Based on recent estimates there are approximately 30-50 million species on Earth. Among them there are strange and weird species which you probably haven’t heard of, some really endangered and some distinctly odd looking. Here are a random sampling of strange species.
1. Almiqui
The Almiqui was believed to be extinct for many years – until 2003, when the creature was found in the island’s eastern mountains. We celebrate it’s journey “back to life,” and intend on giving the creature proper recognition…t. The Almiqui is an insectivore found only in the eastern mountains of Cuba. It belongs to the same family as the Haitian Solenodon and is unusual in the mammalian family because its saliva is venomous. It was originally thought to be extinct , having not been seen between 1977 and 2003, when a farmer came across a specimen. First found in the 19th century, the almiqui had only been sighted a mere 36 times in 150 years. Deforestation resulted in the decimation of the Solenodons population, as did the introduction of dogs and house cats, though they appear to be making a very slow comeback.
2. Sao Tome Shrew
The São Tomé shrew is a very rarely seen species, and as a result, detailed information about this animal’s appearance is hard to come by. The only detailed descriptions are of a male individual captured in 1982, nearly 100 years after its discovery The São Tomé shrew has dark brown fur covering its body, a long, pink tail and feet, and long hind legs, thought to be for jumping or climbing Small, dark eyes peer out from amongst the facial fur, the ears are large and forward-facing, and the snout is unusually long and bears pale whiskers. This is thought to be a species on the verge of extinction.
3. Tasmanian devil
The Tasmanian devil is a carnivorous marsupial now found in the wild only in the Australian island state of Tasmania. Because they were seen as a threat to livestock in Tasmania, devils were hunted until 1941, when they became officially protected. Since the late 1990s, devil facial tumour disease has reduced the devil population significantly and now threatens the survival of the species, which in May 2009 was declared to be endangered.
4. Pignose frog
The sole member of an ancient family, 50 to 100 million years old, it hunkered deep underground while the dramatic environmental and physical changes sweeping the earth wiped out whole groups of animals and saw new ones evolve. This dinosaur among frogs was only discovered in 2003, and it is unclear how many actually exist in the wild, but it is incredibly endangered.
5. Sunfish
The ocean sunfish, Mola mola, or common mola, is the heaviest known bony fish in the world. It has an average adult weight of 1,000 kg. Sunfish live on a diet that consists mainly of jellyfish, but because this diet is nutritionally poor, they consume large amounts in order to develop and maintain their great bulk. Females of the species can produce more eggs than any other known vertebrate. It is considered endangered because of over-fishing and the over abundance in the oceans of plastic waste, which they often consume unaware that it will kill them.
6. Isopod
If you’re afraid of bugs, you’re really not going to like the Giant Isopod. It resembles nothing so much as a cockroach the size of a guinea pig, but it’s actually a crustacean related to shrimp and crabs. These scavengers roam the cold, dark sea floor from 560ft to 7,000ft below the surface of the ocean, eating mostly dead whales, fish, and squid. Though not thought to be endangered yet, it is very odd looking.
7. Indian Gharial
Most of us have grown accustomed to the prehistoric appearance of alligators and crocodiles, but for those unused to looking at it, the Indian gharial seems like something transported straight from the age of dinosaurs. This severely threatened native of Indian rivers has a very long, thin snout fitted with a row of sharp teeth. Scientists suspect that heavy metal pollution in the rivers is causing debilitating gout and making gharials susceptible to infection.
8. Long beaked Echidna
Is it a porcupine or an anteater? Neither, actually. The long-beaked echidna is a rare egg-laying mammal found in Papua New Guinea. This nocturnal critter is a relative of the platypus, but lives underground where it uses its tube-like snout to search for invertebrate prey like insect larvae and worms. It has to eat soft foods, because it doesn’t have any teeth. Hatchlings are known as ‘puggles’, and they reside iin a sticky pouch to receive milk from mammary patches on the mother’s body. De-forestation is making this wierd creature rarer all the time.
9. Longeared Jeboa
Shaped somewhat like a tiny kangaroo, the nocturnal mouse-like Long-eared Jerboa uses its elongated tail and hind legs for jumping. The endangered rodent, found in the Gobi desert of Mongolia, has ears that are about a third larger than its head and eats mostly insects. It’s so extraordinary that it’s the only species of its genus, and believed to be close to qualifying as an endangered species.
10. Yeti Crab
With its long, furry appendages, the newly-discovered Yeti Crab looks like some kind of sea sloth. It was discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean during a deep-sea diving expedition in 2006 and is so unusual that a new taxonomic family had to be invented for it. The Yeti Crab is blind and white, with fur that supports colonies of bacteria. It lives near hydrothermal vents 7,540 feet under the surface. Though it is impossible to say how endangered this species might be, it is certainly very strange in appearance.
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