen gerenuk and Patagonian Mara in the wild, but I have heard of pretty much all of them.

      1. C. truncatus

        I was thinking it looked a bit groundhog or mole-ish too but, it is cute with its over sized armored feet and all.

    2. I think it’s the cutest but I’m partial to armoured animals like armadillos and pangolins! 🙂

  10. Sadly, I didn’t know any of these and have not seen any in person but the first one is my favourite because it almost looks like a hand puppet the way its cute little bum squares off like that!

  11. None in the wild, several in zoos &c. (which I visit frequently)! (There are [at least] raccoon dogs and maras at our nearest, the Yorkshire Wildlife Park.) I recognised more than half of the original 21 although I couldn’t have told you the names of more than a third.

    /@

  13. I’m surprised to see lampreys on that list; they’re common in East Coast waterways. I’m sure I must have seen one live at some point in my childhood, although I can’t recall a specific incident.

    Also, loyal WEIT readers should have heard of Cyphonia clavata since it was covered here a couple of years ago.

  14. OK well, got ’em all except the colugo was in a very un-colugo like posture, and actually did not remember what a markhor was.

    BTW re the fairy armadillo, there are sand-swimming fishes also (many labrids, some cichlids, lots of ammodytids, etc. etc.).

    And then, of course, there is Shai Hulud and the little Makers.

    Les

  15. A nice collection of photos, But not that unusual surely, I’ve read about all but three, seen most of them in zoos and two in the wild. I’ve even written poems about two of them, Pink Fairy Armadillo for a kids book that never got published and The Naked Mole Rat.

    Pink Fairy Armadillo

    If I had an Armadillo
    I’d like him to be pink,
    ‘cause pink is very pretty,
    at least that’s what I think.

    Pink Fairy Armadillo
    is not his favourite name,
    it doesn’t say he’s powerful
    and cute’s just not the same.

    But to ants in Argentina
    he’s a mighty grassland lord
    who devours them in hundreds
    and he just can’t be ignored.

    They treat him with respect
    which human kind does not,
    and they call him Great Destroyer
    and he likes that quite a lot.

  16. I’ve worked with a captive fossa – he was sociable and charismatic, not to mention adorable. Also, I recently wrote a natural history paper about the maned wolf, so I’m super tickled to see that on the list too!

  17. I remember reading the introduction to a biology text; it said something to the effect that Darwin came to South America and thought that the land was perfect “rabbit country” but didn’t find rabbits; instead he found that “rabbit like” rodent which helped give him the idea for evolution (niches, I think)

    “The Patagonian Mara is a relatively large rodent found in parts of Argentina. This herbivorous, somewhat rabbit-like animal has distinctive long ears and long limbs and its hind limbs are longer and more muscular than its forelimbs. “

  22. I only knew or had heard of about 8 of them, well if you count knowing one was an armadillo. I’m pretty sure I saw a maned wolf in a zoo a few years back.

    I’m surprised some of those were “animals you didn’t know existed” because three of them have been in series or movies that are likely to have been seen by the general public, unless they just don’t pay attention. The fossa featured in the film Madagascar which has had two sequels. Dholes appeared in an animated series of The Jungle Book and, in the TV show Kim Possible, one of the characters has a pet naked mole rat.

    1. That’s right! In Second Jungle Book, they’re the Red Dog of the Dekkan. Thanks for jarring that memory loose for me!

  23. The introductory text we used said there were no rabbits in South America, which is an overstatement. I used a slide of the distribution of rabbits from a mammal book, and told my story of making wild rabbit and dumplings for my friends in Venezuela. Making the point that the textbook is not always correct.

    1. Yeah, that’s just wildly wrong. Rabbits (Sylvilagus brasiliensis, I suppose) are among the most common mammals on the Ecuadorian paramo (alpine grasslands). Their trails and droppings are everywhere, and some of the same predators eat them here in Ecuador as in the US (not counting hungry humans). For example we have Great Horned Owls (a special very dark subspecies) where there are high rabbit densities.

  24. I keep checking back to see what the names of these critters are.
    So, those of you too smug to tell us, would you share your wealth of knowledge with the rest of us plz?

    I am really annoyed by the thick musty male oder spillt all over this board.

    1. They’re all labeled at the imgur site. Just follow the link Jerry provided (twice) at the top of the page.

  26. I was familiar with all of them except for that lovely treehopper ant mimic and that duiker species with the stripes.
    Wonderful list!

    I’m quite partial to maned wolves. They feel like the canid answer to servals.

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