From The Dodo, we have a selection of “Strange-looking animals you had no idea existed.” There are 41, and I knew all but the following ten. See if you know the ones below, then head over to The Dodo, look at the other 31, and see how many you recognized in toto. You don’t have to know the precise species name, or even the common name, but simply have known that the species existed.
h/t: Diane G.
Amazing shapes. I can’t say I know any by name, but I have admire them all for trying so hard to make a living on this challenging planet.
I knew 10/30.
Hmm. I should just say I knew 10. I had 30 in my head for some reason, but for whatever set I looked at, only 10 were familiar.
Ooh, I have seen that long necked antelope (?) before. The rest, not so much.
Gerenuk.
Very puzzling and very weird. The first one is a wingless wasp called a velvet ant, although I do not know the specific name of this one. I have seen pix of the 3rd one, which is a spider, but I do not even know the common name.
I think the turtle with the long neck is a snake necked turtle.
I know a few of the others, but I will sit down now.
I was very sad to read that the very cute golden snub-nosed monkey was:
It’s disgusting that we’re still losing so many animals to things like fur, as an unnecessary food source, and traditional medicine in this day and age.
Yeah, some time back I watched a show that featured traditional Chinese medicine, and the amount of dead creatures on display was disgusting. Store after store after store stuffed to the rafters with dried reptiles, amphibians, fish, mammal parts…mind boggling waste.
It’s so horrible. Like that post I did about the pangolins not long ago. They’re endangered because thousands and thousands are being shipped off to China for meat and medicine. Disgusting.
There is a pretty good documentary running on the discovery channel and science channel called RACING EXTINCTION. 2 hours.
You can look it up and I think there is a 2.5 minute trailer on You tube.
Cheers. I’ll check it out. 🙂
I was just thinking about the Pangolins. Come to think of it, a lot of the pressure on threatened species is b/c of demands from the orient.
Yes, we have problems here in Ecuador because the orient wants shark fins and bear gall bladders. Grrrrr….
Not to mention global warming.
Sub
Those creatures were amazing, thanks for the post. I knew maybe 10, so not many. That Goblin Shark was especially cool. They should have named it the Alien Shark.
Colugos are not primates!
Indeed! But according to Wikipedia, ” As a result, colugos were traditionally considered being close to the ancestors of bats, but are now seen by some as the closest living relatives to primates.[5]”
Looks like this one and one more species have not only a family, but an order all to themselves. For the moment, anyway.
Despite the time given above, this didn’t appear in my inbox till 5:20 am the next day. Looks like I must have mistyped my eddress. Anyone else sick of having to fill in the ID data fields for every frickin’ comment?!
VERY sick of it. halllllooooooo Word Press…
Word Press decided not to tell me about any new posts for a whole day of posts I subscribed to. I figure it’s personal. Word Press has become self aware & is trying to destroy me.
(Apologies if this shows up twice–I’ve waited quite a while and still don’t see it.)
Indeed! Though Wikipedia says, “As a result, colugos were traditionally considered being close to the ancestors of bats, but are now seen by some as the closest living relatives to primates.[5]”
Interestingly, this one and just one more species make up the entirety of not just one family but one order as well. (For the moment, anyway.)
To paraphrase Yogi Berra: There are no such animals.
I remember having seen photos of about 75% of them, but couldn’t remember the names of most of them.
Must have been a very big Ark. 😉
The narrow-headed softshell turtle looks bashful. Like he shamefully ate all the dessert before anyone else could have some.
That Goblin Shark in the original story is scary. Looks like they saw that before they designed the Alien’s mouth in the Alien movies. I always like a Jerboa, though.
What a gallery ! For most of them, I had at least a vague acquaintance (not always up to the species name) but I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know the tibetan sand fox (very strange asiatic face), the white bat (cute!) and the orange tortoise spider existed.
My favourite in this gallery is the fossa, Cryptoprocta ferox. They were some in the zoo of Basel, and they are impressive, muscular and elegant cat-like predators. But their latin name suggests a stricking difference with cats: it means “hidden anus”…
Yes, ordinary cats are more likely to show off their anus, often right in your face:-(
I knew of 27 of them. Probably means I spent too much time watching David Attenborrough in years gone by.
I’ve seen 4 of them in the wild. The mouse deer, colugos, Eastern long necked turtles, and waxy plant hoppers. I’ve seen a few more of them in zoos.
My father used to try to breed Eastern long necked turtles. With no success. He did a lot better with several other reptile species though.
I wonder how many of these have turned up on WEIT before? I remember that the panda ant, coconut crab, and mantis shrimp did.
What a fun article. I knew of only six, none by species name. My favorite one is that badass Mantis Shrimp, of which I first learned from The Oatmeal.
I failed to know ten species, a set that overlapped yours. These are really special animals!
I wonder how long Noah had to wait for some of these strange looking animals to show up, and how he knew that NOW he had them all and no more were coming?
And how did these creatures get back to their original habitats after the Flood?
He sure moves in a mysterious way.
“I wonder how long Noah had to wait;” the turtles in particular must have taken forever to crawl to the ark.
but they do have those long necks…
and these:
http://www.sadanduseless.com/2015/11/funny-wildlife/
Hilarious. I’m sharing those.
I knew the first animal. It’s a panda ant, she’s a wingless wasp. I remember reading about her on an excellent website called Why Evolution Is True a couple of years ago.
Oh dear – to rub salt into PCC[E]’s wounds! Probably where I have seen it! 😉
What? You expect me to remember an animal I posted two years ago?????
I remembered the long necked deer animal from WEIT. I just knew the panda ant and figured I’d learned it here.
I know the mammals – a golden snub-nosed monkey from China, a gerenuk from east Africa, and a baby mara from Patagonia. I read mammals books…
The white fluffy thing looks like a frog/tree hopper, I think I have seen the bird in pictures & would guess New Guinea but really no idea, the first insect looks like a ‘velvet’ ant which is not really an ant but I am guessing, the arachnid no idea, the turtles & the frog no idea!
I’d never seen the tortoise spider or, as far as I recall, the Tibetan sand fox, but the others look familiar. Attenborough and Durrell share some of the blame for my youthful addiction to zoos and wildlife docos. I’m not addicted now, I could stop any time I wanted. Honest.
I’m sure that the long-necked turtle shown is not the Eastern (Chelodina longicollis) but most probably the southwestern member of the genus (C. colliei, formerly and sometimes still known incorrectly as C. oblonga). The head is the wrong shape, neck too long, and the carapace too deep and narrow for the species it’s captioned as (also the substrate looks like the Spearwood or Bassendean sand around Perth lakes, though dirty grey sand is hardly unique to the area).