Well, today we want to shed light on the underdogs, the eyesores, the fascinating yet at the same time disgusting creations of Mother Nature. If you think you’re brave enough to see them, scroll down to find an entire list of some of the most bizarre-looking creatures out there. But if you are squeamish about spiders, weird aquatic beings, and reptiles, among other similar things, you might want to check out some dog memes instead. Here at Bored Panda we were curious to learn more about all sorts of weird-looking beings, so we got in touch with the evolutionary biologist and Professor at the Department of Biology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, Dr. Robert Montgomerie, who was kind enough to answer a few of our questions. If you’re curious, too, scroll down to see what the professor had to say about them. The professor explained that in general, the ‘appearance’ of plants and animals is shaped by natural and sexual selection, as well as simple genetic drift. “These various influences are always constrained to some extent by an organism’s past history and selection can only work with the variation that is available to it.” “To me there are lots of weird-looking plants and animals in my own backyard. I expect that we think that things look weird if we do not see them often, or ever. I thought that a lot of birds and mammals in Australia looked weird before I actually went there for several months; I expect that Australians did not find them to be weird-looking at all,” Dr. Montgomerie shared. Take the beauty found in northern Oregon, US, for instance: just a couple of weeks ago, on June 3rd, 2024, some passersby on the beach stumbled upon a ginormous 7.3-foot-long creature washed ashore. What was first considered an ocean sunfish, or Mola mola, was later found to be a newly discovered species, known as the Mola tecta or the hoodwinker sunfish. The New York Post reports that with the help of photographs, measurements, and tissue samples, it was researcher Marianne Nyegaard who identified the marine animal. She also suggested that it may be the largest specimen of the kind ever sampled. Known as Buronius manfredschmidi, the ape was estimated to have weighed just 10kg and was likely the size of a human toddler, which makes it far smaller than other hominids. According to Prof. Madelaine Böhme, a palaeontologist at the University of Tübingen leading the research, it’s unclear why the species was as small as it was, The Guardian reports. But one version is that its size allowed it to occupy a different ecological niche from its larger counterparts, while another suggests that the Buronius manfredschmidi simply represents a more ancestral version of great apes. We discussed the importance of every being—no matter how adorable or creepy-looking—with Dr. Montgomerie, who pointed out that it is a rather philosophical question that might depend on who’s answering it and how one defines what is important. “From a biodiversity perspective, every species is important both for maintaining the ‘natural’ order and for the possible, as yet unknown, benefits to mankind,” he pointed out. “If your only interests are in human welfare, there are probably lots of species that contribute nothing to most people. Again, that’s a philosophical point of view as I feel that my own well-being is aligned with the preservation of all species and is diminished every time one of them goes extinct. I expect that that is far from the majority view. I agree with Thoreau who said 160 years ago ‘in wildness is the preservation of the world’.” Follow Bored Panda on Google News! Follow us on Flipboard.com/@boredpanda! Please use high-res photos without watermarks Ooops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.
