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Nature is the Stephen King of anthropomorphized abstract concepts: It’s the undisputed master of horror. But unlike Stephen King, nature didn’t run out of good ideas twenty years ago. It’s been going strong for millenia, crafting subtle and intricate masterpieces of terror to unsettle, disturb, or outright kill you. Here’s a few more of it’s finer works:

Cymothoa exigua

Cymothoa Exigua, an ocean-dwelling parasite in the pacific ocean, primarily feeds on the Rose Snapper. And that’s not a picture of it being eaten up there. See, Cymothoa Exigua feeds by attching itself to the base of the tongue and draining the blood until it eventually atrophies and falls off. At which point the parasite replaces the tongue – actually functioning as the appendage – thus ensuring that the fish cannot get rid of it without starving to death.

It’s the only parasite that actually replaces a body part in its host, and apart from making fishing trips rather disturbing when one finds themselves trying to remove a hook from the mouth of the monster from Aliens, it also sets a terrifying bar for all the other parasites out there. I’m not saying that this trend will continue, or that you can expect to find your penis replaced by segmented translucent millipede in the near future, I’m just saying that if that does happen, you should probably run to the doctor immediately, provided that your legs have not been replaced by tapeworms in the interim.

Vampire Moth

This is the Vampire Moth, and it doesn’t need a lot of explaining. It is a moth that sucks your blood. And that is terrible. You worry about bloodsucking from mosquitoes, leeches, and lawyers, and now you have to worry about it from moths too? No longer can you say “don’t worry, honey, it’s just a moth!” and be the brave soldier for your loved ones. No, now you’re the one screaming “vampire!” and then hiding under your bed with a cross everytime you see a butterfly.

They’re a recently discovered species, and the blood-sucking mechanism is considered a “logical evolution” from the fruit piercing mechanism present in many other moths. Take note: Everything that eats fruit is going to “logically evolve” into a vampire. I didn’t fucking say that; that’s science. Take it up with them.

Hatchet Fish

This is the Deep Sea Hatchetfish, so named for the hatchet-like body shape. It grows to about four inches in size, and like most deep sea creatures, it is bioluminescent. Unlike other deep sea dwellers, however, the hatchet fish has the unique ability to deeply unsettle you for the rest of your years by simply turning to face you:

Whereupon it ceases to be a fish and instead becomes a phantom escaped from the Room of Lost Souls, here to haunt the living out of jealousy for their flesh., While objectively I know that the Deep Sea Hatchetfish makes no particular sound, I swear to god that I can hear that thing screaming right now, and I’m pretty sure I only have 7 days to live because of it.

Sydney Funnel Web Spider

The Sydney Funnel Web Spider hails from the land of the Plagued Mother Of Horrors – The Kingdom of the Queen of Monsters, The World of Ancient and Unspeakable Horror – where old and terrifying gods sleep eternally, breathing their noxious miasma of choking fear across this world:

The land of Australia.

It’s one of the deadliest spiders in the world, and unfortunately that old adage “it’s more afraid of you than you are of it,” does not apply to the Syndney Funnel Web Spider: It’s not fucking afraid of you at all. It’s infamous for being one of the most “notoriously aggressive” species, and it will attack immediately when provoked. So no, it’s not “more afraid of you than you are of it,” unless you’ve suffered head trauma that has rendered you functionally incapable of registering fear, or are Daredevil.

The venom of the Syndney Funnel Web Spider can kill you quite painfully within 40 minutes, and since you can find the males wandering incessantly during the summer months, frequently  living in garages, yards, and houses all around Sydney, it probably will. Smashing it is ill-advised, because it’s got little spider rage issues and if you miss, it will probably come after you like Mel Gibson in Payback. But drowning is also not a good idea: The Syndney Funnel Web Spider can survive a full day immersed in water, and are also frequently found in swimming pools.

So hey, vacation in Australia! If you’re too scared of sharks to go in the ocean, take a dip in the pool where you only have to risk the word’s most deadly, snorkeling, furious spider.

Giant Anteater

The Giant Anteater, as anybody with reading comprehension skills can tell you is both giant and an anteater. It’s found mostly in central and southern America, and it’s quite cute in a fucked-up-elongated-face kind of way, like Sarah Jessica Parker. Not so cute? These things:

That’s the claw of a giant anteater laid next to the claw of a Velociraptor. You remember Velociraptors, right? From Jurassic Park? There was that really scary speech about how they use these enormous claws to disembowel you, remember? Yeah, the giant anteater is just like that , except for one thing:

The top claw up there – the bigger one – that’s the anteater.

It uses these god damn gigantic claws to kill jungle cats, which are its only natural predator. It can swipe quite rapidly, using a sweeping scythe-like motion to slash at predators or, if cornered, will grab enemies in a “bear hug,” and squeeze the claws through their body. So is it still adorable now that you know it’s basically an Iron Maiden for jaguars?

Follow Robert on Twitter, on Facebook, or his own site, I Fight Robots. It’s been fun everybody! This is the last of my blogs here at Atom, and I hope you enjoyed them.

We’ve done features about the most terrifying animals in the world, and features detailing the many ways that robots seek to kill us. We were getting a terror gangbang from both ends – natural and artificial – but just when you thought all the holes were filled, a new contender steps in and violates you in ways you didn’t even know were possible. That new contender: Robot Animals!

Can I… can I say gangbang on the internet?

Mechanical Tiger

This is Sheva, a walking mechanical tiger built by Kezanti, a Belgian artist.

What it’s used for:

Like most of these robots, it’s an art project. However, unlike most of these robots, Kezanti is at least awesome enough to ride it around town, albeit very, very slowly. Although, honestly, what’s the hurry? You already have a robot tiger mount; you ain’t got shit else that needs doing.

What I Would Use It For:

Confusing the fuck out of real tigers. If we have to live in irrational fear of Terminators, I don’t see why tigers get a free pass.

Giant Twin Robot Spiders

This is one of a pair of giant robot spiders built by a French group called La Machine, for display at Expo Y150, a celebration in Yokohama on the 150th anniversary of the port.

What it’s used for:

The Expo Y150 festival was a showcase of both technology and art. And, seeing as how it was in Japan, these concepts were expressed with a giant horrifying robot.,The expo also serves as a kind of “terror reservoir” for anybody afraid of:

A. Spiders

B. Robots

C. Giants or

D. All of the above.

Ensuring that, over the next 150 years, no child will go untraumatized with such a vast pool of fear having been collected.

What I Would Use It For:

Exactly – and I mean EXACTLY – the same thing. I would run it into an unsuspecting town and use it to terrorize the population. The only difference between La Machine’s approach and mine, is that I would be perched atop a nearby water tower cackling maniacally and wearing a top hat while shouting spider-based puns at the victims.

40 Foot Tall Mechanical Elephant

This is the Sultan’s Elephant, the flagship exhibit of a show by the same name. It’s put on by the Royal De Luxe Theatre Company, and is mostly based on the more innocuous and endearing Arabic folklore – as opposed to the non-endearing folklore where women get raped by whirlwinds and such. That would not make for nearly as nice a parade.

What it’s used for:

It’s the centerpiece to a gigantic spectacle that tours the world and ignites the imaginations of children. Or it’s just compensating for the penis of whoever’s driving it. Because let’s face it, if we assume the guy in the black Hummer has size issues, the guy in the 40 foot tall robot elephant must be anatomically irrelevant.

What I would use it for:

Fucking killing Legolas. LET’S SEE YOU BRING IT DOWN NOW THAT IT IS ALSO A ROBOT, YOU HANDSOME, BASTARD ELF-WOMAN .

Robo-Snake

This is “snake,” a robot built by SINTEF.

What it’s used for:

It’s actually a rescue robot, designed to slip between the rubble to reach earthquake survivors, which it will then locate and relay footage of to rescuers. Sure, it might save a great deal of survivors from collapsed buildings, but it will kill just as many victims with heart conditions who, even assuming they survive the stress of the earthquake and subsequent trapping, will immediately stroke out and die when a fucking robot snake comes slithering out from the darkness, shining its one malevolent eye and twisting its creepy transparent carapace about their legs.

What I would use if for:

Probably to scare girls, like a fifth grader. A fifth grader with a robot arsenal at his disposal.

Animatronic Dinosaurs

These are but a few of the animatronic dinosaurs featured at the London Natural History Museum.

What it’s used for:

A spectacle for the kids who, while possibly bored to tears looking at rocks and bones, would probably instantly reconsider a potential career in archaeology after one short field trip to visit the Dino-Bots.

What I would use it for:

Transport. Nobody’s going to give you a ticket if you accidentally leave your solid-steel T-Rex double-parked.

Fire Horse

This is the Fire Horse: A mechanical, fire-breathing horse built by Paka.

What it’s used for:

It was an exhibition featured in Burning Man which, for those of you unaware, is like Mad Max with hippies.

What I would Use it for:

Making horse racing interesting again. Throw a tiny man on top of that thing, then show me it pounding into the final stretch while shooting fire at its competitors, and you can just have my money – straight up. Everybody’s already a winner in that scenario.

Follow Robert on Twitter, on Facebook, or his own site, I Fight Robots.

The circle of life is a hard thing to understand, but it is vital that all things must die so that others might live. Life, death, and rebirth: The natural world has a kind of spiritual cycle to it that can be seen echoing throughout all of the world’s major religions. And every religion has its devils, so here’s what nature cooked up to fill those roles:

Magnapinna Squid

This is the Magnapinna Squid, also called the Elbow Squid because, well, it’s a squid with elbows, isn’t it? The Magnapinna Squid are so rare that the adult variety of some species still remain scientifically unclassified, as no one has ever seen them alive. Luckily, in November of 2007, a Shell Oil remotely operated vehicle was surveying the ocean floor nearly a mile and a half down, when it happened across an adult Magnapinna and took this video:

Which clearly scared the holy shit out of the men operating the camera. You can really feel their fear here, particularly when the camera starts cutting back forth between empty ocean and the image of the squid like the robot itself had to do a double take. All of the known Magnapinna are non-threatening, but then again, nobody’s really certain. Some of the species, for all modern science knows, could very well mature into precisely what they look like: The terrifying, heartless, super-intelligent monsters from Independence Day, out to colonize our planet for their own dark uses. In which case our only hope is that Will Smith can punch them all in the face as they exit their ships, then humorously converse with their unconscious husks using his Disney-style ‘hood slang.

Blanket Octopus

The Blanket Octopus, or Tremoctopus, lives in the waters of Northern Australia, because that is where crazy scary animals come from. Period. Australia has more terror per capita than Elm Street, so if something looks like a nightmarish monster, odds are it’s probably a household pet in the land down under. But what’s truly disturbing about the Blanket Octopus has little to do with the threat it poses to humans, but everything to do with the unceasing intimidation and terror that it brings to the other marine animals. You see, the Blanket Octopus is the Batman of the Ocean.

Instead of spraying ink, its defensive mechanism is to unfurl a massive, flowing, blood-red cape and fly dramatically about, scaring the shit out of all the surrounding fish like the Dark Knight terrifies criminals. But there’s more! The Blanket Octopus has also evolved immunity to one of the deadlier creatures in its domain, the Portugese Man O’War Jellyfish, but the Blanket Octopus doesn’t exactly take a “live and let live” attitude towards this immunity; it takes full advantage of it, by ripping off the jellyfish’s poisonous tentacles and then using them as weapons against other sea creatures.

That’s right: It rips off the arms off of a deadly predator and then uses them as poison-whips against its enemies!

The blanket Octopus is so fucking intimidating, it even mates like Bruce Willis kills terrorists: The male Blanket Octopus, when encountering a female, fills one of its tentacles with sperm, pulls it from its own body, and then just gives it to the female – who presumably also uses it to whip any motherfuckers that be steppin’. And hey, if that’s not enough to put the Blanket Octopus on the Disturbing list, it also looks like it totally just handed you your ass in a breakdancing contest.

Hairy Frog

The Hairy Frog, native to Central Africa, is so named for the hair-like strands found along its sides and thighs. These aren’t actually hair, though: They’re skin growths containing dozens of arteries that help the frog to stay underwater longer. But even disregarding the fact that they are covered in blood-hair, the Hairy Frog has another unique and disturbing characteristic: It has claws!

Assassin Spider

This is the Assassin Spider. It lives in Southern Africa and – surprise! – Australia.

You know what? All of the horrifying animals native to this country sure go a long way toward explaining their national motto:

“Australia: Even though nature vomited monsters all over this barren isle of Lovecraftian horror, we fucking live here anyway, because we just don’t give a shit.”

But I digress. While the Assassin Spider may look a little sinister in that picture up there – as though it is plotting some sort of nefarious scheme to finally do away with that pesky Superman – that’s not why it made the list. This is:

See, the Assassin Spider is named for the uniquely long neck that separates its head from its thorax which, in conjunction with its proportionally gigantic venom-coated fangs – up to ten times the size of a normal spider – allow it to strike like a snake does: It snaps its elongated neck out and uses those forward-thrust mandibles to spear potential prey.

So hey, fucking check that shit out!

It’s a spider with a spring-loaded giraffe neck, which it uses to hurl its unearthly face (topped with disproportionately large venomous fangs) out at you like a grappling hook made out of my childhood nightmares!

Awesome.

Yes, that is great that something like that exists. I love not sleeping for the rest of my life. I’m so glad I have an excuse to do that now. 

Toe-Biters

That horrible, gut-churning motherfucker up there is called a Giant Water Bug, or a Toe-Biter. Variations of the species can be found all across the world, from South America to East Asia. They’re even considered a delicacy by the Thai people, who must have evolved mentally-retarded mouths to think that eating something as appalling as a Toe-Biter is an acceptable thing to do. The male Toe-Biter carries the female’s eggs to gestation on its back, which results in that nauseating, slime-acne-pockmarked vomit-inducer up there.

The Toe-Biters also have one of the most painful bites of any insect on the planet. They inject large volumes of digestive saliva into their prey as soon as they strike, which immediately begins to liquefy the muscle tissue. And the term “prey,” unfortunately, often does include humans. See, its natural reflex is to play dead when threatened, where it then emits a disgusting fluid from its anus to stop predators from eating it. However, unless you’re a mouth-retard, you’re not likely trying to eat the fucking thing, and therefore won’t even detect its presence. So, it will soon spring back into life feeling threatened, where it will then proceed to rot your muscles with its stomach-juices.

So to sum up: Between making you want to puke up your soul just by looking at it, covering you in anus fluids if you accidentally swim anywhere near it, and causing you epic, mind-blowing pain with every bite, it also makes a Slurpee out of your muscles with its hell-spit because you didn’t try to eat it.

Good god, fuck those squids, Will Smith! We need you on this one, if only to diffuse the horror with your harmless arrogance and cutesy one-liners…

Follow Robert on Twitter, on Facebook, or his own site, I Fight Robots.

As a child, did you ever get one of those crappy knock-off Radio Shack remote control cars as a gift? Nothing but kinked up wires attached to a 3 foot long cord, plastic wheels, and a made in Ukraine sticker on the bottom? Well, it’s time to start making up for it. How about starting off with an R.C. tiger? An actual, literal, remote controlled tiger. We’re not there yet, but we’re not as far off as you might think. Scientists are delving ever deeper into the somewhat disturbing realm of remote control animals, and here’s how they’re doing so far…

One of the early successful attempts at remotely controlling another living creature was conducted by Yale scientists, who started things off small, and began experimenting on fruit flies.

Fruit flies are pretty basic creatures, so it makes sense to start with them when you ultimately decide to try your hand at both animal programming and blasphemy. They stimulated the neurons of the flies with laser pulses, which did prove successful in a small way. They could provoke periods of activity or inactivity, but that was pretty much it. And, because playing god is just no fun unless there’s a bit of terror in it, they then continued on to prove that the fruit fly doesn’t even need a brain to be controlled… by chopping its god damn head off!

So, undead laser controlled insects? Pretty good for a first try at horror, Yale! But, never content to leave well enough alone, scientists at Berkley went ahead and upped the terror ante by doing similar experiments with a Rhinoceros Beetle. Because if you’re trying to win the Fear Olympics, then tiny, nearly invisible, insect zombies definitely take second place to the World’s Largest Cyborg Beetle.

But unlike Yale, the Berkeley scientists didn’t kill their monster-thing. They just mounted radio-actuated electrodes in the beetle’s limbs and brain. This also gave them much more accurate control of the insect – actually allowing them to steer the beetle once they kickstarted it into motion. So good news for everybody that’s always wanted to be chased down by giant weaponized beetles controlled by hidden enemies! Not so good news for sanity and unshit pants.
 

What, you think that’s an exaggeration? The project was entirely funded by DARPA… for primary use in military applications. They chose this particular beetle because it can carry up to 3 grams worth of equipment, but the Control Rig only weighs 1.3. This leaves them with a relatively small, but still pretty useable amount of cargo weight in which to pack all sorts of things. For the time being, that cargo is likely going to be little more than a camera or microphone for surveillance purposes, but it’s not hard to conceive of other uses. How much can a needle and an effective poison weigh? How much C4 does it take to blow up a face? Somewhat disturbing questions, to be sure, but now at least you have an excuse that’ll make you look like a bit less of a pussy when you run away from spiders screaming: They could very well be explosive assassins controlled by the government.

So far remote control seems to be limited to the insect realm, and making that leap to a mammalian brain has to be a much more complicated process. So it’s likely a fair ways off before you’re able to buy your kid his first R.C. Grizzly Bear…right?

No!

Ha! Science got you again!

Scientists at the State University of New York have already trained rats to obey remote signals at a distance of up to 500 yards. 

They achieved this by wiring the rat’s brain up with three sensors – one to the area that controls the right whiskers, one to the left, and one to the reward center. They stimulate the area of the brain associated with which direction the rat needs to turn, and stimulate the reward center if it obeys. After about five sessions, the rats obeyed without question. A human operator was then able to navigate them blindly through a maze, force them to leap from high ledges, or just shut them down completely.

The best part?

All of the equipment only cost them about $40 bucks. That’s right! For less than the price of a video game, you could suck the free will from a living creature and replace it with your own instead! Hey, don’t say the future never gave you nothing: Because even if you’re not into defying morality in order to possess similar powers to Aquaman and the Rat King – the future will now, at the very least, give you some pretty kickin’ nightmares.

Read more from Robert at his own site, I Fight Robots

From real life krakens to boiling-acid-firing caterpillars, nothing’s better at scaring the crap out of you like the gentle majesty of the animal kingdom. It seems like the extent of Mother Nature’s horror is only limited by her imagination, and apparently that bitch has been watching some Reading Rainbow, because her creepiness is off the charts these days. Here are five more examples of the most disturbing creatures on the face of the earth.

Human Face Fish

The aptly named Human Face Fish is, as you can see, not an inventive, charming descriptive term with an amusing backstory to explain it. It’s just a fish with a human face, there to look at you with its non-eyes and reflect the terrible frailty of your human identity with its frozen, corpse-like expression. Because carp frequently skim the surface to ‘breathe’ and collect food, watching the Human Face Fish in action creates the impression that the fish repeatedly swims to the surface to silently scream in terror every couple of minutes.

It’s not actually a recognized species yet, (it’s a hybrid between two different species of carp,) but it’s not a fluke either. The breeding of these two species has frequently produced the “human face” pattern in the fish. So, it’s not like finding one corn-flake that looks like Illinois in a batch of millions; it’s like finding several cases of corn flakes that look like the faces of your screaming children every time you visit the store. In a situation like this – finding something completely inhuman that is clearly trying to adapt to resemble a human face screaming in fear – there’s really only two reasonable responses: You can either assume that you’re insane and seek help, or buy a flamethrower and burn the world until it makes sense again. Here is a video of the fish screaming.

I am going to do both.

Vampire Squid

The Vampire Squid varies in color from pitch black to pale red, has a cloak of webbing connecting its eight arms (lined with spines, of course,) and the largest proportional eyes of any animal on earth. It possesses advanced cloaking techniques, fires bioluminescent ink that explodes in a dizzying laser light show when threatened, transforms into an orb-shape (to frighten inexplicably ball-fearing deep sea hunters, perhaps?) and can vary the size and shape of its numerous glowing photophores to either mimic giant, unearthly evil eyes to frighten larger fish, or to ‘hypnotize and transfix its prey’ with bizarre, intricate flashes of light.

It’s only about a foot long, so it doesn’t pose any real danger to humans, but watching this thing in motion isn’t exactly a warm snuggle either- as it constantly shape-shifts from nebulous cloud to flailing black spider forms, manifests enormous glowing eyes in the deep, and fires flashbang grenades from its spine-laden tentacle-cloak.

If you think I’m exaggerating how disturbing a Vampire Squid in action really is, consider its scientific name, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, which literally translates to “vampire squid from hell.” Most scientific names are basic and descriptive, denoting location, description, or just the color of the animal. They’re not notorious for their exaggeration or hyperbole in animal identification, so when they preface a creature’s name with the word ‘vampire,’ and then append the term ‘from hell’ to it; that’s just the best way Science knows to say ‘that thing is fucking creepy and it makes me cry.’

Olm

The Olm is a blind, cave-dwelling, eel-like creature that swims mostly by contorting its body like a snake, only slightly assisted by those tiny, creepy feet. It eats crustaceans and insects, which it swallows whole, also like a snake. Oh, and one other fun fact: It looks exactly like a sperm, complete with milky coloring, sticky complexion, and wriggling movement. The difference, of course, is that the Olm  would be a giant sperm – about a foot long – that comes equipped with those aforementioned tiny, blindly groping, horrible feet, and swallows crabs whole. It is frequently mistaken for the Ajolote, presumably by people who have never taken a Sex Ed class, because it looks like something that comes out of the Ajolote.

There’s a relationship there, to be sure, but they’re about as identical as apples and oranges. Or rather, about as identical as a clawed-snake penis and a clawed-snake sperm, if you want to be literal about it. Wow. What a god-awful sentence that was; the Olm is so gross that it ruins language.

Heteropoda Maxima

Spiders are notoriously freaky, and instill such an intense, nigh-universal phobia in humanity, that they’ve served as the inspiration for more fictional monsters than any other creature. Luckily, even the most deadly spiders are at least relatively small, giving us some solace in our relative sizes.

Well!

That lil’ fella up there is over a foot in diameter!

It was recently discovered in Laos, and it’s the largest spider in the world. It is a member of the Huntsman Spider family (all of which are frighteningly large,) which are found around the globe – from Japan to Africa, South America to Florida. They’re frequently housed in such exotic places as garages, woodsheds, or firewood piles.

When provoked, they will attack. And since they have a ‘clinging reflex’ when surprised, which causes them to seize onto the offending entity, (like your hands or face,) they’re pretty much always going to ‘be provoked,’ because once you see the world’s largest spider hugging your limbs, it’s a safe bet that said limb will soon be shaking, punching and flailing in desperation. They also travel with incredible speed, and can cling to walls or ceilings just like their smaller counterparts. Which is why sometimes people wake up to see this:

At which point they instantly die from shock, if there is any mercy in the world. In Africa, they’re also called Rain Spiders because, when it rains, they seek shelter inside houses and other dwellings. So please, donate to an African charity now. Because when it drizzles a bit in your hometown, you reach for an umbrella to keep your blouse from getting wet, but when it showers in Africa, you reach for a machete to fight off an impending invasion by the World’s Largest Nightmares. I think you can spare a few dollars to purchase extra blades for children facing the Spider Hordes, can’t you?

Loa Loa Worm

I am not starting this entry off with a picture. I am starting this entry with a disclaimer:

The following images and descriptions are to be considered NSFE, or Not Safe For Everything. Do you remember the first time you realized that the internet was a horrible place? Was it Goatse? 2 girls, 1 cup? Regardless of the particulars, at some point most of us have had a moment where we’ve understood that some things you cannot unsee, and that our lives will always be a little bit worse for witnessing them. This is one of those times.

This is the Loa Loa, also called the African Eyeworm.

Seriously, it’s not too late.

You can go! You can escape this!

Fine, here:

Are you happy now?

It lives in the rainforests of central Africa, and is frequently contracted through fly-bites. Humans are the only known natural incubators for the disease the worm causes, Loiasis, whose symptoms mostly consist of Red Spots, Itching, Soreness, Swelling, and Fantastic Ultra-Suicide when you first see a 2 ½ inch long worm swim through your fucking eyeball for an hour. If you think I’m exaggerating about the Ultra-Suicide, keep in mind that this is how they remove it:

I think I speak for every rational being on this planet when I say, with no reservations and complete authority: FUCK THAT. JUST…FUCKING FUCK THAT NOISE.

I just fired my eyeballs. They no longer work for me.

I hate this job.

I need a hug.

Read more from Robert at his own site, I Fight Robots, because now that you’ve learned how nature plans to kill you, you should really learn how science wants to do it.

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.

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.

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