If they allowed bets on interspecies rivalries, we'd lay our money square on the snake, every time. And we would lose that money, for one very simple reason: because the mongoose isn't fighting snakes for food, or for territory, or for survival -- it's fighting snakes because fuck snakes. That's seriously the reason why: Occasionally you will see a mongoose eating the meat from a defeated snake, but as a general rule, they prefer to avoid it. Yet they still actively seek out and hunt snakes, oftentimes ones larger than themselves. Some species of mongoose have even been known to fight king cobras, a snake so badass it literally eats other, lesser snakes for breakfast. The iconography of the king cobra inundates our culture, and from Commander to Kai, it is always used to intimidate. The hood, the hypnotic weaving, the forked tongue -- every visual aspect of the king cobra screams rotten death and fear.

And then along comes this doofy hillbilly weasel, which proceeds to murder the shit out of the living embodiment of terror just because there's nothing better to do that day.

Aww, aren't they just darling? The tree shrew looks like a real-life anime character, all big, round eyes, adorable little paws and tiny mouth. If that thing spoke, it would have the squeaky voice of a preteen Japanese girl, and it would teach jaded sword-wielding teenagers the importance of nature through its precocious antics.

"Listen! Cocklebur can be fatal if fed to livestock!"

But the pen-tailed tree shrew isn't all cuteness and innocence. It's on this list because it eats only one thing: The fermented nectar from the bertam palm plant of Malaysia. This nectar is naturally fermented inside the plant to have an alcohol content of around 3.8 percent, roughly equivalent to one (cheap) human beer. Now, these shrews aren't the only animals on Earth that drink alcohol -- bats, birds, monkeys and many other creatures drink on occasion -- but we meant it literally when we said they consume only one thing: booze. That is their sole sustenance. They do nothing but get blasted, every hour of every day of every year of their lives. These guys spend an average of two hours a day doing nothing but drinking the bertam liquor, an amount roughly equivalent to about 10 to 12 glasses of wine for a human, all in one sitting.

The Kennedys of the wild.

So yes, it might look like it's about to do a series of tiny cartwheels while singing you a little song about where rainbows come from, but if it did, it would probably vomit on your pants afterward and then take a swing at you for "judging it with your eyes."

And it's like watching a baby unhinge its jaw to swallow a kitten whole; the cuteness all instantly perverts into horror. So you know that the wolverine is somehow associated with berserker rage, and that it can transform from a cuddle machine into a threshing maw of horror in an instant. It's a psychopath, you get that. What you might not be getting, however, is the sheer scale of its madness: That berserker rage is not selective to animals its own size, animals it can realistically take, animals it wants to eat or animals that pose any direct threat to it. No, the wolverine will attack and eat everything from small rodents to arctic foxes to deer, musk ox and even bears.

Wait ... what? The fuck can that thing take on a bear? The sheer size difference makes it impossible.

Are we cheaping out here and counting one-sided fights where bears corner and devour wolverines while the tiny animals haplessly gnaw on the giant predator's ankles? Nope: Wolverines will actively stalk and attack larger predators by hiding on top of rocky outcrops or in trees, then leaping off onto their backs, biting, chewing, mauling and stomping on their spines like a backpack capable of hate.

But don't take our word for it -- witness all the random spite of nature firsthand:

And then again, just like the wolverine, the Tasmanian devil has to go and ruin the snuggle-fest by opening its mouth and turning into the fucking Sarlacc.

But we're not here to repeat ourselves. The devil isn't here for its fighting ability; it's here because it eats literally everything: It devours its kills whole, bones, fur and all. Here are some other things that have been found in Tasmanian devil poo: pencils, plastic, collars, tags of devoured pets, echidnas -- spikes and all -- and blue jeans. The only logical conclusion, on that last one, being that it either ate the pants off of one very terrified Tasmanite, or it ate everything but the shirt off of one very dead Tasmanite. Tasmanian devils even bite through metal traps, and not because they're stuck in them. Just fucking because.

Some people keep Tasmanian devils on them at all times for occasions like this.

"What is this, some kind of steel blade? Looks delicious," says the Tasmanian devil. "Don't mind if I do."

Once they do tuck in to a meal, they can eat anywhere between five percent to 40 percent of their body weight in one sitting, after which they are too bloated and tired to move, so they just go to sleep -- with complete disregard for their surroundings. That is how few fucks the Tasmanian devil will give: If you're standing there, helplessly watching while a Tasmanian devil eats your kid brother, it absolutely will not stop ... until it's full. Then it will lie down and take a nap immediately after, even with you still right there, screaming.

It might ask you to keep it down, but that is the extent of its concern with you.

And then there's the cane toad: Not only will they regularly have sex with dead bodies, but they'll even make sweet love to corpses outside of their species. Not just different types of frog, mind you, but animals that in no way could ever be mistaken as a former cane toad: Snakes, lizards, small mammals -- the cane toad is a firm believer in the "hole is a hole" attitude, and an even firmer believer in the "if there's no hole, just make one with your boner" attitude. There has been at least one recorded attempt of a cane toad to mate with a long-deceased female that had been completely flattened by a car ... for eight straight hours!

In conclusion, here's a cane toad raping a dead salamander. You're welcome.

Let's do the wolverine-style breakdown again. Pictured above: Snuggles incarnate. We'd name him George Clooney and feed him a diet of peanut butter and hugs.

Now, murder from concentrate:

Oh, and hugging is a bad idea; they attack the testicles first. That's just how the honey badger rolls. Here are other ways the honey badger rolls:

In that one, short video, you can see a honey badger chasing a leopard away and climbing a tree just to attack a cobra -- presumably because it looked at him funny. But the perfect example of the honey badger's inability to give one hot shit comes around 2:15 into the video: One particular honey badger got hungry, so he went to find a nice meal. Now, he could snuffle around in the dirt all night, looking for the safest food source, but that sounds hard, and it might take a while. So instead, he opts to piss all over the very concept of survival instincts, and just eats the first damn thing he comes across. Unfortunately, it happens to be a puff adder -- one of the deadliest snakes in the world.

The badger stumbles across the snake midway through its own meal, so what's a badger to do? Why, steal the food straight from the death-serpent's jaws, of course, and then sit down to eat the snake's stolen meal right in front of him, while he furiously spits and hisses. When the badger finishes the snake's dinner, he's still a bit peckish, so he walks right over to the still-furious snake and mauls it to death, sustaining multiple bites in the process. Ignoring the deadly poison coursing through his veins, the badger settles in and starts eating the puff adder. Tragically, a few minutes later, he collapses.

And so ends the story of this honey badger, who died as he lived, spitting in the face of mortalit- what's that? He's back up? Holy shit! Two hours pass, and the badger miraculously resurrects himself from apparent death! He's been given a second chance at life! A second chance to ...

Go right back and continue eating that snake.

Danny Vittore is a freelance writer. When he isn't writing, he is found sitting at his desk twiddling his thumbs waiting for his next writing job. If you feel the need to contact him for whatever reason you deem necessary, his email address is: dannyvittore@gmail.com

For more of Mother Nature's gifts that will give you nightmares, check out 7 Terrifying Creatures You'll Never See Coming and 7 Terrifying Prehistoric Creatures (That Are Still Around).

And stop by Linkstorm to see where you can buy a Tasmanian devil.

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