9 incredible animals with super powers

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

A frog fighting with fragments of its own bones, a shrimp with a claw hotter than the Sun, a cupid slug and more.

1. Lizard shooting poisonous blood from the eyes

• Name: toad lizard, Phrynosoma platyrhinos.
• Habitat: from southwestern Canada to Guatemala, most are found in the southwestern United States and Mexico.

If a predator tries to grab this lizard, it will shoot it with blood from its own eyes. At the same time, she aims at the eyes of the enemy. Its blood tastes disgusting and causes severe irritation, because it accumulates poisons from the ants eaten by the lizard. A reptile can spend a third of its blood volume on shots without harm.

2. A frog that fights with fragments of its own bones

• Name: hairy frog, Trichobatrachus robustus.
• Habitat: from southwest Nigeria through west and southwest Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Gabon.

Firstly, the very presence of hair in a frog is already unusual. Although, strictly speaking, these are not hairs, but skin processes, presumably helping the creature to breathe. But the coolest feature of the frog is the bones of its fingers, which can serve as claws. This is a kind of amphibian Logan, just before being covered with adamantium.

If the frog needs to protect itself from predators, the bones in the toes of its hind paws break and, piercing the skin, jump out, turning into a weapon. Seeing such an atrocity, the predator runs away in panic, and the animal returns the bones to their place, splicing them and covering them with skin again.

3. The Pistol Shrimp Wielding Thanos' Flip

• Name: nutcracker cancer, Alpheus digitalis.
• Habitat: in most of the oceans, as well as in flowing caves.

Clicker crayfish, which is a real shrimp, grows to only 3–6 centimeters in length. Moreover, one claw is larger than the second. With this limb, a pistol shrimp, as this crustacean is also called, can click with incredible force.

Squeezing and unclenching the claw at the speed of a bullet, the animal shoots jets of hot water at opponents. The stream of bubbles accelerates to 100 kilometers per hour, and the click volume reaches 210 decibels - louder than the sound of a jet fighter taking off. This is enough to stun the fish the shrimp is hunting, or to smash an aquarium if placed there.

The click causes a flash of light and heats the crab's claw to 5,000 ℃ - higher than on the surface of the Sun.

These nutcrackers congregate in colonies and click all together, and their noise interferes with sonar operation. And the cavitating bubbles they produce even damage the propellers of ships.

The pistol shrimp has a relative, the mantis shrimp (Squilla mantis), which has the same ability. At the same time, he also sees in the usual, ultraviolet and infrared spectra and distinguishes between the types of polarization of light, which means that he aims better.

In the air, he does not want to demonstrate his signature blow - maybe he is embarrassed, but, most likely, he protects the claw. Outside the cooling seawater, it will be damaged with a click.

4. A slug throwing "spears of love"

• Name:ninja slug, Ibycus rachelae.
• Habitat: mountain forests on the slope of Kinabalu, Sabah, Borneo.

At first glance, this is just a slug, and it is not immediately clear why he was nicknamed a ninja, because he looks like turtles only in color. It would be more appropriate to call this mollusk a cupid.

When female slugs want to reproduce, they shoot, at the male, "darts" produced by their bodies, consisting of calcium carbonate and covered with hormones. Having received such an arrow, the male becomes excited and goes to his beloved to mate.

5. Immortal jellyfish

• Name: jellyfish Turritopsis nutricula.
• Habitat: initially - the waters of the Caribbean Sea, then there was a settlement in other seas of the tropical and temperate zones.

This creature does not know how to kill with one touch or sink ships and there are whales: it is only a few millimeters in size. But it is immortal. If Turritopsis nutricula is not devoured by a predator, it will live forever.

When a jellyfish gets into unfavorable conditions or gets injured, it sinks to the bottom and turns into a polyp. After a couple of months, having recovered, she again takes on the appearance of a jellyfish. Propagated by budding.

6. Sea cucumber shooting with internal organs from the anus

• Name: sea cucumber, Holothuroidea.
• Habitat: all over the oceans.

Sea cucumber is not a vegetable, but a representative of invertebrates such as echinoderms. When a predator attacks, the sea cucumber shoots without hesitation, at it with the back of its intestine or even with its lungs through the anus. While the attacker shakes off this lewdness in horror, the sea cucumber crawls away. He regrows lost organs.

If you can't scare the enemy with your own lungs flying out through the anus, the sea cucumber allows the predator to tear itself apart. And when it is torn to pieces, the piece with the head crawls away and regenerates the body.

7. Just a flying snake

• Name: common decorated snake, Chrysopelea ornata.
• Habitat: jungles of South and South-East Asia.

If you hate snakes, you better not meet this creature: the decorated snake does not worry at all about what will happen if it suddenly falls off the branch.

The reptile simply straightens its ribs, pulling in its stomach and thereby improving its aerodynamic qualities, and plans wherever it wants, controlling the direction of flight with its tail. Thus, the snake can attack prey from above or escape from predators.

During not very humane experiments, it turned out that Chrysopelea ornata can plan without any harm to itself from a 41-meter tower - this is about 12 floors.

But do not worry: although these snakes are poisonous, they cannot kill a person.

8. Almond-scented centipede

• Name:dragon centipede, Desmoxytes purpurosea.
• Habitat:Laos, Southeast Asia.

Don't like centipedes? They are you too, so they have an impressive defense mechanism. Or attacks. The dragon centipede produces hydrogen cyanide - the same hydrocyanic acid that the characters of cheap detectives like to poison each other.

This is why the centipede gives off the scent of almonds.

The fact that the animal is poisonous is indicated by its bright red-pink color.

And another centipede, this time yellow, Apheloria polychroma, can literally spray clouds of cyanide around it to scare away birds of prey.

One volley is enough to kill up to 18 birds the size of a dove.

9. Bed bug is a sex giant

• Name: bed bug, Cimex lectularius.
• Habitat: your bed.

You may ask: what's so interesting about common bedbugs? They bite, drink blood, and are hard to get rid of. Everything is true, but their intimate life is incredibly fun. Male bugs are noble Casanova, and they do not ask the lady if she wants intimacy.

Instead, with their sharp, long, curved penis, they poke the female wherever they can. It gets into the vagina - good, but this happens rarely and only in laboratory conditions. Basically, males do not aim, but make a hole in the female's shell, fertilizing her.

The semen goes directly to the circulatory system, from there to the reproductive system, and the female produces eggs, usually between 250 and 500. She can also control when to conceive. If the living conditions are not very successful, the female will save the obtained genetic material for later. Once fertilized, she can become pregnant and lay eggs for the rest of her life, without even contacting males in the future.

If one female was with several suitors, she will have children from all at once. But from the latter, more offspring will be born.

Bedbugs can copulate 200 times a day, not figuring out who they are pestering with their courtship - females or other males. And if a male bug undergoes such "traumatic insemination", he simply changes sex, lays eggs and lives like a female, not really worrying about what happened.