hello on this fine day here at bunjywunjy dot tumblr dot com and it’s time to talk about weird animals again.
today we’re going to learn about that denizen of the deep sea that looks like it’s in on the ultimate cosmic inside-joke, the Snipe Eel.
(no, they won’t explain it)
about five feet long, they live a dreary existence feasting upon shrimp in the lightless dark, like nature’s saddest cocktail party.
at least they get to gloat over the fact that they have more vertebrae than any other creature on earth. we would say we’re impressed but honestly that just sounds really unpleasant. yikes.
that sure is a thing to be proud of and not a reason to pity them even more, no sir.
while the Snipe Eel rarely appears in popular culture, A TRAGEDY BEYOND MEASURE, it is believed to have inspired the Pokemon Gorebyss.
slap some mermaid boobs and a shitty Speed stat on it and call it a day
a final lesson we can take from our friend the snipe eel is that a big smile will get you anywhere in life, as long as it’s coupled with aggressive wiggling
it’s another great day here at bunjywunjy dot tumblr dot com, and we thought we’d take a moment to re-introduce you properly to a creature that you might have met before.
meet the Sea Angel, a type of free-swimming sea slug that lives in oceans worldwide.
it’s also called a ‘Sea Butterfly’ because I guess ‘Tiny Ocean Flappy-Flappy’ was too lowbrow for their tastes
many posts have been dedicated to these little swimmers, usually focusing on how flipping cute these little guys are.
whee! take me home and love me forever!
and, in their defense, they are pretty adorable. in the same way that an axe murderer wearing a hello kitty hat is adorable.
see, most resources about these little guys conveniently forget to mention their diet. which is sea snails.
which they eat alive, after ripping them straight out of their own shells with the barbed tentacles that explode out of their heads without warning
pictured: nature is a heartless bitch and there is no god
we’d just like to take a moment to say: HOLY FUCKING SHIT, GUYS. LOOK. LOOK AT IT. FUCK.
whee! take me home and love me forever! so I can eat your skin
FUUUCK.
okay. now that we’ve had a moment to compose ourselves, we’d like to mention that we hope this doesn’t cast sea angels into a villainous light for you.
could you hate this face? yes? oh.
our goal here today was to a). correct misinformation and b). inform you that in fact, Sea Angels are boss as fuck, and we certainly hope we’ve succeeded.
that’s it for today’s BioTime Adventure, see you next time!
until then, remember to always check to make sure none of these are hiding under your bed.
it’s another beautiful day here at bunjywunjy dot tumblr dot com and it’s time today to learn about the largest animal on earth- the Blue Whale.
(it’s okay, he’s just going through a phase right now)
the Blue Whale is a type of baleen whale in the rorqual family, which is the largest individual family in this group. also it’s really fun to say. rorqual! rorqual rorqual rorqual rorqual.
rorqual RORQUAL rorqual. hey come back I’m not done
the most important fact about them is that these guys are FUCKING GIGANTIC. adults can reach lengths of 111 feet and weights in excess of 181 tons. TONS. (for reference, your entire fucking house probably weighs about 80 tons. shiiiiiiit.)
somebody call Ultraman
not only are they the largest modern animals currently on the planet, but they may be the largest animals EVER. of all time. while many large dinosaur species have been discovered, none of them even come CLOSE to the enormous majesty that is the Blue Whale.
you guys don’t even deserve to be on the same chart. shoo! SHOO.
so the next time you go to the ocean remember that there could be a 3-of-your-childhood-home sized creature swimming right below you and you wouldn’t even know.
hi hello howdy we here at bunjywunjy dot tumblr dot com feel that it’s been a while since we’ve talked about/relentlessly mocked a weird animal, so now it’s time to explore Mother Nature’s basement once again. (it’s where she keeps all the cool stuff)
we’d like to formally introduce you to the Remora, which is an important-sounding name for a very strange fish.
I don’t even know what to say to this. look at it.
JUST FOR STARTERS: they totally look like god read the ikea instructions wrong and assembled them upside-down.
in his defense, we’ve all done that thing where you assemble an ikea chair backwards because you can’t fucking read
their true weirdness shines out in the fact that Remoras use the strange pad-like-structure on top of their heads (yes, that’s the top) to literally suction themselves onto the bodies of passing animals. like a car window garfield hitchhiker.
life imitates art
their instinctual drive to become a living hood ornament to any passing object larger than themselves drives them to attach to sea turtles, whales, boats, aaaaand sharks. it’s usually sharks.
imagine if your life goal was to glue yourself to a lion. face-first.
surprisingly, sharks appear to tolerate these hitchhiking freeloaders. the Remora becomes the shark’s personal vacuum cleaner, in exchange for a ride and hardly ever getting eaten.
yaay! now to find myself an unsuspecting animal to glue myself to!
a final lesson we can take from our friend the Remora is to seize opportunity whenever you can, but watch out in case it has teeth.
all right so today I got curious to see if divers often try to ride ocean animals because I know I would so I Googled it and Y’ALL I WAS NOT DISAPPOINTED
(DO NOT ACTUALLY DO ANY OF THIS. THERE ARE SEVERAL REASONS WHY THIS IS A BAD IDEA)
hey, kid. you look like a discerning young customer person.
you wanna learn some cool facts about animals?
I think you dooooo. c’mon back here into this completely unsuspicious alley for some absolutely legal dealings.
meet the Conch (pronounced kONK, because why not), a large marine sea snail found throughout the Caribbean. you can probably recognize them from their shells:
found in every beach-themed restaurant and etsy store on the globe
the actual animal is a foot-long snail with a habit of peeking out at the world in the manner of a man who wants to sell you the full set of counterfeit ginsu knives hidden in his trenchcoat.
available cheap, this week only!
unfortunately for the snail, their shifty ways and general gross snail-ness are no match for the fact that they are completely fucking delicious.
wait, what
prized in the Caribbean for it’s lustrous shell and delicious delicious meats, the Conch is now threatened in most of its natural range.
look buddy, are you gonna buy these watches or what?
thankfully, some protections are now in place for nature’s scalpers. it is our genuine hope that they continue to hawk dubious goods at humanity for decades to come.
now that you’re thoroughly unsettled, we’ll drop the Elton John act and introduce you to the Queen Scallop, a delectable little lovecraftian hellspawn that you’ve almost certainly eaten before.
delicious!
the actual animal is a bivalve mollusk possessing a very distinctive and beautiful shell, as well as two rows of bright blue fully functional nightmare eyes about the size of the head of a pin.
d-delicious?!
they can see fairly well with these eyes, which they use to detect and avoid threats such as starfish and hungry humans with clam knives. (they’re better at avoiding the former)
we’d feel bad but they’re so fucking delicious
Scallops are also among the only mollusks to have an exit strategy. once they’ve identified an incoming threat, they clap the two halves of their shells together so hard that the surrounding water is ejected out the back of their shell. this causes the Scallop to rocket violently away via jet power. this looks about as hilarious as it sounds.
wheeeee!
this strategy is far less effective when the incoming threat has opposable thumbs, and a hankerin’ for those sweet sweet Scallop meats.
again, we would feel bad, but DELICIOUS.
the shells are also very nice, commonly used as mermaid bras and tacky beach memorabilia
Scallops are now farmed by humans in huge numbers, and these farms provide habitat for countless species of other animals. in addition, scallops have a side effect of purifying ocean water, since they filter out particles when they feed. what I’m saying is, there’s no reason not to eat these guys. go buy a bag at your local supermarket right now! it’s what the Scallop would want, probably.
I really fucking love Shortfin Mako sharks, okay. They’re the fastest sharks and the best at lunging the fuck right out of the water. they’re also warm-blooded and super smart, but most importantly every image of them breaching looks like someone just photoshopped a shark into the sky really badly
aah, what a lovely day here in the Abyssal Plain, the area between 3,000 and 6,000 meters below sea level that covers 60% of the planet’s surface and contains as much biodiversity as the Amazon Rain Forest.
it is, however, SIGNIFICANTLY darker. and colder. and weirder.
say, what’s that over there? we should swim over and check it out.
just a little closer..
HOSHIT
congratulations, you have just been introduced to the Gulper Eel (also known as the Pelican Eel, and in certain circles “ol’ Umbrella-Face”)
(my circles. they’re my circles.)
the Gulper Eel (not his real name, actually a fish) spends its life in the depths, where it reaches lengths of about 2 and a half feet. this might not seem impressive, but a full 40% of that is mouth.
it’s basically the Gollum of deep sea organisms
this ridiculously oversized ubrellaface lets the Gulper Eel eat pretty much anything it can convince to hold still long enough, including animals that are actually larger than the eel itself. (like many deep-sea fishes, they have very elastic stomachs but like fuck am I about to google that for pictures)
google it yourself if you’re that interested, I’m not here to judge
they do seem to prefer shrimp and squid, however. maybe they’re picky about bones, who knows.
we HATES bones, precious
though it’s found in warm waters worldwide, not much is known about this lonely voregoblin. perhaps it will remain a mystery fish, haunting the depths and occasionally appearing in your weirder dreams
please allow me to introduce you to everyone’s favorite Rubik’s cube of the sea, the Yellow Boxfish. they’re, uh.
well. see for yourself.
a vision of geometric perfection and kissy lips
yeah.
despite looking like an ocean-borne Bethesda glitch, the Yellow Boxfish is a real animal with hopes and dreams just like yours.
well, maybe slightly more angular
found in warm water reefs worldwide, (say that five times fast) Yellow Boxfish start life tiny and bright yellow, eventually fading in color as they reach their adult length of about 18 inches. they live mostly off algea and the bitter tears of mathematicians. (just wait until they discover the Hypercube Boxfish)
your frustration sustains me!
we STILL don’t know how they work- being a literal cube seems to make them incredibly agile swimmers, but we’re not sure why. maybe the ocean is just really into right angles?
nature just loves rectangles I guess
also just in case they weren’t weird enough, they also have a bad habit of squirting a deadly poison everywhere whenever they get startled, like an excitable toxin grenade
PANIC! PANIC! RELEASE THE TOXINS
while it is an efficient way to murder the shit out of every other fish in the general vicinity, this toxin has zero effect on humans. unless you were to attempt to eat the Boxfish, so don’t do that.
you probably couldn’t anyway, this is what a Boxfish skeleton looks like
Yellow Boxfish are popular pets and are kept by many aquarists. your local fish store may have one right now, go say hello! but gently, lest you accidentally startle this weird dumb square toxic grenade of the sea.
ifesbob 