The last installment told you about death-ray firing shrimp, snake-jawed marsupials, and flying snakes. Apparently, that’s just how Mother Nature warms up, and all those other animals were merely the foreword to her encyclopedia of terror. Here are five more animals so disturbing you’ll declare war on the outside world.

 

 

 

 

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Giant Humboldt Squid

 

 
The Giant Humboldt Squid averages about 6 feet long and 200 pounds, but have been found at heights up to 14 feet long and weighing over seven-hundred pounds. They’re more commonly known as the Red Demon Squid, and that name does not have a backstory that needs explaining: They are usually red, and they are fucking demons. Their tentacles are lined with around 1,200 individual sucker disks, each one in turn lined with around 25 razor-sharp teeth, giving them a grand total of 30,000. They’re incredibly aggressive, hunt in packs, use stealth tactics to capture prey, and display remarkable intelligence. Basically, they’re modern-day underwater Velociraptors.

With 10 legs.

And 1200 fucking mouths.

 

 
And they hate you – oh god do they hate you.

They’re known as man-eating squid, and that’s not hyperbole. They don’t eat people rarely, like an accident; they do it all the damn time, like a hobby. They live in the Sea of Cortez, and nearly every local fisherman knows somebody who’s fallen overboard to be devoured by these things within moments. Which officially makes Sea of Cortez fisherman the worst job on earth: Sure, you can lose a hand doing construction, or be blinded working with chemicals, but what other profession considers a good day to be one when nobody gets wrapped in a blanket of carnivorous mouths and hauled off into the depths by monsters?

Shocking Pink Dragon Millipede

 

 
Aw…what are you doing here, little guy? Did you get lost? This is a list for horrible, scary animals – not just weird little dudes. You say you look like a French tickler for elves? You’ve got a point there, I suppose, but I still don’t think you belo- oh, you shoot cyanide? What? Like, the poison? You fire cyanide out from your tiny pink sex toy body? Well, why didn’t you say so earlier? Pull up a chair! Make yourself at home.

 

 
This is the Shocking Pink Dragon Millipede, only recently found in the Greater Mekong region. It manufactures and fires hydrogen cyanide, which is an extremely poisonous, acidic substance that boils slightly above room temperature and smells of bitter almonds. It’s particularly strange for a creature of its size, because it lives right out in the open – not hiding in shrubs or trees. It just sits out there, garish as hell, daring anything to come near it so it can shoot boiling, poisonous acid at them. You can’t tell me that’s an accident; it knows what it’s doing. That’s like a guy dressing up in drag, heading out to Compton, and then hurling hand grenades at anybody that looks at him sidelong. This thing is not out there defending itself, it’s out there looking for trouble, and may God help your face if you’re what it finds.

Ajolote

 

 
The Ajolote, also known as the Mole Lizard, is a burrowing lizard that lives mostly in Mexico. It’s disturbing because it only has front legs, which are useful for a tunneling creature, but lacks the back legs which are relatively pointless for something that lives largely underground…and it also resembles something. Something uh, disturbing I guess? Something….look, do I have to spell it out?

 

 
It’s disturbing because it is a giant crawling penis with tiny clawed hands, okay? That’s why it’s here alongside poison-firing condoms and Cthulu-like monstrosities; because a living severed penis with tiny, near-human arms is so god damn disturbing it would give Freud nightmares, and that guy saw penises everywhere. He was like the penis-seeing version of the kid from the Sixth Sense, and even he would have to admit this thing is pretty fucked up right here.
 

Emerald Cockroach Wasp

 

The Emerald Cockroach Wasp is mostly native to the Pacific islands and Southeastern Asia, and it’s unique in that it is a brightly colored, solitary wasp with a complex, paralytic venom. It is also unique in that is a master of the undead that utilizes intricate stings, poisons, and amputation to achieve mind control of another species in order to birth its babies within their still-living bodies.

 

 
When it comes time for the female wasp to lay her eggs, she finds a roach and stings it in a precise spot in the ganglia to reversibly paralyze its front legs, then stings it in a different spot to disable the escape reflex. She then chews off half the roach’s antennae, and uses the stubs to lead the zombified roach around like a dog on a leash until they reach her burrow where she lays her eggs in its stomach, and buries it alive. The lobotomized roach then rests quietly while the baby inside of it hatches, and proceeds to systematically eat the roach’s internal organs in a specific order that keeps it alive until the very end, at which point the new wasp finishes hollowing out the shell and emerges.

Basically, it’s part Ridley Scott’s Alien, part Heinlein’s Puppet Master, and part Dungeons and Dragons’ Necromancer. She surgically alters her prey with poison and forms it into a zombie all to let her babies hollow out its still-living internal organs. Man…just like a woman, am I right, fellas?!

Side Note: If you actually agreed with that statement, then you know horrifying, unearthly women and should phone the authorities immediately.
 

Deep Sea Frilled Shark

 

 
This creature was, until recently, thought to be extinct. Probably because that’s what the marine biologists really hoped was true when they found the fossils of a 7-foot long half snake, half shark. Upon discovery, I would assume something like that was long since dead too, if only so I could sleep at night without the aid of eight fingers of bourbon and a panic room.

 

 

The scientists were wrong though, as they saw when the sharks started occasionally popping up in the nets of deep-sea trawlers. These bizarre creatures were always brought up dead, which is a fortunate fact that could have gone a long way toward proving the existence of a kind and merciful God…except that one was recently filmed alive off the waters of Japan. They supposedly live all around the world, but it was only first encountered in Japanese waters because, as Godzilla taught us, that’s where all good monsters come from.  If you never thought you’d live to see a shark fucking slither at you, you might want to watch this video:

 

If you did think you’d see this day, then congratulations! You are H.P. Lovecraft, and if you’re reading this blog, then you’ve beaten death! Good for you! For the rest of you, here’s an adorable moonwalking bird, so you can go back to pretending that nature doesn’t actively hate you:

 

 

And may God have mercy on your souls.

 

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You can read more from Robert at his own site, I Fight Robots

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