• Question: Whats the weirest creature you know? I know the "spiny devil katydid"!!! http://www.businessandbiodiversity.org/images/katydid.jpg

    Asked by barney to Gioia, Iain, Jo, Leo, Mariam on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by annibella13.
    • Photo: Iain Moal

      Iain Moal answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      There are loads, but I’m going to have to go with the platypus.

      It has a bill like a ducks, a tail like a beavers and feet like otters. It is a mammal, but it lays eggs and its poisonous. It lactates, but doesn’t have nipples. Its teeth fall out after it it born and it can generate and detect tiny electrical currents with its bill. All very strange.

    • Photo: Mariam Orme

      Mariam Orme answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Whoa, that really is a strange looking creature! Kind of cool though.

      The strangest creature I’ve ever actually seen is a slime mould (latin name: Dictyostelium discoideum, known affectionately by scientists as Dicty), which is used by some scientists for their research. It’s usually a single-celled organism, but in some situations lots of these single cells come together and make a multicellular organism. It’s pretty cool. They come together because they get attracted to a particular chemical called cAMP, and this movie shows one Dicty at the single cell stage of its life following a pipette that’s releasing cAMP:
      http://dictybase.org/Multimedia/development/dzl23a0.mpg
      This movie shows lots of single celled Dicty coming together:
      http://dictybase.org/Multimedia/development/ax320x.mov
      And this one shows them growing into a multicellular organism:
      http://dictybase.org/Multimedia/development/culm.mov

    • Photo: Leo Garcia

      Leo Garcia answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      The weirdest creature I know of is a sloth:

      They move veeerrryy slooowwwllyy, sleep most of the day, and spend most of their lives hanging upside down. One day, I hope to go to a sloth rescue sanctuary in Costa Rica – where you can CUDDLE A BABY SLOTH!

      So, even though sloths are weird, I think they are fantastic animals.

    • Photo: Gioia Cherubini

      Gioia Cherubini answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      I don’t know if it’s the weirdest, but my favourite is the sloth (you know Sid from Ice Age?)

    • Photo: Joanna Watson

      Joanna Watson answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Check these funny looking sea creatures out – the one halfway down the page looks like it should be the monster in a movie! That spiny devil is pretty weird isn’t it – I’ve never seen one before.

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