Freshly Caught

It lies with its mouth open and wiggles a tongue that looks like a worm.

Seven neck bones, two metres of neck, and a heart that weighs eleven kilos.

Give this larva gold and jewels, and it builds itself a case out of them.

Weaver ants stitch leaves together using their own larvae as glue guns.

A woodpecker's tongue wraps around the inside of its own skull.

Its fangs are so long it cannot close its mouth, so it evolved sockets in its skull.

A grown man can stand on this animal and it walks away unharmed.

Some of these ants become living barrels and hang from the ceiling for months.

This fish has a completely see-through head, and its real eyes are floating inside it.

This spider hunts other spiders, and it appears to plan the whole attack in advance.

This might be the angriest animal on Earth, and it is roughly the size of a plum.

This deer never grows antlers. It grows a pair of fangs instead, and it can swing them.

This is not one animal. It is four, fused into a single creature that cannot survive apart.

This delicate little angel flies through the water, then fires six tentacles out of its head.

Threaten this nest and the chicks turn around and fire a jet of faeces at you.

This worm has no mouth, no stomach and no gut at all, and it eats whale skeletons.

This animal eats twenty thousand termites every single day, and its teeth barely work.

This is the only marsupial that hunts underwater, and its pouch seals completely watertight.

This spider builds no web. It fakes a female moth's perfume, then swings a sticky ball at whatever answers.

This bird never sits on its eggs. It builds a giant compost heap and runs it like an oven.

These giants sleep standing bolt upright, hanging in the water like a forest of statues.

These blind insects build four-metre towers, and every single one is aligned north to south.

For this animal, one mating season is a death sentence, and not a single male survives it.

This fish has completely clear blood and no red blood cells, and by all rights it should be dead.

This eel hides a second set of jaws in its throat, and they shoot forward to drag prey down.

This worm lives on the side of a volcanic vent, with its tail sitting in water hot enough to cook it.

This crab carries a living, stinging anemone in each claw, and if it loses one it clones the other.

On two remote islands, the finches survive by drinking the blood of much larger birds.

This octopus does not just hide, it impersonates at least fifteen other species on demand.

This wild bird calls humans out of their villages and leads them to hidden treasure.

This pack holds a real vote before every hunt, and they cast their votes by sneezing.

This ant's jaws snap shut at 140 miles per hour, the fastest known movement in the animal kingdom.

In this species the father swallows his own tadpoles, and later spits out fully formed frogs.

This adorable big-eyed primate is one of the only venomous mammals on Earth.

This bird eats almost nothing but bones, and stains itself blood red on purpose.

This is the only lizard on Earth that swims in the ocean, sneezes salt, and shrinks when food runs out.

This shark may have been swimming before the United States existed.

This wasp stings a cockroach directly in the brain, then leads it away like a dog on a leash.

This snail has been hijacked by a parasite that puppets its body and makes its eyes pulse.

You could stare right at this animal and never realize it is alive.

The largest arthropod alive can span nearly thirteen feet from leg to leg — wider than a car.

This lizard hides a set of wings folded against its ribs — and unfolds them to glide between trees.

This frog defends itself by deliberately snapping its own bones and pushing the sharp ends through its skin.

Mysterious geometric circles on the seafloor baffled divers for years — until they found the artist.

This ten-foot worm buries itself and snaps prey in half in a fraction of a second.

This bird locks its own mate inside a tree for months, sealed behind a wall of mud.

This tiny desert rodent hops like a kangaroo and can leap ten times its own height.

This is called the world's happiest animal, but its smile hides a dark secret.

This fish walks instead of swimming, and it has the fastest mouth on Earth.

This fuzzy 'ant' is really a wingless wasp with a sting nicknamed the cow killer.

This seal attracts mates by blowing a bright red balloon out of one nostril.

This six-foot salamander makes cries that sound like a human baby.

This crocodile grows a pot on the end of its nose and uses it to blow bubbles.

This animal glides the length of two basketball courts without flapping a wing.

This bird lays an egg weighing up to a quarter of its own body.

This is the biggest crab on land, and it cracks open coconuts with its bare claws.

This little fish settles fights by unhinging its face like a spiky umbrella.

This monkey grows a huge drooping nose that works like a built-in megaphone.

This shaggy jungle animal smells exactly like hot buttered popcorn.

This reptile has a hidden third eye on top of its head and predates the dinosaurs' relatives.

This antelope stands upright on two legs like a person to reach its food.

Locals once believed this blind, ghostly cave creature was a baby dragon.

This is the world's only flightless parrot, and it freezes instead of flying away.

This cute bunny survives by eating its own droppings, on purpose.

This is the only mammal that can truly fly, and it hunts using sound.

This bird remembers your face for years, and can teach its whole family to hate you.

This backyard rodent accidentally plants thousands of trees every year.

This animal fakes its own death so convincingly its body does it automatically.

This masked bandit has hands so sensitive it 'sees' the world by touch.

This animal is so adaptable it now thrives in the middle of major cities.

This animal can fire a burning chemical spray accurately from ten feet away.

This bird digests leaves like a cow, smells like manure, and its chicks have claws on their wings.

This endangered antelope has a bizarre, trunk-like nose that looks completely alien.

This deep-sea shark can launch its entire jaw right out of its face.

This deep-sea creature is a roly-poly the size of a cat — and can go years without eating.

This isn't a fox on stilts — it's the tallest wild dog on Earth.

This toad's babies erupt out of dozens of holes in their mother's own back.

This bird can vanish in plain sight by pretending to be a broken branch.

This forest animal looks like a mix of a zebra, a horse, and a giraffe — but it's its own thing.

This tiny blue sea creature steals the stingers of its venomous prey and uses them as weapons.

This eagle has talons longer than a grizzly bear's claws.

This lizard can literally run across the surface of water without sinking.

This tiny desert fox has ears bigger than its face — and never needs to drink water.

When this lizard is scared, it unfolds a giant umbrella around its head and runs on two legs.

This crab glues living plants and animals onto its body to wear as a disguise.

To win a mate, this seabird inflates a giant red balloon on its throat for hours.

This tiny pink animal swims through solid sand and is almost never seen alive.

This lizard can hang from a sheet of glass by a single toe — and lick its own eyeballs clean.

This ancient little worm hunts by firing two jets of sticky slime like a net.

This giant bird stands completely still for hours, then kills with a machine-gun strike.

This spider is the size of a grain of rice — and dances like a tiny rainbow disco.

This primate has a long bony finger it uses to tap on wood and fish out grubs.

This fish looks like a giant swimming head — and lays 300 million eggs at once.

This bird transforms into a glowing alien smiley face to win a mate.

This tiny sea slug eats plants and then runs on sunlight, like a living solar panel.

This deep-sea giant has eyes the size of dinner plates — the largest of any animal alive.

This desert animal can live its entire life without ever drinking a single drop of water.

This creature eats a fish's tongue — and then becomes the new tongue.

This bird builds an entire art gallery and arranges it by color just to impress a mate.

This lizard fires a tongue twice the length of its body in under a tenth of a second.

This insect is disguised as a flower so perfectly that bees pick it over the real thing.

This bird's heart beats over 1,200 times a minute — and it nearly dies every single night.

Sea otters hold hands while they sleep so they don't drift apart in the night.

This deep-sea monster fishes with a glowing lure on its head — and the males fuse into its body forever.

This desert lizard drinks water through its skin — and never has to take a sip.

This is a fish that spends most of its life out of the water — walking, climbing, and even fighting on land.

This tiny primate has eyes bigger than its brain — and can turn its head almost all the way around.

When this lizard is cornered, it shoots a jet of its own blood straight out of its eyes.

When attacked, this fish turns the water around it into a bucket of choking slime in seconds.

This elegant bird hunts by stomping venomous snakes to death — with the force of a hammer.

This is not seaweed drifting in the current — it is a living fish in disguise.

This is the only mammal on Earth covered head to toe in scales — and it rolls into a ball even lions can't crack.

This beetle steers using the Milky Way galaxy while rolling a giant ball of poop in a straight line.

Flamingos are not born pink — they hatch dull grey and have to earn their color by eating it.

This frog freezes into a solid lump of ice every winter — heart stopped, brain silent — then thaws back to life.

Vampire bats throw up blood into a starving friend's mouth to keep it alive — and remember who helped them.

When this animal gets scared, it fires its own guts out of its body at whatever is attacking it.

This mole sees with 22 pink fingers growing out of its face — and eats faster than your brain can react.

This frog has see-through skin — you can literally watch its heart beat through its body.

This bug stabs its prey, drinks it from the inside out, then wears the empty corpses as armor.

This wrinkly rodent feels no pain, almost never gets cancer, and barely seems to age.

This bird is basically a living dinosaur — and it can open you up with one kick.

This spider is the size of a dinner plate — and it really does eat birds.

This fish shoots its prey out of the air with a jet of water, like a living water gun.

This octopus is smaller than a golf ball, and it carries enough venom to kill 26 people, with no antidote.

This animal hypnotizes its prey with a moving light show on its own skin.

This lizard is venomous, ten feet long, and can take down a water buffalo.

This gorgeous seashell fires a venomous harpoon that can kill a human in minutes.

This bird hits 240 miles per hour in a dive — faster than a Formula 1 car.

This tiny beetle fires boiling acid out of its body — like a built-in machine gun.

This animal is venomous, lays eggs, and glows in the dark — and scientists thought it was a hoax.

This bird can spin its head almost all the way around — without cutting off the blood to its own brain.

Sloths only poop once a week — and they risk their life every single time.

Wombats poop perfect cubes — and no, their butt isn't square.

This tiny shrimp stuns its prey with a bubble hotter than the surface of the sun.

This animal got launched into the vacuum of space, unprotected — and survived.

This animal throws the fastest punch on Earth — and sees colors you can't even imagine.

This animal can regrow almost any part of its body — including parts of its brain.

This animal can get bitten by a cobra, pass out, then wake up like nothing happened.

This fish can generate 860 volts of electricity — enough to stun a horse.

This bird can perfectly copy a chainsaw, a car alarm, and even a camera shutter.

This animal has three hearts, nine brains, and blue blood.

There's an animal on Earth that can literally never die of old age.