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[Loud Whispers]

The predatory tunicate Megalodicopia hians. It’s got a great expression.

Thanks for this, I wasn't aware of such a creature. Such a lovely face!

look at this omatophone looking dude

[Grim Portent]

Where are you guys finding all these weird looking critters, Chernobyl?

Well the aardark and aardwolf are both from Africa. Both are ant/termite eaters, and aardwolves are a type of hyena weirdly enough.

Pangolins are found in Asia and Africa as I recall.

Saiga antelope are from the steppe in Asia/Europe. As I recall the noses are an adaptation to breathing cold air, they help keep the internal body temperature higher by heating the air up as it passes through the nasal passages so it's warmer when it reaches the lungs.

The alaskan bull worm isn't real, to my knowledge the only worm by that name is from Spongebob, though it wouldn't surprise me to learn that a newly discovered species would be named that, biologists love their referential or silly animal names. The photo Novel posted is presumably a large marine worm from the north atlantic or pacific, or the antarctic ocean, but there's a whole heaping load of very large* worms in the ocean especially as you go towards the poles or deeper down.

Voliol's tunicate is a filter feeder, there's similar tunicates in the ocean worldwide. Some are less neat looking, being more like a squishy transparent pipe than anything else. They start out as mobile larva that swim around feeding on plankton, then once they mature a bit they anchor themselves to the sea floor, their tail and nerve cord get reabsorbed and they turn into various takes on filter feeding tubes. They basically digest their brain and leg equivalents to live the life of a vaccuum.


*Or long really, most marines worms that are big are extremely long rather than being larger in all dimensions than a small worm. Biological limitations on their internal anatomy and a lack of reason for getting thicker when longer does the same job better. Poor circulatory systems make getting nutrients from the digestive tract to the outer layers of a thicker body harder, so a thin long body helps there, and they tend to fill a lot of their length with ovaries and/or testes.

[dragdeler]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The white wagtail, my favourite bird that isn't a corvidae or parrot. These little gentlemen have style, and they'd rather walk a few steps than turn on the ole combustion engine.

[Eric Blank]

The 1000 butt worm, Ramisyllis Multicaudata (wikipedia), is your Chernobylian freak you're looking for. So many buttholes, yet adults (developing multiple tails) neither eat nor defecate, supposedly absorbing nutrients through their skin from the glass sponges they parasitically inhabit, hence the branching-at-random body shape like a plant or fungus (at least hypothetically, I don't know if anyone has conclusively proven that, but they have conclusively proven that dissected specimens' guts were devoid of any swallowed material, so how the fuck else could they survive, right? There's practically no chance they voided every particle from every millimeter of their guts without researchers noticing.)

But the 1000 butts also help during breeding, where they develop stolons; body segments on the end of the free tails that are effectively another tiny little worm, with a butt, head with brain and eyes, but fill these with either sperm or eggs (they are not hermaphroditic, each individual worm is either male or female) and then the stolon pops off and swims away to find a mate.

I recommend them purely because they're fucking weird.

[Loud Whispers]

That's such a funky lifeform, and they reproduce how I imagine mind worms from SMAC would

[King Zultan]

A worm with 1000 butts is a strange thing, one has to wonder why it has 1000 of them.

[Eric Blank]

Apparently many polychete worms have a bit on their last segment called a pygidium, which contains stem cells that let the worm grow new body segments, making their bodies longer. This one in particular is just growing a few normally, and then two simultaneously, complete with the regular organs attached to them, and connected and extended gut and anus, and then each new butt has a pygidium that can grow and split again at random intervals. But theyll always be a butt, because only the last segment on its body, its butt, can grow more segments, and those segments will always be a butt, because that is all its designed to produce. Only one head, if you ignore the stolons, because the head cant grow or split.

Maybe in the distant future more highly derived forms will forego having any gut at all in adults, or more points on the body, like the sides of preexisting segments, where new limbs can grow.

To be fair, it would be no less horrifying if it grew thousands of butts and heads, and became a sessile predator that snaps little critters out of the water. But there would be one point on its body, the segments between the butts and the heads, of the original free-swimming juvenile, through which all that shit has to pass. Actually, that would be way more horrifying. Like, a lot.

[Uthimienure]

Uthimienure likes tapirs, for their noses.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[dragdeler]

Oh god that second pic he can shit in our living room.

[Frumple]

Pangolins are found in Asia and Africa as I recall.

Armadillos also have similar vibes, for what it's worth -- some of them even do the roll-into-a-ball thing (others jump into the air when surprised, which is remarkably maladaptive when it comes to avoiding turning into roadkill). They're basically all over the Americas. If you don't have to, like... actually deal with them... they're kinda' cute.

... if you do, they're a bloody disease carrying pest that digs holes in your yard :V

[Eric Blank]

And if you try to shoot them, there's a risk of the bullet ricocheting back into your face. No shit, it's happened. Also a teenager got leprosy from shagging one.

You would also think deer are adorable, and they are usually, but god can they be pests.

Coyotes are also hella cute for something that eats all your pets. The coyote that was stealing our chickens last year had cubs to feed, I felt kinda bad chasing her away and shooting at her (with rock salt/bird shot from too far away to be effective, but still). Hasn't come back except to eat roadkill though.

[Grim Portent]

And if you try to shoot them, there's a risk of the bullet ricocheting back into your face. No shit, it's happened. Also a teenager got leprosy from shagging one.

Both of those seem like the expression 'play stupid games, win stupid prizes,' applies.


Another couple of reptiles from me; starting with the mole lizards.



One of the multiple takes on leglessness or near leglessnes that lizards have tried out over the years, mole lizards are found around Central America, and I think extend a bit into both North and South America proper. They are very small burrowing lizards, which are effectively blind despite still having eyes. They primarily feed on small invertebrates that live underground or in leaf litter.

Interestingly they have some anatomical similarities to snakes not found in other lizards that have adopted the serpentine form. Legless lizards usually have short broad bodies and long tails, but mole lizards have long bodies and short tails like snakes.


Secondly the earless monitor,



A semi-aquatic species from Asia, and the only living members of their taxonomical family, which is related to true monitor lizards. Visually stunning, but also very rare. Unlike the majority of lizards, and as their name suggests, they do not have an open ear canal. Their diet primarily consists of worms, snails, crustaceans and fish.

[King Zultan]

Also a teenager got leprosy from shagging one.

Why would some one fuck a armadillo, that just seems like a stupid idea.

[Frumple]

I mean, it's a stupid idea to climb a towering deadly mountain, too, but people still climb Everest. If it won't run away fast enough, sooner or later a human will try to bang it, for reasons myriad.

...

Also that totally reminds me of... some comic or another. Particularly debauched guy was brought a live 'dillo on a silver platter. Wasn't anything depicted on-screen, so to speak, but I'm pretty sure its uncomprehending sound effect was fnarf. Somethin' like that.

but yeah they're one of the remaining leprosy reservoirs in the wild, though unlike koalas and their STDs I don't think it's killing them or anything

[Grim Portent]

To be fair climbing Everest is less likely to go poorly than shagging a wild animal. Or any animal for that matter, interspecies sex is rife with issues moral and medical regardless of the animal being domestic or not.


On a more wholesome note;



Here's a valais blacknose lamb, a breed of domestic sheep which is very cute.