7 Terrifying Creatures You'll Never See Coming

Caterpillars? Really? Ha, don't those things turn into butterflies or some shit? Give us a break.

"Ooh, I'm a fuckin' caterpillar or whatever."

Not so fast. The Lonomia caterpillar calls South America home and is so horrible that it is considered a public health problem. Not even the above mentioned candiru can lay claim to that. So what makes the Lonomia such a scourge to humanity? Well, what from a distance seems to be another lumbering, lovable caterpillar, on very close inspection is revealed to be covered with venomous spines.

When the spines make contact with human skin, the immediate symptoms are a burning sensation, headache and nausea, much like the effects of a one night stand in Vegas. This could be followed some time later by internal hemorrag... hemmorag... internal bleeding. This includes hematuria, which we think is Latin for "blood in urine" and ecchymosis which is essentially bleeding under your skin. The venom contains several toxins that affect the clotting ability of your blood and can, in extreme cases, damage your kidneys.

Actual victim.

Though it seems that things couldn't get much worse, the caterpillars actually have the ability to throw their spines into the air, so you don't even have to actually make contact with the animal for it to fuck you up.

WARNING: VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT

Normally water and electricity don't mix. However, electric torpedo rays don't give a shit about logic and will release up to 220 volts of electricity into the water at any given moment, from their totally hidden spot on the ocean floor.

Electric rays are fairly aggressive and have been known to attack divers, so don't try to tell us that they are more scared of us than we are of them, 'cause we're terrified.

Electric impulses fired from the ray can knock a full grown adult on their ass. Amplify the shock with a conductor like salt water, mix in a lack of oxygen and you have a recipe for dead swimmer. But like every efficient murderer, the rays leave little evidence of their crimes.

The electric rays are like the hit men of the ocean. There are no confirmed fatalities contributed to the rays, but there wouldn't be (they are suspected in several unexplained deaths of divers). By the way, you may be thinking that it's pretty badass somebody named them "torpedo rays" but they weren't named after the explosive ship-killing weapons. No, the weapons were named after the fucking rays.

And if you're comforting yourself by looking at the picture up there and figuring, "Well, that's not all that well hidden. In clear water, I'd surely see that thing." Yeah, give it about one second to bury itself in the silt, and you're not going to see a damned thing.

The N. fowleri may not look like much--and won't look like anything at all without a microscope--but of all the creatures on the world that want us dead (and there are many more than we've mentioned here) it might be the worst of them all.

Fuck you.

This little bastard can't wait to kill you. It's preferred method? Like most good horror movies monsters: to feast on your brain until you stop living. In another strange horror movie-like twist, it apparently targets teenagers.

N. fowleri seen here attacking.

The difference is, of course, brain-eating zombies are at least visible. This amoeba, on the other hand, dwells in lakes and ponds. It sits on the bottom waiting for its victim to stir up the water enough for an attack, it then literally crawls into your brain via the nasal passage, sits and gorges itself until it is drunk on tasty gray matter and you ultimately pass away two weeks later. What an asshole.

The only symptoms of this unspeakable horror seem to initially be a headache or fever followed a few days later by hallucinations. But, of course, that's what people get for swimming in murky, amoeba-infested waters in the jungle, right?

Oh, hey, did we mention that it can turn up in your swimming pool?

And because we can't stress enough how much animals must be annihilated from the planet, check out 5 Scientific Reasons People Act Like Assholes. And check out The Galactic Empire's Official Defense Strategy in our Death Star page.

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