Penguins throw poo bombs, lemurs give off stinking perfume to entice friends and even the cutest monkeys sometimes eat their own. When you study animals, you never know exactly what strange behavior you might see.
Here are 10 of the weirdest animal stories that caught our attention in 2020.
Related: Survival of the Grossest: 8 Disgusting Animal Behaviors
Snakes feast on toad organs
Asian kukri snakes use their knife-like teeth cut into the abdominal cavities of toads and gobble up their organs, leaving little but an empty pouch of skin. The snakes sometimes spend hours eating toad guts; specifically, scientists caught the snakes consuming poisonous toads Duttaphrynus melanostictus, also known as Asian Common Toads or Asian Black Spotted Toads. The toads secrete a poisonous white substance, so the scientists suspect that kukri snakes have adopted their cruel eating strategy to avoid this poison.
Cannibalistic monkeys
White-headed Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus impersonator) look absolutely sweet, with their deep brown eyes and tiny faces surrounded by white fur – but sometimes these adorable creatures will cannibalize their own relatives. When a baby monkey fell from a tree in Costa Rica’s Santa Rosa National Park, his relatives gathered around the corpse in interest. Soon, a young male and a pregnant female began to nibble on the legs and feet of the child. In the end, they left only the head, chest, and arms untouched. When hunting for prey, the Capuchins usually ate an entire animal at one time and as a group, rather than just two monkeys eating part of the portion; Therefore, scientists suspect that cannibalism may be unusual behavior for white-headed capuchins.
Panda courtship caught on camera
After three years of tracking pandas through China’s Qinling Mountains, filmmakers caught two male bears compete for a woman’s attention. This is the first time this courtship behavior has been captured on film, and if you were expecting something fun and cuddly you would be seriously mistaken. The two males stood at the base of a tree, fighting and roaring while the female sat in the branches above. The eldest of the males won this first skirmish, but when the female scrambled down she managed to slip away. Both males continued to follow the female for several weeks until, eventually, the younger male won.
Related: Strange Love: 11 Animals With Really Weird Courtship Rituals
Penguin poo bombs
Penguins can shoot their poop over long distances, up to about twice their height, and scientists calculated exactly how much force they needed to do this. The team looked specifically at Humboldt penguins (Spheniscus humboldti), which spew their excrement in a graceful arc from their nests on high ground. They calculated that the pressure generated in the penguins’ rectum was a whopping 4 pounds per square inch (28.2 kilopascals). That means the powerful poepers can throw out their feces at about 5 mph (8 kph) and up to about 53 inches (134 centimeters).
Godzilla wasps lay their eggs in underwater caterpillars
The Microgaster godzilla wasp earned its monstrous name of the way it hunts hosts. The parasitic wasp dives under water to catch moth caterpillars, which float just below the surface in home-made casings. One by one, the wasp wrestles the caterpillars out of their shells, drags them above water, and quickly pumps them full of eggs. The way the wasp bursts out of the water reminded scientists of Godzilla emerging from the sea in classic science fiction movies.
The daring (and gross) escape of an eel
A blue heron flew over the Delaware coastline when suddenly one The American eel erupted from its intestines. Photographs taken by Maryland engineer Sam Davis show the eel dangling from the bird like a thick tie. After escaping the blue heron’s belly, the daring eel may have survived – but only if it fell into or near water that was salty enough. The heron probably lived one more day to fly, despite this heartbreaking encounter.
Naked mole rats use carbon dioxide to prevent attacks
Naked mole rats live in overcrowded underground burrows with little oxygen, but that’s no problem for these wrinkly weirdos. Rather than relying on oxygen, actually naked mole rats more dependent on carbon dioxide; without it shorting their brains and the bugs get seizures. Due to a genetic mutation, the mole rats lack a switch in their brains that usually controls electrical activity. This mutation allows the animals to conserve precious energy reserves, and thankfully, high levels of carbon dioxide in their burrows suppress brain activity in another way, normally saving the mole rats from seizures.
Lemurs flirt with a smelly love potion
Male ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) produce their own cologne from a gland in their wrists and extinguish their tails with the fluid during the breeding season. These wrist secretions smell bitter and leathery for most of the year, but in the breeding season, the cologne takes on a sweeter, more fruity aroma. Scientists believe that testosterone fluctuations can cause this change in smell, and this could be a signal when a man is ready to mate. But while females show strong interest in mating season scent, it’s unclear whether this smelly form of flirting actually makes males more desirable partners.
Platypus glow under UV light
When scientists studied ancient platypus specimens, they made a surprising discovery: under UV, the normally brown creatures radiate a blue-green glow. Apart from the platypusFlying squirrels and opossums are the only other mammals known to exhibit this type of biofluorescence. The scientists discovered this glow after studying flying squirrels at the Field Museum in Chicago, when they decided to train their black lights on the duckbilled mammals as well, as both animals hunt at dusk and at night. The platypus’ green sheen may diminish their visibility to predators, the team hypothesizes, but more research is needed to confirm that theory.
Mantis shrimp steal rivals’ homes
The mantis shrimp Neogonodactylus bredini wave club-like arms they use pest smaller shrimp from their homes. The crustaceans, nicknamed “smashers”, can swing their arms at 80 mph and battle it out over coral burrows in the southern Caribbean Sea. In laboratory studies, scientists found that if the shrimp could choose between empty burrows, they would have large, spacious molars in which to grow. But when other shrimp take up residence in the burrows, smashers tend to attack shrimp in small burrows most fiercely. While the burrow may be tight, the attacking shrimp likely knows that the resident will be small and therefore easier to beat, the researchers suggested.
Originally published on Live Science.