I can't believe I've missed this thread up to now!

I'm going to have to try not to spend my whole day posting weird critters here, instead of dealing with the multiple dumpster fires in my inbox right now.

So here's one of my favourite ridiculous creatures:

The Velvet Worm!

They're like a cross between an earthworm and a centipede, with claws on each stubby little foot, and can spit corrosive glue!

They give birth to live young, exhibit parental care, and may date back to the Cambrian explosion!

EDIT - Those aren't eyes, those are it's glue-shooters! Holy cow!

They have a giraffe feeding platform at Colorado Springs' Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, though that location would be hard to confuse with Florida and the Caribbean.

Hummingbird hawk-moth

Today, I'll share a critter I'm pretty sure Hippo talked about

The Aardwolf!



The second animal in the dictionary, the aardwolf is actually a type of hyaena.



Instead of crushing bones, eating carrion and giving birth through a pseudo-penis, the aardwolf eats termites!

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They have only a few teeth, and those are small and peg-like. Instead, they lick up about a quarter-million termites a night with their long, sticky tongue.



Aardwolves use scent glands around their anus to exude a black, pungent oil that they use to mark termite mounds and other items in their territory - sometimes as often as 60 times an hour. So, you know, maybe not the best pet in the world.

Oh, God, no! I draw the line at spiders. The caterpillars were beautiful, but this guy is too much. I hate their legs!

I just remembered the Proboscis monkey! Monkeys in general are ridiculous, but this one is quite something.

That is great! Hooray for being saved from extinction! The baby ridiculous tree lobsters are cute, especially the one piggybacking on the parent!

Man, if we start going down the parasite wormhole (which is definitely the most accurately named, if disgusting form of wormhole) this could get real terrifying, real quick.

So I'll graze the event horizon of the ridiculous parasite wormhole with Leucochloridium paradoxum.

Sometimes known as the green-banded broodsac, this is a parasitic flatworm that attacks snails.

Most of the time it just looks like a normal, boring parasitic flatworm that lives inside the bodily tissues of a snail.



But when it is time to mate and disperse, the green-banded broodsac moves up into the eyestalks of the snail (preferring the left one) and makes it swell up, which looks like it probably hurts.



The worm in the eyestalk also interferes with the snail's perception ability (unsurprisingly). Infected snails are more likely to wander out into well lit areas during the day, and climb onto higher vegetation.

To further entice the worms, when they are in bright light, the broodsacs start to pulsate.



The pulsing eyes filled with pregnant worms attract birds, who probably think it's a nice juicy caterpillar.



The birds then get infected with worms themselves, poop out the eggs and then snails eat the pooped out eggs.

Thus giving us several important life lessons

1 - If you have pulsating worms in your eyes, stay in the dark and don't climb trees
2 - If you see a snail with pulsating eyes, don't eat it. It's not a caterpillar!
3 - Don't eat bird poop. It might have parasitic worm eggs in it.

Today, I present the ridiculously cute sand cat!



Hey! That sand cat looks like Red Forman too!



Sand cats, also known as the sand dune cat are fairly closely related to the domestic kitty (Felis catus), but are in a different species, Felis margarita, so named because of their propensity for tequila and salted rims.



Sand cats are slightly smaller than your average domestic cat, but their ears are larger, with expanded auditory bullae, and enlarged canals. This gives them hearing far more sensitive and powerful than even your average housecat. A sand cat is able to detect a tuna can being opened from over a mile away!



Sand cats are also stealthier than house cats. They have dense fur between their toes and around their pads that insulates them from hot desert sands, but also muffles sounds and obscures their footprints.



Sand cats once ranged across Northern Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Now their distribution is disjointed, with populations in Algeria, Morocco, Niger, patches of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan. They're doing better than most other cat species, though. There are enough of them around that they were listed as Least Concern by the IUCN in 2016.

I'm a dog person, but now I kinda want to own a sand cat.