Bizarre Anatomy
Possessing unconventional body structures, strange jaw joints, or weird sensory extensions evolved for extreme niches.
Atlantic Mudskipper
A West African fish that blinks on land and hunts crabs and insects on the mud.
Barreleye Fish
The deep-sea fish with a transparent, fluid-filled shield on its head and light-sensitive tubular eyes that rotate inside it.
Brazilian Treehopper
A rainforest sap-drinker wearing a crown of glossy globes on slender horns, argued over by entomologists since 1903.
Coelacanth
Thought to have gone extinct over 65 million years ago, then found alive in 1938, with fleshy fins that move like a four-legged animal's legs and a pregnancy of around five years, possibly the longest of any vertebrate.
Common Starfish
A headless starfish that pries open mussels with its suction feet, then pushes its stomach inside the shell to digest them.
Cookiecutter Shark
A shark up to 56 cm long that glows underneath to lure big animals close, then spins to cut a round plug out of them.
Gulper Eel (Pelican Eel)
A huge gape, a mouth that first unfolds and then inflates, and a glowing tail tip.
Luna Moth
A big green silk moth whose spinning hindwing tails pull bat attacks off its body, and whose adults do not eat.
Ringed Caecilian
A legless burrower about 40 cm long whose newborns eat their mother's skin and drink milk from her vent.
Saiga Antelope
An inflatable nose, loud nasal roars, and an Ice Age survivor of the Eurasian steppe.