From a wacky purple frog to the first carnivore found in America in over 35 years!
Here are ten of the strangest creatures recently discovered.
10: The Lesula The lesula is a brand-new species of primate
that was discovered by a team of conservation biologists while they were exploring the Lomami
Forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2007.
The biologists were shocked when they discovered an unusual monkey tethered to a post in the
remote jungle town of Opala.
They had never seen the monkey before, referred to as a lesula by the locals.
It was apparently being kept as a pet by the school director’s daughter who had found
the young female monkey after hunters killed its mother.
She had adopted the monkey and just kept it around town, tied to a post.
It wasn't a very great life, but it was better than the alternative.
The biologists continued to explore the area and found another captured male and female,
then witnessed their first one in the wild on the shores of the Lomani River.
But it would only be five years later when genetic tests finally confirmed the lesula
as a new species.
Unfortunately, the population of the primate is already in steep decline.
They aren't found anywhere else in the world and occupy a geographic range of only around
6000 square miles.
These primates are hunted by the locals and are just about gone from the world, only a
few years after being discovered by scientist.
9: Purple Frog A new frog species found in India’s Western
Ghats is unlike any other frog in the world.
It's called the Bhupathy’s purple frog, and it looks incredibly strange.
The frog has deep purple skin and a nose like a pig.
Its body is also shaped like an amorphous blob.
It doesn't look anything like the typical green hoping tree frog.
So, why does this new frog look so weird?
According to what scientists have managed to put together so far, it looks so strange
because it lives underground.
Instead of dwelling in the trees and bushes, the purple frog lives inside shallow burrows,
where it hides from predators.
Even more incredible is that it lives underground for its entire life.
It never even comes to the surface to eat because it spends its time gobbling up underground
ants and termites.
The only reason it was even found is because of torrential rains the flooded the area and
caused the frogs to appear on the surface.
Scientists also learned that whenever their burrows are flooded by torrential rains, the
frogs take the opportunity to mate with other frogs who they find wandering aimlessly on
the surface.
If it never rained, they would probably never mate.
8: Vampire Alien Fish A vampire-like fish that looks a lot like
an alien and dates back to prehistoric times has been spotted in the rivers of the United
Kingdom for the first time in over 200 years.
It's called a lamprey, and it's a type of fish that can grow to be about the size of
a person's forearm and instead of jaws, it has a circular mouth opening filled with razor-sharp
teeth.
It's one of the most horrifying fish in the entire world, growing to a maximum of three
feet in length.
These beasts used to roam all throughout the waterways of the United Kingdom but were thought
to have gone extinct in the region because of pollution that came with the Industrial
Revolution.
For the first time since the 1800s, lampreys have been found in Yorkshire, making experts
wonder just how exactly they've managed to make a reappearance.
Even though lamprey fish do suck blood kind of like vampires – and even though they
kind of look like chest-bursters from the Alien movies, conservationists are helping
to innovate new techniques in which the few surviving lamprey can find their way to their
ancient spawning grounds.
In a few years, the U.K. could be crawling with these horrifying monsters.
7: Dancing Spider In Australia, scientists have discovered a
new dancing spider.
As if spiders weren't bad already, now they are apparently dancing.
The arachnid has been named Nemo after the adorable clown fish from the kid’s movie
– and to be honest, it's kind of fitting.
The spider was found near Mount Gambier in the south of Australia by Sheryl Holliday
completely by accident.
She was taking photographs of blooming purple orchids when she accidentally took a picture
of what would become an entirely new species of peacock spider.
These spiders can be found throughout Australia and are known for their vibrant colors and
their bizarre mating dances.
Sheryl shared the photos of the peacock spider on social media, they caught the attention
of arachnologist Joseph Schubert, and many months down the line, the spider became a
new species first described in the journal Evolutionary Systematics.
There are now 92 species of peacock spider in Australia.
As for just what kind of dancing these spiders really do, it's quite fascinating to watch.
Male spiders become extremely colorful when they molt in the spring, which just so happens
to be mating season.
To attract a female, they hop and dance like trying to summon a rain god.
6: Toothless Rat On the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, an
international group of biologists discovered a toothless shrew rat.
Suffice to say, this bizarre rodent shocked the biologists, who were led by Dr. Jacob
Esselstyn from McMaster University in Hamilton.
The rodent was given a name way too long and complicated for any reasonable person to pronounce,
so it’s easier to call it the toothless rat.
But why on earth is there a rat with no teeth?
Apparently, it doesn't really need them.
Its primary diet consists of earthworms.
The rat has absolutely no molars and only a small pair of incisors which allow it to
eat the soft worms more easily.
In case you were wondering just how rare a rat with no teeth is, this is the only species.
There are 2200 known species of rat in the world and all of them have most of their teeth
while the majority have all their teeth.
According to Dr. Esselstyn, the rat probably lost its teeth because they weren't useful
for survival.
It likely had teeth to begin with and then the characteristic was shed through evolution.
5: Giant Flying Squirrel In the Himalayas, a flying squirrel has been
discovered that is so big it's hard to believe.
We've all seen sugar gliders before, the notorious flying squirrels that became popular house
pets in the 90s before they kept gliding into people's open toilets.
There was a lot of tragedy going on back then.
In any case, sugar gliders are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.
They are just little babies.
But the new flying squirrel found in the Himalayas is a giant, the size of a fat housecat!
Amazingly, 2 new squirrel species were found, not just one.
We have the Yunnan woolly flying squirrel and the Tibetan woolly flying squirrel.
The first lives in the mountains and gorges of China’s Yunnan province while the other
lives at altitudes of over 16,000 feet in the Himalayas where India, Tibet, and Bhutan
meet.
These gliding mammals each weigh about 5.4 pounds and grow 3 feet from nose to tail.
That’s roughly the size of a cat, a cat that can literally glide through the mountains.
4: Worm with 100 Butts Researchers have discovered a worm with way
too many butts.
How many butts is too many?
How about 100 butts?
This bizarre marine worm was discovered to have a single body, one head, and 100 butts.
This is possible because the worm’s body divides into about 100 branches, and each
branch ends in… yes, you guessed it – a butt!
But this strangeness doesn't end with butts.
The worm can actually reproduce using its butts.
When it's time to make new worms, a butt will grow eyes and a brain and become a single
worm.
It is the oddest and most ridiculous tiny creature known to science.
But what is it really?
It's called the R. multicaudata and it is a segmented worm.
There are thousands of these kinds of worms.
However, not too many of them can reproduce using branching bodies just like fungi.
Unfortunately, the inner workings of all the butts and brains are still a bit of a mystery.
Scientists can’t even figure out how they feed themselves.
But we know they exist, and that’s a good start.
3: Mystery Sea Creature The carcass of a mysterious animal was washed
up on the shore in the far east of Russia.
It was found on Sakhalin Island and nobody has been able to identify it.
The dead animal had what looked to be a beak, part of its body covered in fur, and what
may have been paws or actual feet.
According to The Siberian Times, the mystery was actually never solved because after the
pictures were taken, a storm came in and sucked the body back out into the ocean.
But here's everything we know about it.
The creature’s body was roughly 6 feet long.
Its tail was another almost 15 feet.
The creature had fuzzy hair, it didn't have any fins, and it had two appendages – though
nobody could agree on if they ended in paws or feet or if they had claws.
Some say the beast may have been a dolphin in the middle of decomposing, which is why
it looked so weird.
But nobody can account for the fur.
It’s just too strange and since the animal’s gone now, we’ll probably never figure out
what this mysterious sea creature was.
2: Hammer-Headed Bat Believe it or not, the hammer-headed bat is
a real, living animal.
But no, it is not related to the hammerhead shark.
It's also not a demon or the Jersey Devil.
Instead, it's a perfectly ordinary bat discovered in Equatorial Africa that loves eating fruit
and doesn't even try to eat people.
It's the appearance of the bat that makes it so strange.
It has huge lips and a large head that almost makes it look like a fox with wings.
Males have enlarged lips that let them make a crazy honking sound like a clown horn.
The sound is used by males when they gather together in the hundreds to attract females.
They literally fly around squawking and squawking in hopes of finding a date!
What's truly remarkable about the hammer-headed bat is that it's the biggest megabat anywhere
in Africa.
It's absolutely huge, with a wingspan of over 3 feet.
It’s also one of three African fruit bats known to carry the Ebola virus.
But even though they are known to host the virus they do not show symptoms, making it
a very mysterious case.
Nobody really knows where Ebola came from or how it causes outbreaks but it is quite
a horrific way to die.
Outbreaks in the 70’s, and in the 2000’s has cause major panic.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976, the virus seems to come out of nowhere, appearing
in a small hospital and spreading, killing 90% of its victims before it disappeared.
Victims suffer from sore throat, fever, headache, and abdominal pain.
Then they began bleeding from the eyes, nose, and other orifices and die within days.
Is it from eating bats??
But maybe just bats that have active symptoms??
Scientists are still looking for a pattern but in any case, even though this bat is awesome,
it’s not the best choice for a pet or companion.
1: The Olinguito For the first time anywhere in the Americas
in 35 years, a team of scientists from the Smithsonian have discovered a new carnivore
species.
This was one of the biggest animal discoveries of the last decade.
While it's fairly common to find new amphibians, birds, and insects, discovering a new kind
of carnivore in the 21st century is unheard of.
The animal is called an olinguito and it looks like a mix between a bear and a cat.
It's actually from the same family as raccoons and kinkajous, though it's the least documented
and most unknown of any member.
It only weighs about two pounds, it lives primarily in the cloud forests of Colombia
and Ecuador, and it’s only been properly observed by scientists once.
The one and only observation of the olinguito in the wild revealed it’s a creature active
in the night, even though it's a carnivore it still has a diet primarily of fruit, and
it births a single baby at a time.
it also never comes out of the trees, which is probably why it's so hard to find in places
like the Colombian cloud forest where you can barely see the trees or what's going on
in them!
We don’t know how many of these creatures are left, but scientists hope to do more studies
out in the jungle.
Which of these strange animals is your favorite?
Let me know in the comments and thanks for watching.
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