Absurd Creatures of the Week: Nature’s Weirdest Eaters Will Make You Feel Better About Your Gluttony

If you live in the deep sea like the goblin shark does, you need to be damn sure you can wrangle anything that comes your way, e.g., fishes' hopes and dreams of living a peaceful life. Those spring-loaded jaws fire forward in a flash, and needle-like teeth teeth hold tight to unfortunate prey. GIF by Nurie Mohamed/WIRED. Source: Discovery Channel’s Alien Sharks

If you live in the deep sea like the goblin shark does, you need to be damn sure you can wrangle anything that comes your way, e.g., fishes' hopes and dreams of living a peaceful life. Those spring-loaded jaws fire forward in a flash, and needle-like teeth teeth hold tight to unfortunate prey.

GIF by Nurie Mohamed/WIRED. Source: Discovery Channel’s Alien Sharks

At up to a foot long, the giant African land snail was introduced to Florida by a little boy who'd pocketed some while on vacation in Hawaii. Now the things are out of control. They breed like mad and eat the stucco off houses for the calcium to grow their shells, which are so strong they can pop car tires. And they're laying waste to agriculture as officials scramble to control them. So, really you could have done worse on Thanksgiving. Roberta Zimmerman, USDA APHIS

At up to a foot long, the giant African land snail was introduced to Florida by a little boy who'd pocketed some while on vacation in Hawaii. Now the things are out of control. They breed like mad and eat the stucco off houses for the calcium to grow their shells, which are so strong they can pop car tires. And they're laying waste to agriculture as officials scramble to control them. So, really you could have done worse on Thanksgiving.

Roberta Zimmerman, USDA APHIS

I'm just going to go ahead and assume that at this point you're not wearing what remains of the turkey you had for Thanksgiving. The assassin bug, though, would be appalled, appalled, at such waste. These insects stab their prey with a needle-like mouth, then suck out the good stuff. Instead of discarding the shell, they'll actually stick it to their back, building up huge piles of corpses. This helps break up their profile and assume the scent of their prey. Getty Images

I'm just going to go ahead and assume that at this point you're not wearing what remains of the turkey you had for Thanksgiving. The assassin bug, though, would be appalled, appalled, at such waste. These insects stab their prey with a needle-like mouth, then suck out the good stuff. Instead of discarding the shell, they'll actually stick it to their back, building up huge piles of corpses. This helps break up their profile and assume the scent of their prey.

Getty Images

This here is the giant salamander of Asia, which can grow to an incredible 6 feet long. That huge maw is good for one thing: creating a vacuum. If an unfortunate fish happens to wander near it, the giant salamander rapidly opens its mouth, and the fish tumbles right in. Also, it may look cuddly, but it's more than capable of defending itself against your fingers, and by defend I mean relieve you of them. Theodore Papenfus

This here is the giant salamander of Asia, which can grow to an incredible 6 feet long. That huge maw is good for one thing: creating a vacuum. If an unfortunate fish happens to wander near it, the giant salamander rapidly opens its mouth, and the fish tumbles right in. Also, it may look cuddly, but it's more than capable of defending itself against your fingers, and by defend I mean relieve you of them.

Theodore Papenfus

Hollywood couldn't make this stuff up, folks. The tongue-eating isopod seeks out a fish, infiltrates its gills, and attaches itself to its tongue. It'll then slowly suck the blood out of it, until it withers away. But the isopod wouldn't be so rude as to leave the fish without a tongue, so it'll actually hang there as the fish uses it to grind food against the top of its mouth. Hurray for being human! Copyright Matthew R. Gilligan

Hollywood couldn't make this stuff up, folks. The tongue-eating isopod seeks out a fish, infiltrates its gills, and attaches itself to its tongue. It'll then slowly suck the blood out of it, until it withers away. But the isopod wouldn't be so rude as to leave the fish without a tongue, so it'll actually hang there as the fish uses it to grind food against the top of its mouth. Hurray for being human!

Copyright Matthew R. Gilligan

Beautiful, isn't it? Too bad it hunts it preeetty much the most horrific way possible. This is the bobbit worm, which can grow up to 10 feet long. Buried in the sea floor and poking just its head out, it waits for fish to come along, then strikes so powerfully and quickly that it can chop its prey in two. Then it drags the poor critter down into its burrow, where God knows what happens next. Jenny/Wikimedia

Beautiful, isn't it? Too bad it hunts it preeetty much the most horrific way possible. This is the bobbit worm, which can grow up to 10 feet long. Buried in the sea floor and poking just its head out, it waits for fish to come along, then strikes so powerfully and quickly that it can chop its prey in two. Then it drags the poor critter down into its burrow, where God knows what happens next.

Jenny/Wikimedia

Oh hai! This is the enormous coconut crab, which grows to 3 feet across. Its claws are so powerful that it can tear right through coconuts, as its name suggests. Oh, and it's been known to hunt kittens. Oddly enough, this is a kind of hermit crab. You know, the cute little beast you had growing up. Only the coconut crab could take your finger off. So no touching. Unless you have a prosthetic hand. In that case go ahead. Drew Avery/Flickr

Oh hai! This is the enormous coconut crab, which grows to 3 feet across. Its claws are so powerful that it can tear right through coconuts, as its name suggests. Oh, and it's been known to hunt kittens. Oddly enough, this is a kind of hermit crab. You know, the cute little beast you had growing up. Only the coconut crab could take your finger off. So no touching. Unless you have a prosthetic hand. In that case go ahead.

Drew Avery/Flickr

Having cookies this weekend? So is the cookiecutter shark, only it's making its cookies out of flesh. It uses its teeth to excavate plugs of meat out of things like whales and even other sharks. Oh, and also Mike Spalding, who was night swimming between two Hawaiian islands when a cookiecutter dug a hole out of his leg. One hospital visit later, Mike was back in the water, completing the swim that was so rudely interrupted. George Burgess

Having cookies this weekend? So is the cookiecutter shark, only it's making its cookies out of flesh. It uses its teeth to excavate plugs of meat out of things like whales and even other sharks. Oh, and also Mike Spalding, who was night swimming between two Hawaiian islands when a cookiecutter dug a hole out of his leg. One hospital visit later, Mike was back in the water, completing the swim that was so rudely interrupted.

George Burgess

You're looking at the world's only fanged tadpole, known appropriately enough as the vampire flying frog. You see, its mother drops it off in a tiny pool of water in a tree, where there isn't much food. So mom comes back every once in a while and drops in an unfertilized egg covered in a kind of jelly, which the tadpole slices through to get to the yolk. Paging Dr. Freud. Jodi Rowley/Australian Museum Research Institute

You're looking at the world's only fanged tadpole, known appropriately enough as the vampire flying frog. You see, its mother drops it off in a tiny pool of water in a tree, where there isn't much food. So mom comes back every once in a while and drops in an unfertilized egg covered in a kind of jelly, which the tadpole slices through to get to the yolk. Paging Dr. Freud.

Jodi Rowley/Australian Museum Research Institute

I can’t help you with that post-Thanksgiving lethargy, or the hangover for that matter, or with that thing you shouldn’t have said to your grandmother, but I can assure you that you’re not alone. I’m not talking your fellow Americans, I mean your fellow creatures of Earth. All around us, you see, there are animals that eat like you wouldn’t believe. So cheer up.

Take, for example, the parasitic isopod that devours a fish’s tongue and takes its place. And the foot-long snail that’s literally eating houses in Florida (I know, of all places). And don’t forget the goblin shark, which doesn’t so much eat fish as it does launch its face at them.

So above I proudly present Absurd Creature of the Week’s Critters That’ll Make You Feel Better About Everything You Did This Thanksgiving Weekend Save for That Thing You Said to Your Grandmother.

As always, you can browse the full Absurd Creature of the Week archive here. Know of an animal you want me to write about? Are you a scientist studying a bizarre creature? Email matthew_simon@wired.com or ping me on Twitter at @mrMattSimon.