#damn nature you scary

[itsexclusive]

"The huge anaconda measures 26ft-long, weighs 440lbs and its head is the same size as a human's. The Northern Green Anaconda was found by TV wildlife presenter, Professor Freek Vonk.Until now, only one species of Green Anaconda has been recognised in the Amazon. Researchers have given the new species the Latin name Eunectes akayima, which means the Northern Green Anaconda. This incredible footage shows Professor Vonk swimming next to the giant anaconda

[ms-scarletwings]

So it’s like a huge thing in Dredge that sometimes you pull up these lovecraftian type of mutant fish… like, they’re rarer and more valuable, albeit fucked up variants of the normal ones you catch. Kind of like shiny Pokémon if the shinies had many eyes where they shouldn’t or clumps of parasitic, Gigeresque cysts covering their malformed bodies.

Anyway the least disturbing and MOST funny one to me that I’ve encountered so far has to be this aberrant version of blackmouth salmon

Like, I’m sorry, devs?… that’s not some unholy divergence from the course of the natural order that’s just a normal ass chinook in the spawning season. No joke, they just casually rot alive exactly like that every single generation of fish.

Heads up: under this cut gets gross

Photos of real salmon during the spawn season that turn my stomach in a way this video game can only aspire to

In case you ever wondered, this is also the reason people don’t eat post-spawn adults.

Remember kids, as much as any of us try, it’s very hard to top the worldbuilding of the greatest horror author of all- Mother Nature.

[futurebird]

The fly that tricks ants and who never grows up.

Imagine you run a nursery. You & your sisters care for many helpless babies. One day you notice a baby is... different. It never grows up. It's not a baby ant! It's an adult phorid fly! A fly without legs, or wings! Can you spot the fake? Can you spot the fake? (Image source)

This ant is not carrying a larvae but one of the phorid flies. She found it and is taking it to the nursery where it "belongs" We don't know the whole life cycle of this sneaky parasitic insect yet. It was only discovered in 1995 and there is much more research to be done!

Vestigipoda sp. trick army ants into taking care of them.

I cannot stress how WIERD it is that an *adult* fly is totally immobile & looks like a larvae of another species. (army ants in this case)

Under a microscope you can see the fly-like features of Vestigipoda's face. Incredible becoming totally "helpless" is such an effective adaptation. I really want to know what the entire life cycle is like. How do they mate? What are they like when they are maggots? Are they disappointed to be a maggot and pupate only to be a larvae?

(Listen, creepy fly... at least you don't need to do anything to find food. The ants clean you and take care of everything. )

[braindamaged007]

[itsexclusive2]

Whale swallows two people in a kayak. 

[sam-dugesian]

Phrynichus deflersi is absolutely insane

whip spiders are kinda insane as is but the fact that this one exists in a small area of the map roughly around the Gulf of Aden this creates a naming convention confusion where it's officially known as The Arabian Whip Spider but it's exclusively native to Somalia and even though it's been imported illegally into Yemen, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Djibouti I think you'll notice the obvious fact that none of those locations are in Arabia with only one of them not being in Africa so we're off to a great start.

its torso is thin and flexible 6 of it's legs are twice the length of its torso bent backwards and lying so flat that it shuffles along the ground on its knees while doing the spider equivalent of the splits

its tusks yes tusks are modified into arms that are 4 times the length of it's body with fake hands on the ends of them complete with an opposable thumb

and these work together with the remaining front 2 legs that are equally as long weirdly flexible and for some reason protrude from the spider's neck and have a second shoulder joint immediately after the one attached to the neck

they have one of the smallest mouths next to the size of their body of basically any spider and even with that the teeth are even strangely small for the size of the mouth making the creature almost flat faced

here's pic of one preserved in mid-pounce pose

just to illustrate how crazy a concept that is

and oh yes it can pounce or sort of technically it doesn't so much pounce as it does shuffle along a surface at around 60 mph or 100 kph being able to manoeuvre on a dime during this movement and also conceal itself in tight spaces moving a maximum distance of 5 feet in one of these bursts which we still don't know just how many they can do at a time.

being soft-bodied it can hide in spaces that are even smaller than the size of its thorax and it's strong enough to take down prey such as fully grown rats by grabbing onto them and dragging them to their mouth where their tiny teeth chew through the rat's neck until it bleeds to death.

for scale here's one on a human hand

and here's their prey

to say the spider is strong is an understatement

oh and by the way there's a very similar creature that's local to Southern California

just so you know

and guess what else

i have a friend in the north of England that actually keeps them as pets

oh and if you go to Egypt they flavor their French fries with its urine there

[sparklepocalypse]

Mini hiatus! My state got hit by a bomb cyclone yesterday and I, along with 300k of my fellow Mainers, currently have no power. I’m safe, I have food, I have a wood stove, but this is probably the only post you’ll see from me until my power has been restored.

[jaubaius]

The octopus held on for a bit then let go and swam back down.

Source

[bearlyfunctioning]

Comic #291: -The Duality of Bear - Website links: Here! Bears exist. This is a threat. Hahah! I dunno, of all the top carnivore types bears seem to get little respect for their ability to dredge up that "DAMN NATURE YOU SCARY!" feeling. Despite being highly capable of doing some messed up things

[hollistercrowley]

Trying my hand at a dark naturalist theme

[futurebird]

The Glorious Complexity and Mysteries of Galls, Wasps, Ants, and Aphids

Plant galls are structures of plant tissue that grow in response to the actions of arthropods, bacteria or fungi. These living things hijack the plant and "make" it grow something they find useful.

An "oak apple" type gall created by a parasitic wasp by laying an egg in the leaf as it was growing.

The shapes and structures of galls vary wildly, and often have no obvious correspondence to any of the other parts of the plant. (If you you have a strong trypophobia response be careful googling images of galls some make my crawl, others are etherial)

Some galls seem to be optimized to foil parasitoids who try to lay their eggs inside the pupae of other insects. A wasp would need a very long ovipositor to get to this larva suspended in the center! Somehow the wasp egg induces the tree to grow this complex structure! Amazing!

Although ants are closely related to wasps who play a large roll in the formation of plant galls, ants are *normally* only secondary fauna of galls and not gallmakers.

This is surprising to me since so many plants roll out a welcome mat for ants: extrafloral nectaries as cafeterias, hollow stems& thorns as dormitories. A resident colony of ants can be a plants personal private security detail.

For all the many symbiotic parings of ants and plants there are only a few ants that induce their own galls. As secondary fauna of galls (often created by their creepy cousins, the parasitoid wasps) ants may also act as pest control.

This raises the question: Could plants "allow" gall wasps to make these otherwise energy intensive and potentially harmful structures in hopes of attracting ants as secondary guests? It's a complex web of ecological relationships! Read more here.

Another potential player in this story of galls and wasps and ants are aphids. Aphids are the other main insect that can induce galls. The aphids live in these galls for generations (they don't live long so this is only several months) Of course, ants are famous farmers of aphids.

(Some gallmaking wasps get attacked by hyper parasitoid wasps who only lay their eggs in other gall wasps galls. To prevent this some gallmakers make the galls attractive to ants... who can deter the invaders.)

Glorious Complexity!

[glowing-disciple]

The bees in the garden are acting funny.

The birds are not singing.

Our cats are on edge.

The sky is restless.

…

(edit by @cassia-c)

[disabledopossum]

Vulture bees feed on rotting meat instead of nectar, and yes, their honey - called meat honey - is edible. This is what their hive looks like.

Sauce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulture_bee

[thatanimalauthor]

Look at this monster

Komodo dragons like to swallow their prey whole whenever possible. They can swallow an animal as big as a goat or small deer. This is a process that can take as long as 20 minutes.

And, fun fact: if the prey gets stuck, the dragon will ram it repeatedly against a tree to force it down its throat. They do this so hard that sometimes it knocks the tree down.

[itsexclusive2]

Massive crocodile chases swimmer in Mexico.