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ADVERTISEMENT Ants are among the most plentiful and formidable creatures on the planet Earth, able to use their vast numbers and collective problem solving skills to defend their nests from even the largest attackers, but nothing in nature is without its enemies, and with their staggering numbers, ants have racked up quite the list of [...]

Most of you probably know that caterpillars turn into butterflies, and maggots into houseflies; both examples of an animal transforming from a “larval” to “adult” stage. Besides these famous insects, however, are thousands of other species who undergo bizarre and extreme transformations during their life cycle. Larval stages are especially extreme in creatures of the [...]

Mother Nature is filled with formidable killing machines. Voracious flesh-eaters such as the thresher shark, the harpy eagle, the death stalker scorpion…and how about that rosy snail? Or the oyster mushroom? Some animals kill with teeth, claws and muscle…others kill with little more than mucus and patience. 10.  Planarian If you’ve taken college biology, you [...]

Ethology is the term used for the study of animal behavior. Strange animal behaviors can be genetically determined or learned behaviors and I have included some of both. Either way, whether learned or instinctive, these behaviors don’t change the fact that some animal behavior is just… strange. Here is my top 10: 10. Naked Mole [...]

Life finds a way to survive virtually everywhere on our planet – including on itself. Almost every bird and mammal on the planet has its own unique species of louse: reptiles are home to scale-chewing mites, tiny crustaceans cling to the fins of fish, and even many bugs can have bugs of their own. Some [...]

Ah, the ocean. Bottomless, beautiful, and home to a wide diversity of life: from the spunky dolphin to the majestic whale. Also, the source of endless amounts of nightmare fuel! There are plenty of creepy, dark back roads evolution has taken in the big blue, almost all of them ready to haunt your dreams. Here [...]

From films like “Night of the Creeps” and “Slither” to video games such as “Resident Evil 4″ and “Halo,” sci-fi horror is crawling with parasitic lifeforms who hijack their host bodies, creating zombie slaves to spread themselves even farther. Little do many people realize, this phenomenon is a scientific reality, and happening all around us [...]

It is estimated that there are about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 insects living today. That’s right, a quintillion insects. In the world, there are about 900 thousand different kinds of living insects, making up about 80% of all of the world’s species. In the U.S. alone there are 91,000 known species and about 73,000 that have yet to [...]