Sometimes called a “living fossil,” the goblin shark is the only extant representative of the family Mitsukurinidae, which goes back some 125 million years.
Goblin sharks — we’re sure you can come up with your own great name for them — are all around the world, always at depths greater than a hundred meters, with adults being even deeper. While the goblin shark poses no danger to humans, going swimming at night and having this thing brush past you is going to warm up the water around you pretty quickly.
Cantor's Giant Soft-Shelled Turtle
Ask any third-grader the first thing that comes to their mind about turtles, and you're going to hear their big shells. However, there are some turtles that eschew the tradition, such as this pancake guy.
Consider some of the largest extant freshwater turtles — while some reports say they can grow as long as six feet, other reports dispute the fact. The length of the largest specimen was fifty-one inches, and the heaviest ever found was around five-hundred and fifty pounds. These turtles are, of all things, ambush predators, attacking crustaceans, mollusks, and fish, though they also snack on aquatic plants. It spends ninety-five percent of its life buried and motionless. Same, my dude.
Gobi Jerboa
The Gobi Jerboa, as the name suggests, comes to us from the Gobi desert in China and Mongolia. This species was only discovered a hundred years ago by Glover Morrill Allen.
Researchers are unsure how many members of this species exist, though due to the frequency of encountering them, the conservation status has them placed at the “least concerned” status. With long ears and spindly, jumping legs, the movement of this creature is quick and light. The tail (usually much longer than the body of the animal) often drags on the ground.
Umbonia Spinosa
It's a little hard to tell what this animal actually is, but look close enough and you'll see a bug down there. These creatures are also called thorn bugs and are closely related to cicadas, those noisy guys in the trees.
They use their beaks to pierce plant stems and suck out the tasty sap. Their defining characteristic is the large and colorful dorsal horn. The horn gradually tapers to a point, giving it its thorn name. The indigenous people of South America consider the juvenile form of this bug edible since their spines are still soft after molting.
Hummingbird Hawk-Moth
What happens when you jam three flying animals together into one body? You get the hummingbird hawk-moth. So, which one is this? It turns out it's actually a moth, but just like a hummingbird it feeds on flowers and makes a similar humming sound. It also looks similar to a hummingbird. We're unsure why they decided to add “hawk” to the name. Those scientists are a kooky bunch.
The hummingbird hawk-moth can be found in a great swathe of the northern hemisphere aside from the Americas, from Portugal to Japan, as far south as the equator, and as far north as the Arctic Circle. It's also quite good at recognizing colors.