What’s your favourite animal, Danny?
I love animals but sometimes they can be real creeps.
10 Beaver Dam that can be seen from SPACE While at first this may not seem that scary,
think about it….a Beaver Dam you can SEE FROM SPACE.
SPACE.
It is a popular myth that you can see the Great Wall of China from Space, but….
Like I said it’s a myth.
The only human made structures you can see from space are the Bingham Canyon Mine – made
with dynamite and the greenhouses if Almeria in Spain.
That’s what we get from all our fancy human tools and fancy human brains.
BEAVERS MATE.
They’re coming through.
Beavers are adept builders and they love nothing more than to make a nice big dam for themselves.
The biggest beaver dam in the world was found in Wood Buffalo national park in Northern
Alberta, Canada.
The animal made construction was measured at 2,790 feet, so twice the length of the
hoover dam.
Beavers do it better, say it with me now!
When can we expect the beaver revolsion?
Soon.
We’re at their mercy and they have a shaaaarp bite.
I crossed a beaver dam when portaging once.
IT was terrifying.
They don’t like their spaces being disturbed, and if you’re unlucky, while you try and
cross one, they mite pop out and bite you.
Next up at number 9 we have the Giant Ant Colony.
In 2012, experts in Brazil found an Ant abandoned colony that they suspected was one of the
biggest ones ever found.
There was only one way to find out just how big it was.
They poured ten tonnes of concrete into the holes on the surface, which served as air
conditioning ducts for the ants.
They knew it would take a day or two of pouring - but they didnt expect to be doing it for
10 days.
When it was full and the concrete had dried, they began excavating.
They uncovered an ant city that looked like something straight out of an alien movie.
These tiny ants had excavated around 40 tonnes of soil to create the labyrinth.
To put in human perspectives, the experts say that this thing is the equivalent of the
great wall of china in terms of effort.
Many people are a bit disturbed by the sight of this, especially if youre not really into
creepy crawlies.
It can be a little bit unnerving to know this is going on just inches below us …
8 Termite Monoliths Take a look at this gothic looking castle
of doom.
No, Draculas’ minions didn’t build it….
Termites did.
Mound building Termites are super efficient creeps that build high rises in their home
countries of Africa, Australia and South America.
These mounds can sometimes be 30 metres in diameter and over 6 metres high.
Have a look at the Bungle Bungle Park - the place is blooming covered in termites!
Each one of these mounds can house up to 2 million termites….
Which is horrifying.
You want to know something weird - despite building their towers high into the sky - the
termites mainly live underground.
This has absolutely baffled scientists for hundreds of years and they still don’t have
an exact answer as to why.
A lot of people write bugs off as being pretty basic, but in actual fact, not only can termites
build these incredible, if bone chilling structures, they are also known to actively farm mould.
Next up at number 7 we have The Whale Song.
Songs are created - we humans do it a lot - so do whales - and something weird is happening
with them.
All around the world, blue whales arent singing like they used to.
The largest animals on the planet are singing in deeper voices every year and scientists
don't know why.
Ever since the 1960s, whales all over the world now sing in a frequency 30% lower than
they did before.
Mark Donald is president of Whale Acoustics, a company that specialises in this kind of
monitoring.
He said -We don't have an answer.
We just have a lot of recordings- … Mark and his team arent convinced by the suggested
explanations of ocean noise pollution, changing population dynamics or new mating strategies.
Its getting creepy now and experts arent even sure when it will end.
Do they sense something changing in the ocean?
On the whole planet?
Is there something we know that they don't?
While humans scratch their heads trying to figure it out, the whale song gets lower,
and lower, and lower …
6 Horrifying Spider Web I do not like a spider.
I really don’t.
I am a nature lover so I basically just try and grin and bear them, but this is too much
for me to accept.
In 2007, these super giant spider webs arrived straight from your literal nightmares in Dallas,
Texas.
Lake Tawakoni State Park fell victim to a giant communal spider web that caused a stir
on social media.
3,300 intrepid tourists visted the park over the labour day holiday.
Apparently the phenomenon occurred as a result of wet summer conditions, causing the parks
spider population to explode.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Biologist, Mike Quinn, referred to the spiders work as
sheet webbing, and it is thought to have covered the length of a football pitch.
One visitor described the webs as draping the tree like shrouds….which, if you don’t
know what a shroud is, it is a like a funeral cloak a dead person is buried in.
That description really isn’t making me feel better about the spiders!
The spiders, by the way, are thought to be the Guatemalan long jawed spider….ghhhhhreeeeaaaat!
I never even thought about spiders having jaws.
Apparently the webs were so popular that the New York Times ran the pictures as a lead
story.
Local Superintendent, Garde, said “the spiders are great little guys.
They put our park on the map.”
Yeah….
But...also….argh!
Spiders Danny?
How do you feel about spiders?
I actually don't mind them but if you don't like them - perhaps youll like our next one
because it definitely scares spiders - at number 5 we have the Mud Dauber Prisons.
These wasps eat spiders - but in a very creepy way.
Mud daubers build prisons for spiders made out of mud and wasp vomit.
Sounds like Im making it up right?
Part of me wishes I was but no, they really do this.
Mud dauber nests can contain dozens of these prison cells and each cell can contain up
to 3 spiders.
You might be wondering why the spiders don't try and escape, well, as much as Id like to
see a spider version of the Shawshank Redemption, they cant escape because the wasps paralyze
them.
At this point, even those of you who hate spiders are wondering why they the wasps do
all of this.
Well, its food - but not for them - for their babies.
The wasps lay eggs on the paralyzed spiders.
Once the eggs hatch, the wasp larvae finds its first meal ready to devour.
Soon enough it will be a fully grown wasp improsing spiders for the next generation,
its kinda sweet really.
There are many things humans have copied from the animal kingdom, I don't think this will
ever be one of them …
4 Wooden Hornests Nest Wasps scare me at the best of times because
they sting without remorse.
Hornests are like even angrier wasps.
At least with bees, stinging is a last resort...saying that really makes me want to sing Papa Roach.
Anyway, wasps and hornets can just keep on stinging.
Again, bees live in hives which are kind of pretty and are functional as they give us
wax or honey.
Hornets What do they give us.
This.
This is what you get from Hornets.
Thanks hornets….thanks for the carefree stinging and the sleepless nights.
Wasps and hornets make their nests from chewing wood into a pulp and sticking it together
with their saliva.
Haaaannnyway….the wasps chose the creepiest wood to harvest and the creepest place to
nest….in an old wooden statue.
The picture was shared on reddit by Count Bubs who said that their dad stumbled across
the horrifying sight in a shed he hadn’t used for years.
Cool.
You should always watch out for a wasp or hornets nest too; they may look old and abandoned…
but the creepy little stingsters could still be hibernating inside.
Yuck.
Next up at number 3 we have The Trapdoor Spider.
Spiders usually build webs - people who are scared of spiders are usually not fond of
webs.
However, there may be something even more creepy for a spider to live in - a trapdoor.
The aptly named Trapdoor Spider in Australia dig burrows under the ground where they spend
their entire lives - and they live quite a long time, around 20 years or more.
Of course, they don't just live underground, if a door can close, its supposed to open
again.
The trapdoor spider makes a door to their burrow using soil and leaves and even makes
a hinge using their own silk - this allows the spider burrow to be completely invisible
while sealed, so youd never know if you were right next to it.
They don't only use their silk for hinges though - oh no - they have a much more important
use for it.
The trapdoor spider sits and waits for its prey to pass by and trigger one of the specially
made tripwires around its burrow.
It will then leap out and drag its victim underground to consume it.
If insects had horror movies, the trapdoor spider would be one of the biggest villains.
There havent been any reports of them dragging humans down but er, Im not gonna take any
chances …
2 Crab in Baby Head Oh, hermit crab, you really have surpassed
yourself with the level of creepy you can achieve.
By and large, I am very pro crab, even though they are similar to spiders.
I like that they walk sideways and they are pincery.
I guess I wouldn’t love them if they lived in my house or my garden like spiders often
try to...so maybe that’s why I like them….
Out of sight, fond in mind!
So this hermit crab is a coconut crab in the pacific island… guess what it decided to
live in?
Eeer...the creepy decapitated head of a vacant eyed doll.
If I saw that monstrosity coming towards me I think I would do more than scream.
ARGH.
The dolls head also seemed to rot and deteriorate over time...making it look even scarier as
time went on.
What is that baby from toy story called?!
The mutant one in sids room?
This is like a real life version of that.
To be honest, the fact this exists is scary on a whole other level, too.
Hermit crabs usually use the empty shells of mollusks to protect themselves, but this
crab used a plastic dolls head..which speaks volumes as to our ocean pollution.
Every year, the world ocean sees a dump of anyway between 5 to 14 million tons of plastic
and other toxic debris.
This debris releases toxins that are contributing to the the biggest marine life mass extinction
in millenia.
And finally at number 1 we have Spider Decoys.
In 2017, scientists in Peru discovered a new species of spider - that was cool - but the
spiders were doing something very strange.
They were making models of themselves - tiny little fake spiders that would sit on the
web.
From a distance, these models look surprisingly like a spider but theyre actually made up
of bits of leaves, debris and even dead insects.
At first this might seem like some sort of strange ritual.
Humans like to make models of ourselves for art or religion - is that what the ants are
doing?
Is this their sort of ant religion?
Scientists were amazed by the fact that every spider model they found had 8 legs, it was
like the spiders knew what they looked like somehow - very creepy stuff.
Because the species is such a recent discovery, scientists will need more time to fully understand
how and why the spiders do this.
The current theory is that they build the fake versions of themselves to act as decoys
- perhaps as a defense mechanism to confuse predators.
Hopefully.
That sounds a lot better than a spider religion starting
in
the Amazon.