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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saying that if that does happen, you should probably run to the doctor immediately, provided that your legs have not been replaced by tapeworms in the interim.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?

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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.

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.

 

 

 

 

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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