Who can really claim they know every single animal that has ever existed? The list is endless and more foreign than we would ever have imagined. There are animals that we would have never expected to exist, their nature and characteristics unparallel to the others.
Creatures of colors and shapes that you would have never dreamt of finding outside the fairytales. Sit tight and browse through this beautiful compilation of 63 of the weirdest animals that you could lay your eyes upon!
1) Nature Got Bored And Made A Bongo
Most types of antelope are pretty similar. They all tend to have quite plain fur patterns and simple bodily forms, but the bongo is totally different. It has patches on its cheeks, stripes all over its body, and huge horns too.
2) Camouflage Isn’t The Strong Suit Of The Golden Pheasant
The golden pheasant, also known as the Chinese pheasant, is quite a looker! The males are super colorful, with golden-yellow crests, orange ruffs, and plenty of red, blue, and green bits all over their bodies too. They definitely stand out in a crowd!
3) Jorunna Parva – The Sea Bunny
Affectionately known as ‘sea bunnies’, these funny little sea slugs are marine molluscs found in the waters around Africa and Asia. They’re funny little things, with those two little ear-like structures (scientifically known as rhinophores) looking just like bunny ears. They use them to scan the surrounding environment to find food and mates.
4) Colorful Sarada Lizards
Sarada lizards have these beautiful, colored fans beneath their throats. They actually become more colorful and vivid as the males reach sexual maturity, enticing any lazy lizards in the area to come over and say hello.
5) The White-Faced Saki Stands Out
The funny-looking white-faced saki immediately stands out when compared to other primates due to its strangely-shaped white face. Only the males have this unique aspect, whereas the females tend to have darker faces that blend well with the rest of their fur.
6) The Striped Possum Has A Funny Face
Striped possums are quite closely related to sugar gliders. They’re members of the marsupial family and they always have three white stripes running along their bodies, creating a Y-shape on their heads.
7) Bearded Reedlings Just Look Like Little Blobs
The bearded reedling almost looks like a little squirt of whipped cream, sitting on a tree branch. These adorable little muffin-like creatures are super cute and only ever pair off with a single partner for their entire lives.
8) A Monkey With Almost No Nose
The black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys stand out for the fact that they have no nasal bones at all, giving their faces a totally different look when compared to many other monkeys. They were more or less unknown until the 1990s and can only be found in a certain part of China.
9) Is That A Pokemon? No, It’s A Boomer
Greater prairie chickens, also known as boomers, are found in North America. They’re quite rare nowadays, but were very common many years ago. They really stand out with their inflatable orange neck patches and orange feathers over the eyes.
10) These African Cows Do Something Different With Their Horns
The Ankole-Watusi African cow might not look too strange at first, but wait until you learn more about it. Like many cows, these ones have horns. Only they aren’t used for defense! Instead, these cows use their horns to cool down and they’re always warm to the touch.
11) A Teeny Tiny Unicorn Katydid
Unicorns are real, after all! Only they’re much tinier and definitely not as pretty as we imagined. The unicorn katydid is a member of the Orthoptera family and has a single long horn protruding from the top of its head.
12) No, It’s Not A Feather, It’s A Sea Pen
Sea pens look just like little colorful flowers bobbing around in the ocean. They were named due to their resemblance to old quill pens, which were made from feathers.
13) A Snake With Horns
The Saharan horned viper, also known as the horned desert viper, is a very venomous and dangerous species of viper found in Africa. It stands out from other slithery serpents due to the little horns on its head. It can’t really use them to attack, but they make it look almost like a dragon!
14) Von Der Decken’s Sifaka Are Too Cute
Von der Decken’s sifaka are found only in Madagascar. They live in forests and are great climbers. They stand out due to the fact that their fur is mostly white, with black bits only on their faces and lears. It almost looks like they’re dressed up like sheep! They were named in honor of the first European man to try and climb Mt Kilimanjaro.
15) A Stick Or An Insect?
Stick insects definitely deserve a spot on this list. They’re amazing at fitting in with their environment, but really, they’re just sticks with legs.
16) The Santa Monkey
The De Brazza’s monkey is named after an explorer called Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza. They have a unique fur coloring that makes it seem like they’re walking around with big, bushy, white beards, just like Santa Claus.
17) A Bird With A Beard
The male long-wattled umbrellabird definitely doesn’t look quite like anything else on Earth. It has a huge waffle of feathers around the throat area that actually dangles down when the bird is resting, but can be retracted when it needs to fly.
18) Tridacna Have Curvy Shells
Tridacna are marine molluscs, like clams, with folded shells that form in wave-like shapes. They live in coral reefs and can survive for centuries! One of their nicknames is ‘boring clam’.
19 Honduran White Bats Are Tiny Fig Fans
The Honduran white bat is a type of bat with beautiful white fur and very funny features. It has a nose and ears that almost look like little leaves. It has no tail either and it lives almost entirely on figs.
20) Leaf Tail Geckos Have The Perfect Camouflage
The leaf-tail gecko definitely knows how to blend in with its environment. It can easily be mistaken for a simple leaf, allowing it to catch little insects unawares and gobble them up.
21) The Venezuelan Poodle Moth Is A Mystery
This weird, fluffy moth was only discovered in 2009 and no specimens have actually been caught or investigated, so we don’t know much about them except for the fact that they look like aliens or mini monsters.
22) Gharials Aren’t So Scary
If you spotted a gharial swimming towards you, you might freak out. They look a little like crocodiles or alligators, but they’re far less deadly. They have super narrow jaws that are only really suited to eating fish, so they can’t really handle big mammals like humans.
23) A Very Bright Bird
This bird has one of the best names around. It’s called the Andean cock-of-the-rock and is the national bird of Peru! Weirdly enough, the male’s body is totally black, but the head is bright orange in order to attract females.
24) The Radiated Tortoise Has Such A Pretty Shell
The radiated tortoise is one of the most beautiful tortoises in existence. It looks just like any other tortoise at first glance, but when you look closer at the shell, you can see lots of distinctive yellow lines and patterns that make it super pretty. The oldest radiated tortoise made it to 188 years old, but this species is critically endangered.
25) A Tomato Or A Frog?
Say hello to the tomato frog! It’s pretty easy to guess how they got their name. They always have a distinctive bright red color, just like a ripe tomato. You definitely don’t want to try eating one though. They can secrete a very toxic substance to keep predators away.
26) The Critically Endangered Red Ruffed Lemur
Found only in Madascar, these funny-looking lemurs immediately catch the eye due to their red ruffs and thick, bushy tails. They’re very clean creatures and can spend hours each day grooming themselves and others.
27) Indri Is The Biggest Lemur Around
Indri is the name of this type of lemur. It’s the biggest lemur known to man and is famous for its fuzzy ears and big green eyes, which almost make it look like a teddy bear brought to life.
28) The Bearded Barbet Is One Bristly Bird
The bearded barbet is an African bird in the Lybiidae family. They’re pretty birds, with red and black plumage, but their most distinctive feature is those little black bristles, that almost look like whiskers, sticking out all around the beak.
29) Cotton-Top Tamarins Always Look Like Old Timers
The cotton-top tamarin almost always looks old, due to the thick tuft of white fur sitting on top of its head. They have almost no fur on the face, which also adds to their unique aesthetic. One of the funny habits of this type of tamarin is showing its butt to others when it wants to be left alone.
30) The Spectacled Eider Seems To Be Wearing Glasses
The spectacled eider is a type of sea duck that lives in Alaska and Siberia. It was named due to the unique pattern around its eyes that make it seem to be wearing glasses.
31) The Shoebill Is One Funny-Looking Bird
The shoebill, also known as the whalehead, is famed for its massive bill that almost looks like a shoe sticking out of the front of its face. At certain angles, the unique bodily form of this bird also makes it seem like a little child wearing a bird suit!
32) The One And Only Blobfish
Voted the ugliest animal on Earth, the blobfish is an incredible example of seemingly lazy design on the part of Mother Nature. As the name indicates, it really does look just like a big slimy blob.
33) The Superb Bird Of Paradise Is Such A Show Off
With a name like ‘Superb Bird of Paradise’, you already know that this little guy thinks pretty highly of himself! The males of this species have bright blue throat shields that can be extended and used in mating dances to attract females.
34) A Furry Crab
This is the yeti crab, also known under its more scientific name of kiwaidae. They’re named in honor of the legendary yeti due to the fact that they have furry-looking claws and bodies, all covered in bristles.
35) The Zebra Duiker Needs To Make Its Mind Up
The zebra duiker almost looks like it can’t decide whether it wants to have stripes or not! Half of its body is covered with them, but the rest isn’t, creating this weird creature that looks a little like a Photoshop of two different animals blended together.
36) The Pacu Fish
If you put the teeth of a pacu fish and the teeth of a typical person side by side, it’s actually very hard to tell the difference! They look like regular fish on the outside, but when they open their mouths, we can see those human-style teeth, perfect for cutting and grinding up their food. Has Human-Like Teeth
37) What A Weird Nose
Found only in North America, the star-nosed mole is quite a creepy creature. It’s super tiny, about the size of a hamster, and is named of its weirdly-shaped nose that has thousands of little sensory receptors to help it get around and avoid danger.
38) Cat-Dog
The fossa has been quite a controversial creature among animal experts, as many of them don’t agree on how it should be classified. It clearly has cat-like characteristics, but it also has some other features that are definitely not very catty at all. It’s almost like someone tried to mix a cat and a dog together.
39) Nightmare Creatures
Lampreys are the stuff that nightmares are made of. They basically look like long tubes filled with sharp teeth. There are many different types of lamprey, but they all have similar traits and scary feeding habits. They latch on to other fish and suck their blood.
40) It’s A Painful Life For The Babirusa
The babirusa is a very odd looking creature with two sets of tusks. One set sticks out of the sides of the mouth, but the other set actually sticks through the roof of the mouth and juts out of the middle of the head, piercing the animal’s flesh and curving around towards its eyes.
41) Dugongs Are Strictly Vegetarian
The dugong is a member of the Sirenia family and is the only exclusivley herbivorous marine mammal on Earth. It has no dorsal fin and looks like a big bundle of blubber, swimming slowly along and dining on little bits of seagrass whenever it can find them.