A Walk on the Wild Side

What if I told you that there is an animal that can be found in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, is carnivorous, has 15 sets of legs, and is probably IN YOUR HOUSE RIGHT NOW AND IT LOOKS LIKE THIS!!

Although it may look like some sort of alien monster, it’s actually the humble house centipede. They’re relatively harmless (most of these arthropods couldn’t hurt you if they tried due to their tiny teeth) and eat the bugs you should really be worrying about (aka cockroaches, termites, silverfish, and bedbugs).  House centipedes don’t carry disease, don’t destroy your property, and try to stay out of people’s way.  

The body of a house centipede is only about an inch long, but thanks to those ridiculously long legs and antennae, it can look much bigger.  It also spends a significant amount of time keeping those legs clean. Like a cat, it will groom itself, meticulously making sure that everything is in proper order.  So next time you see one of these centipedes crawling out of your drain, try not to scream or panic, and remember that this is one bug that you don’t want to squish.  

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!  It’s a …squid?  That’s right, Todarodes pacificus, aptly named the Japanese flying squid, is a squid that can actually fly.

Well, not fly fly.  It’s really more of a prolonged glide, although some scientists have argued that it technically does fly, since it has multiple stages of flight (launching, jetting, gliding, and diving) and can make adjustments midair to remain airborne.

Even if this invertebrate isn’t going to be challenging birds anytime soon, it’s still pretty impressive what the Japanese flying squid can do.  All squid swim by sucking water in with their mantle and then squirting it out through their siphon.  This squid takes it a step further by doing just that, only out of the water.  Once they’ve jet propelled themselves into the air, the Japanese flying squid spreads out its tentacles and fins to gain lift and stability.  They can cover a whopping 98 feet in just three seconds, making them faster than Usain Bolt, the fastest man on the planet.  When they start coming down, the squids will fold their fins and straighten their tentacles for a smoother reentry into the water.

When it’s not challenging the very concept of marine life, the Japanese flying squid is eating anything it can get its tentacles on.  Young squid start out eating plankton, and move on to fish, crustaceans, and other squid as they mature.  They’ll even eat each other if they become crowded, which has led Japanese fisherman to quickly haul in their catch, lest these squid (which are used for making sushi and calamari) eat it all.  

These squid aren’t just gluttons, though.  The reason for this constant caloric intake is that the Japanese flying squid only lives for a year and needs all the food it can get to grow from a tiny egg into a foot-long adult, as well as make the migration to the breeding grounds, all while dodging predators in both the sea and sky.  Not bad for something that most people associate with seafood.

The mountain katydid, as its name suggests, can be found living on the mountains of Australia.  They also live in grasslands, forests, and shrubby deserts.  The males have elongated bodies and fully developed wings, while the females are shorter, squatter, and only have the wing covers, but both sexes are the same mottled grey color that helps the blend into the ground.  Mountain katydids are virtually invisible if they aren’t disturbed.    

If something pokes or picks up this bug, it instantly raises its wing covers to display its brightly colored abdomen.  The striped bands of deep red, black, and electric blue greatly contrast with the ordinarily dull coloration of the mountain katydid, causing predators to back off, because in the animal kingdom, a prismatic palette is synonymous with poisonous.

Mountain katydids aren’t really poisonous though; it’s all a bluff known as Batesian mimicry, where a harmless organism adopts the bright colors and patterns of something that is deadly in the hopes that it will scare potential predators away.  However, the mountain katydid does taste really bad, thanks to its diet of ragwort, a plant that contains toxins that make other animals ill.  So when it flashes its abdomen at whatever is bothering it, mountain katydids really are issuing a warning, just not the kind the predator was expecting.

In 1874, while conducting research in the Arafura Sea, the crew of the HMS Challenger pulled up a net containing a small female cuttlefish.  It was soon determined that they had discovered a brand new species, so the specimen was shipped off to London for study. 11 years later, in 1885, this unusual cuttlefish was finally given a name: Metasepia pfefferi, the flamboyant cuttlefish.

Looking at that picture, you might wonder how such a dull looking cephalopod could ever be called flamboyant.    Well, that particular cuttlefish is just displaying its base color; if it wants to rest, or sneak up on its prey (small fish and crustaceans), there’s no need for it to start flashing like neon sign.  But when it does want to display, it is quite a sight to see.  There is a reason cuttlefish are called the chameleons of the sea; they have the ability to change colors in the blink of an eye.  The flamboyant cuttlefish is no different, turning its arms bright purple and yellow and creating mesmerizing black and white stripes that move down its 3 inch body.  

Despite its similarities to other cuttlefish, the flamboyant cuttlefish is different in two ways. Most cuttlefish hover above the ocean floor, keeping an eye out for anything that they can grab with their specialized feeding tentacles.  The flamboyant cuttlefish hunts in the same way, but prefers to walk.  It uses its two bottom most arms to propel itself and keeps the other six raised high for predators to see.  Why?  Because the colors that earned this invertebrate its name are a warning sign.  All cuttlefish have a venomous bite, but the flamboyant cuttlefish is the only one in the world that is also poisonous.  

If you are ever visit North America’s northern Pacific coast, you might come face to face with the second largest slug in the world: the Pacific banana slug.  There is no question as to how the banana slug got its name; with its bright yellow skin and a body that can grow to be 10 inches long, it bears a striking resemblance to the fruit that it shares its name with.    

You would think that this would make the banana slug stand out amongst the greenery of the coniferous rainforests that they live in, but that isn’t always the case.  These slugs can come in a variety of colors; mottled brown and black, green, and white.  In addition to that, banana slugs are detritivores, meaning that they feed on decomposing plant and animal matter, so they are often hidden under the leaf litter of the forest floor.  And, even though they don’t have any teeth to bite with or claws to fight with (or limbs for that matter), the banana slug has a secret weapon in the event that a hungry predator picks it up.  

Like all slugs, the banana slug is covered in mucus.  This mucus serves many purposes; it helps the slug transfer oxygen through its skin, aids in locomotion, and can even be used to attract a mate.  But perhaps the most useful thing this slime does (for the slug, at least) is to keep it from being eaten.  When a hungry animal puts a banana slug in its mouth and starts to chew, it gets a nasty surprise.  The banana slug starts producing more mucus than usual, leaving the predator with a mouthful of slime that only gets thicker and stickier the more it chews. As a bonus, the slug’s mucus contains an anesthetic, which causes the predator’s mouth to go numb.  Maybe that hungry animal would’ve have better luck with an actual banana instead.

What looks like a lizard, acts like a lizard, but isn’t a lizard?  The answer to that question is the northern tuatara, one of the oldest and most unusual reptiles on the planet.

The tuatara is one of the oldest reptiles on the planet in more ways than one.  Tuataras are ancient creatures; the only surviving members of the order Rhynchocephalia.  They have amphibian-like brains, fish-like spines, and the most primitive heart and lungs of any reptile.  They also have extremely long lifespans; it can take the tuatara 20 years to reach sexual maturity, five years to develop and lay an egg (the slowest reproduction of any reptile), and 35 years to get to their maximum length of two feet.  There is a captive tuatara that is over 100 years old and still able to reproduce, leading some scientists to think that these reptiles might have a lifespan of a whopping 200 years.

Tuataras live exclusively in New Zealand.  Until the introduction of invasive species such as rats and cats, the tuatara had no natural predators, but that doesn’t mean it can’t defend itself.  This reptile has armored spines all along its back and tail, and like a lizard, has the ability to break off said tail if it is grabbed.  Tuataras also have a nasty bite that they will direct at anything that gets too close, as well as the tendency to keep their mouth clamped shut on whatever it has sunk its teeth into.

Even though they evolved with no predators, the tuatara still prefers to come out at night.  With the exception of the young, who are active during the day to avoid the cannibalistic adults, tuataras are almost entirely nocturnal.  This is because these reptiles need cooler temperatures to survive.  Anything over 82° F can be fatal, so during the day, tuataras hide out in burrows that they have dug themselves or borrowed from nesting sea birds.  Once night falls, the tuatara goes on the hunt, searching for bugs, frogs, lizards, and eggs.  When dawn approaches, the tuatara detects the ultraviolet rays of the sun using its third eye, a sensory organ on the top of its head that can tell dark from light, and makes its way back to its shelter to rest until it is time to hunt again.

With a wingspan of 23 feet, the oceanic manta ray is the biggest ray in the world.  However, much like its cousin the whale shark, this ray is a filter feeder, sustaining itself with some of the smallest organisms in the ocean.  The manta ray will glide through the water using its cephalic fins (the ones by its mouth) to funnel plankton into its open mouth, eating around 350 pounds of the tiny invertebrates every week.

When the cephalic fins aren’t in use, they’re tightly wrapped up so they stay out of the manta rays way while it swims through the warm waters found across the globe. Sometimes these rays will join up and form groups with up to 50 members if they find an especially rich feeding spot, but manta rays usually travel in ones or twos.  

The only other place that manta rays really congregate is at cleaning stations.  These are special spots near coral reefs where the ray can have its skin cleaned by smaller fish and, if the time is right, breed.  Male manta rays become sexually mature when they reach 13 feet in width, while females take a little longer, getting about 16 feet wide.  After the two have mated, the male will take off, leaving the female with a single fertilized egg in her oviduct.  The egg eventually hatches, but remains it the mother’s womb, getting nourishment from a milk like secretion.  A full year after she mated, the female gives birth to her pup and leaves.  The newborn pup will spend a couple of years in the shallows before it too swims off into the open ocean.

At just under 6 feet from head to tail, the giant river otter is the longest member of the family Mustelidae (a group that includes, weasels, badgers, wolverines, and of course, otters).  It also has the shortest fur in the otter subfamily, but that doesn’t bother the giant river otter, since the fur is dense enough to keep its skin dry during swims in the Amazon River.

Another otter oddity is the fact that the giant river otter has exceptionally good vision.  This otter is active during the day, and uses its keen eyesight to spot fish, crabs, snakes, and the occasional caiman.  Being able to see well also comes in handy when the giant river otter needs to tell its friends from foes.  When one otter comes across another, the two of them will engage in a behavior called ‘periscoping’.  Both giant river otters will raise themselves out of the water to expose the markings on their necks and chests.  These markings are different for every individual, so these otters can use them to identify one another.

This is important, because unlike other otters, the giant river otter is a very social animal.  The average size of a romp (that’s the name of a group of them) of giant river otters is between 3 and 8 individuals, but there have been groups of more than twenty described.  These units are made up of extended family members surrounding a dominant breeding pair, and they live in dens that are dug near the river. In the dry season, the dominant female will give birth to one to five pups, and the rest of her family will help care for them until they can start hunting on their own.

The wattled jacana lives in the tropical wetlands of South America, where it spends its time wading around picking bugs out of the water and off of low lying vegetation.  At first glance, the wattled jacana looks like any other wading bird; long spindly legs and a neck that can stretch out to snap up food.  But this bird has a secret that it is hiding beneath the warm wetland waters.

Don’t worry, it’s not anything sinister.  The wattled jacana just has really, really big feet.  And, while it may seem counterintuitive, these massive feet make this bird more mobile. The long toes help distribute the jacana’s weight over a larger area, which allows it to walk across lily pads and other aquatic plants without sinking.  Not that the wattled jacana can’t swim; this bird is an excellent swimmer, but sometimes prefers to go over the water rather than through it.

There is another unusual thing about the wattled jacana.  Unlike most birds, it is the females of this species that are larger and brighter.  They also control a territory, guard it from other females, and create a harem of males to incubate their eggs and raise their chicks.  The males make excellent dads.  If the floating nest begins taking on water and starts to sink, he’ll pick up the eggs (two under each wing) and move them to a new nest.  

The rubber boa is a snake that lives on the western side of North America, with a range stretching all the way from California to British Columbia.  This makes them the northern most boa species in the world, which is good for this snake, since it doesn’t handle the heat of the lower latitudes very well.  This doesn’t mean that the rubber boa’s habitat is restricted though.  These snakes can be found living in grasslands, forests, and alpine environments; basically anywhere that has a place for the rubber boa to hide in.

Having cover is very important to the rubber boa.  They aren’t very big (the maximum length of this snake is only about 2.5 feet) and are not aggressive in any way (which makes it a popular pet, since the rubber boa never bites), so it can be a little difficult to defend themselves from anything that wants to eat them.  If threatened, all a rubber boa can do is to release a foul smelling musk or curl up into a ball with its blunted tail acting as a fake head for predators to strike at.  

When night falls, the rubber boa becomes active and starts hunting for prey.  If it comes across eggs of other reptiles or birds, it’ll eat them, but the preferred prey of this snake are the babies of the other animals that make use of the shelter; mice, voles, and shrews.  Speaking of babies, rubber boas are ovoviviparous (their young develop in eggs, but hatch inside the mother, making it seem like a live birth) and can produce up to 9 baby snakes each year, although most females only reproduce every four years.

Eelpouts (family Zoarcidae) are a type of fish that get their names from their elongated bodies and perpetual frowns.  The pink vent fish is a member of this family, but its name comes from something other than looks.  A very loose translation of the genus Thermarces is ‘keeping close to heat’, which true, because this fish pretty much only lives around hydrothermal vents.  These vents are caused by cracks in the ocean floor that release superheated water (around 600 degrees Fahrenheit) and minerals that create oasis where life can thrive among the otherwise barren abyssal plain.

Pink vent fish have made themselves right at home in this inhospitable environment.  The hydrothermal vent’s warm water and abundance of minerals makes it into a literal hot spot for bacteria, which attracts copepods and amphipods, snails, giant tube worms, crabs, octopuses, and fish.  The pink vent fish is at the top of the food chain here, but prefers to go after the smallest prey.  While it mostly eats the tiny limpets that attach themselves to the tube worms, this fish will also eat amphipods, copepods, and the occasional snail.

We really don’t know that much about the pink vent fish.  Their size, lifespan, behavior, and reproduction is still a mystery. That’s because the water 7,500 feet down is under a tremendous amount of pressure; more than 220 times greater than the pressure at sea level.  That means that the pink vent fish is swimming through waters that have a pressure of 3,250 pounds per square inch.  This fish can survive down there because it’s had millions of years to adapt to this environment, while humans only discovered the vents that they live on in 1949, and didn’t develop technology to explore them until 1964.  But who knows?  Maybe, in the near future, we’ll devote more resources towards learning about this elusive deep sea creature, and eventually all other creatures of the ocean as well.    

In 2007, after collecting specimens from a cavern, scientists in Thailand introduced a newly discovered species; Desmoxytes purpurosea.  It was type of dragon millipede (named for the spikes all along their backs) that was a brilliant hot pink, so it was named the shocking pink dragon millipede.

Although this millipede is one of the largest in its genus, it’s still only about an inch long.  You’d think that the bright coloration of the shocking pink dragon millipede would cause predators to make a bee-line towards this tiny bug, but you’d be wrong.  This millipede’s hot pink body is a warning sign; shocking pink dragon millipedes secrete cyanide, which is one of the strongest toxins on the planet.  

Shocking pink dragon millipedes live in leaf litter found in limestone karsts (a geologic formation where rock has been dissolved, resulting in sinkholes and caves).  Here forages for decaying plant matter, such as fallen leaves, to eat.  When it isn’t looking for food, this millipede will sit on the rocks to sun itself, regardless of any danger it is putting itself in, because it knows that nothing will touch it.  Shocking, isn’t it.

The name of the Antarctic giant isopod is a bit of a misnomer.  Yes it is an isopod, and yes it does live in the ocean by Antarctica (it’s called the Southern Ocean, if you were wondering), but it’s not giant.  Its average length of 3.5 inches makes it bigger than the average animal that lives in the freezing oxygen poor waters near the South Pole, but it’s absolutely miniscule compared to some other isopod species, which can be more than a foot long.  

Because there isn’t enough sunlight to support plant matter in the mesopelagic zone (200-1000 feet below sea level), Antarctic giant isopods are carnivorous.  They are mostly scavengers, feeding off any carrion that drifts down to their depth, but will also eat small sponges and fish.  Even though they usually don’t actively hunt down prey, Glyptonotus antarcticus is one of the few isopods that can swim.  And if that wasn’t strange enough, the Antarctic giant isopod actually swims upside-down.

In the rare event that this isopod is attacked by something large enough to do damage, it can curl up into a ball to protect itself, just like its terrestrial cousins the wood lice (aka roly polies and pill bugs) do.  The Antarctic giant isopod can also use its four spiny legs as a defense mechanism, raising them up and waving them around to look bigger.  Mothers-to-be prefer to avoid direct confrontation; after they have laid their eggs (the biggest of any marine invertebrate) into a special brood pouch, the females of this species will bury themselves in the sand and wait for their young to hatch.  Luckily, the Antarctic giant isopod has a slow metabolism, so the mother doesn’t starve to death during this process.

If you use a search engine to look up pictures of a longhorned beetle, chances are that the majority of the beetles you’ll find are Anoplophora glabripennis.  The Asian longhorned beetle’s home is in China, Korea, and Japan, where it is also known as the starry sky beetle due to its coloration.  This beetle can also be found in various other countries around the world, where it is known as a pest due to its habit of destroying trees.

In 1996, officials in New York discovered the invasive beetle had hitched a ride in wooden packing material that had been shipped in from China.  The Asian longhorned beetle began feeding and breeding, and with no predators to cull their population, quickly spread throughout the northern United States.

The problem isn’t really caused by the adult beetles; they only have a maximum lifespan of 200 days in laboratory conditions.  It’s when the females lay their eggs (up to 62 in their lifetime) that the trouble starts. Like most young creatures, Asian longhorned beetle larvae are hungry.  This isn’t really a problem for them, since their nursery is their source of food. When the female Asian longhorned beetle lays an egg, she first burrows into a tree to make sure that her egg is protected.  

Upon hatching, the larvae immediately begins to eat, working their way from the bark to the very heart of the tree.  The tree usually doesn’t survive the process, which isn’t surprising, considering that young Asian longhorned beetles can eat more than 35,000 cubic feet of wood during their larval stage.  It can take two years for this beetle to grow from an egg to an adult, but only a few days for the adults to reach sexual maturity and start producing more ravenous Asian longhorned beetles.

There is a reason that so many horror films set in Japan feature creatures rising from the briny deep. Take the Japanese spider crab; it lives at depths of almost 2,000 feet and is the owner of the longest legs of any arthropod.

Despite its large size (a twelve foot leg span can be pretty intimidating) and powerful pincers, Japanese spider crabs have been described as docile by those who have worked with them in captivity.  These crabs aren’t very active hunters, preferring to scavenge on plant and animal matter.  They are also quite intelligent; prying open bivalves, scraping at the seafloor to dislodge algae, and decorating themselves with sponges and seaweeds to help keep them hidden from predators.

Another remarkable fact about the Japanese spider crab is that it has an extremely long life span. Japanese spider crabs start out as eggs attached to their mothers legs, then hatch into tiny legless larvae that drift around the surface of the ocean.  After two to three months, the crab finally reaches its adult stage, but continues growing for the rest of its long life; scientists believe that this crab can live to be 100 years old, which would make it the longest lived species of crab in the world.  

A babirusa is a primitive pig that lives on the islands of Indonesia.  While the young and female babirusas look rather unremarkable, the male’s canine teeth have become enlarged, resulting in massive curving tusks that can be 17 inches long.  It is these antler-like tusks that give these pigs their name; babirusa literally translates as ‘pig-deer’.  Interestingly, a babirusa’s tusks never stop growing (which is unusual for teeth) and if they aren’t worn down, they have been known to penetrate the skull and kill the pig.

The North Sulawesi babirusa is the most populous member of the genus Babyrousa and lives exclusively on the Sulawesi and Lembeh islands. Unlike other species of babirusa, the North Sulawesi babirusa is virtually hairless, letting its grey skin act as camouflage among the underbrush.  It is here that this pig spends its time searching for food.  Babirusas are omnivorous, and will eat just about anything. They will dig for grubs and roots underground, stand up on their hind legs to reach high leaves and fruits, peel bark off of trees, and pull fish out of the water.  These pigs will even resort to cannibalism if they find a dead babirusa on the ground.

Just like the North Sulawesi babirusa is different from other species of babirusa, this genus of wild pigs greatly differs from other suids (that’s the scientific name for the pig family).  Most pigs have a simple stomach, but the stomach of a babirusa is chambered, like that of a cow.  Babirusas also have small litters, giving birth to just one or two piglets at a time. As a result of this, female babirusas only have one set of teats.  The young of the babirusa also mature much more quickly compared to other pigs.  It takes about three months for other piglets to be weaned off of their mother’s milk, but a baby babirusa will begin to eat solids in just ten days.      

At five feet tall, the rhea is the largest bird in South America.  It’s related to ostriches, emus, cassowaries, and kiwis, and shares their common characteristics of long legs and flightlessness.  Because they can’t fly, rheas depend on their legs to help them make a speedy getaway in the event of a cougar or jaguar attack; these birds can run at speeds of 40 miles per hour for sustained periods of time, allowing them to escape from the big cats.  

Rheas are not picky eaters. Although they mostly feed on leaves, the rhea will also eat seeds, fruit, insects, reptiles, and small mammals. This varied diet makes this bird both a help and a hindrance to farmers.  Rheas will devour leafy vegetables like cabbage and lettuce, but won’t bother grains, instead eating the bugs that would have ruined the crop.  Since they can’t chew, rheas have to swallow small rocks to grind up the plant matter in their stomachs so the food can be properly digested.

When it comes to raising children, rheas do things a little differently.  Males will pick a spot and compete with other males for the right to mate with a female and have her lay eggs in the nest he has built.  The males mate with multiple females, and end up with several eggs in his nest (the average is 26, but clutches of 80 eggs have been recorded) that he incubates and hatches all on his own.  

When they are ready to hatch, chicks begin making popping noises within the egg.  This is a signal to the other chicks in the nest that it is time to hatch, and all of them end up emerging within 36 hours of each other. This may seem like a strange way to reproduce, but it works well for the rhea.  In 2000, six rheas in Germany escaped from their enclosure and ran off into the woods.  Instead of quickly succumbing to the unfamiliar habitat, the rheas thrived, and as of 2011, had reached a population of more than 100 birds.