Weirdest Animals in the World: 20 Real Creatures Explained

What makes an animal “weird”?

Weird is in the eye of the beholder. Every strange feature on this list is an adaptation: a solution to finding food, hiding from predators or surviving in a harsh place. Many of these animals live in deep water, dark burrows or remote islands, so most people never see them alive. Several are threatened, and conservation groups use their odd looks to win public attention.

1. Aye-aye

The aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) is a nocturnal lemur from Madagascar with bat-like ears, ever-growing front teeth and a skinny, bony middle finger. It taps on tree bark, listens for hollow tunnels made by beetle grubs, gnaws a hole and hooks the larvae out with that finger, a technique called percussive foraging. Early naturalists mistook it for a squirrel. It is Endangered, and in some areas it is still killed because of a local belief that it brings bad luck.

2. Blobfish

The blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus) lives 600–1,200 m (2,000–3,900 ft) deep off southeastern Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand and is usually less than 30 cm (12 in) long. Instead of a gas-filled swim bladder, it has jelly-like flesh slightly less dense than water, which lets it hover above the seabed with little effort. The droopy face in famous photos is not its real look: it is what happens when a soft-bodied fish is hauled up quickly from high pressure. In 2013 it was voted the world’s ugliest animal.

3. Star-nosed mole

The star-nosed mole (Condylura cristata) of eastern Canada and the northeastern United States has a ring of 22 pink, fleshy appendages around its nostrils. They carry more than 25,000 tiny touch receptors called Eimer’s organs. A study in Nature found that it can identify and swallow a small prey item in as little as 120 milliseconds, making it the fastest-eating mammal known. It can even smell underwater by blowing bubbles onto objects and sniffing them back in.

4. Naked mole-rat

The naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) lives in underground colonies in the dry lands of East Africa. Like bees, it is eusocial: a single queen breeds while the others dig tunnels, gather tubers and guard the colony. It is almost hairless, barely controls its own body temperature, and has survived 18 minutes without oxygen in laboratory tests. Naked mole-rats can live more than 37 years, far longer than any other rodent, and cancer is very rare in them.

5. Axolotl

The axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) is a salamander that never grows up. It keeps its feathery external gills and stays in the water its whole life, a condition called neoteny. Our axolotl profile explains how it can regrow lost limbs, parts of its spinal cord and even heart tissue. It is common in laboratories and aquariums, but in the wild it survives only in the canals of Xochimilco in Mexico City and is Critically Endangered.

6. Pangolins

Pangolins are the only mammals covered in hard, overlapping scales made of keratin, the same material as human fingernails. They have no teeth and lap up ants and termites with a sticky tongue that large pangolins can extend up to about 40 cm (16 in), anchored deep in the chest. When threatened they roll into a tight ball. All eight species, four in Asia and four in Africa, are threatened, mainly by illegal trade; see the Sunda pangolin.

7. Glass frogs

Glass frogs (family Centrolenidae) of Central and South America are lime green above, but many species have see-through skin on their bellies that reveals the heart, liver and gut. A 2022 study found that sleeping glass frogs hide most of their red blood cells inside their liver, which makes them two to three times more transparent and helps them vanish against a leaf.

8. Leafy seadragon

The leafy seadragon (Phycodurus eques), a relative of seahorses from the coasts of southern and western Australia, is covered in leaf-shaped flaps of skin. The flaps are not used for swimming; they are pure camouflage, making it look like a drifting piece of seaweed. It moves using almost invisible fins on its neck and back, grows to about 20–24 cm (8–9.5 in), and, as in seahorses, the male carries the eggs.

9. Saiga

The saiga (Saiga tatarica) is an antelope of the Central Asian steppe with a swollen, drooping, trunk-like nose. The nose filters out dust during dry summer migrations and warms freezing air in winter. In 2015 a bacterial disease linked to unusually warm, humid weather killed more than 200,000 saigas in a few weeks. Thanks to strong protection, numbers in Kazakhstan rebounded to over a million, and in 2023 the IUCN moved the species from Critically Endangered to Near Threatened.

10. Shoebill

The shoebill (Balaeniceps rex) is a gray wading bird of East and Central African swamps that stands 110–140 cm (43–55 in) tall and has an enormous bill shaped like a wooden clog. It can stand motionless for long periods before lunging at lungfish, catfish and other prey. Its fixed stare and loud bill-clattering have made it an internet favorite. It is listed as Vulnerable.

11. Platypus

The platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) of eastern Australia has a duck-like bill, a beaver-like tail and webbed feet, and it lays eggs, yet it is a mammal that feeds its young on milk. Its bill senses the tiny electric fields made by the muscles of prey, so it hunts underwater with its eyes, ears and nostrils closed. Males have a venomous spur on each hind ankle.

12. Proboscis monkey

The proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus) lives in the mangrove and river forests of Borneo. Adult males have a huge, fleshy nose that can be more than 10 cm (4 in) long and hang below the mouth; it probably makes their calls louder and impresses females. Its pot belly holds a many-chambered stomach for digesting leaves, and it is a strong swimmer with partly webbed feet. It is Endangered.

13. Okapi

The okapi (Okapia johnstoni) has zebra-like stripes on its legs and rump, but it is the only living relative of the giraffe. It lives only in the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was formally described by Western scientists only in 1901, and has a long, flexible tongue it can use to clean its own eyes and ears. It is Endangered.

14. Narwhal

The narwhal (Monodon monoceros) is an Arctic whale whose “horn” is a tooth. In most males the left canine grows forward through the upper lip into a straight, spiraled tusk that can reach about 3 m (10 ft). Medieval traders sold narwhal tusks in Europe as unicorn horns. Scientists still debate what the tusk is for, with sensing, display and sparring among the leading ideas.

15. Babirusa

Babirusas are wild pigs from Sulawesi and nearby Indonesian islands. In males, the upper canine teeth grow upward right through the top of the snout and curve back toward the forehead, alongside a second pair of tusks from the lower jaw. The name means “pig-deer” in Malay. Their curved upper tusks are thought to serve mainly for display.

16. Giraffe weevil

The giraffe weevil (Trachelophorus giraffa) is a small red-and-black beetle from Madagascar about 2.5 cm (1 in) long. The male’s neck is two to three times longer than the female’s, and males use it to fight rivals. Females roll a leaf into a tube to protect a single egg.

17. Thorny devil

The thorny devil (Moloch horridus) is a small Australian desert lizard covered in sharp spines, with a spiny knob behind its head that may act as a false head when it tucks the real one down. It eats only ants, often thousands in a day. It can drink through its skin: tiny grooves between its scales draw water from damp sand or dew by capillary action and carry it to the corners of its mouth.

18. Hagfish

Hagfish are eel-shaped, jawless fish that scavenge on the seabed and are the only living animals with a skull but no true backbone. When grabbed by a predator, they release slime that expands thousands of times in a fraction of a second and can clog a shark’s gills. To clean off their own slime, they tie their bodies into a knot and slide it from head to tail.

19. Ocean sunfish

The ocean sunfish (Mola mola) looks like a giant fish head with fins, because its body ends in a short, rudder-like flap instead of a tail. Adults commonly weigh 247–1,000 kg (545–2,205 lb), making sunfish among the heaviest bony fish in the world. One female was estimated to carry about 300 million eggs, more than any other known vertebrate.

20. Tardigrades

Tardigrades, or water bears, are eight-legged micro-animals usually about 0.5 mm (0.02 in) long that live in moss, soil, freshwater and the sea. When their home dries out, many species curl into a dried state called a tun and can revive years later when water returns. In 2007 some survived ten days of direct exposure to space on a European research satellite.

Weird animal myths and facts

• “The blobfish always looks like a blob.” False. It looks like a normal, if flabby, fish at depth; the blob shape comes from decompression.
• “Pangolins are reptiles.” False. Their scales are made of keratin, and they are mammals with hair on their bellies and milk for their young.
• “Naked mole-rats cannot get cancer.” Not quite. Cancer is extremely rare in them, but a few cases have been recorded in zoo animals.
• “Axolotls are fish.” False. Despite the nickname “Mexican walking fish,” the axolotl is an amphibian. More strange creatures live in the dark ocean; see our list of deep-sea animals.