5

The Clam With A Full-Blown Rave In Its Mouth

Lakshmi Sawitri/Flickr

Ctenoides ales has several hip nicknames, and not just because "Ctenoides ales" is goddamn impossible to pronounce. It's the only bivalve known to have the ability to create a mesmerizing strobe light effect with its soft tissue, earning it monikers such as the disco clam, the electric flame scallop, and the electric clam, which sounds like something you'd order out of an adult catalog. We're going to go ahead and give it a new one right now: the THOR CLAM.

UC Berkeley Campus Life/YouTube
You can only eat one using Mjolnir.

Scientists originally assumed that the THOR CLAM's rave impression was some type of mating display, but recent studies have revealed that it's more likely used to attract prey, and can even ward off predators. Because who the hell wants to wrap their lips around a freaking undersea lightning bolt? And in case the light show isn't adequate, the THOR CLAM also squirts sulfuric acid from its fringe-like tentacles.

Animal Wire/YouTube

UC Berkeley Campus Life/YouTube
"Keep testing me. That's not the only thing I can shoot."

4

Psychedelic Party Crabs

atese/iStock/Getty Images

It may look like some plastic tchotchke that Mother Nature plucked out of the impulse bin at Justice when she was 12, but the Galathea pilosa is 100-percent BPA-free. That's because it's a not-plastic creature commonly called a squat lobster, a close cousin of the hermit crab. Galathea pilosa doesn't need a shell that's painted in happy faces and rainbows like some pet store hermit, though, because that would be redundant.

JeremyKeithBrown/iStock/Getty Images
Its natural enemies are seabirds and tweens.

Since it's lacking said shell, when this crab wants to lower its profile, it simply tucks its tail beneath its thorax. The efficacy of this technique is questionable at best, considering that their arms grow to several times their body length and that they're more garish than a Mexican cemetery.

JeremyKeithBrown/iStock/Getty Images
Related fact: They're filled with delicious candy that flies everywhere when you whack 'em with a stick.

3

Party Time Grasshoppers

Kevinsooryan/Wiki Commons

The life of a bug is pretty simple: eat, mate, don't get eaten. To accomplish that last goal, bugs such as grasshoppers normally employ relatively tame color schemes -- green, brown, or some combination of the two. But then there are those grasshoppers who bear the equivalent of a forehead tattoo reading "Eat me, I'm fabulous."

Behold the rainbow grasshopper, also known as the painted grasshopper or the barber pole grasshopper. They can be found in the American Southwest and Mexico, where they blend in with exactly nothing.

Stellarkid/Wiki Commons
Scientists refer to their method of concealment as the "Ed Hardy Technique."

2

The Bird With An Upside-Down Head

Fundacion ProAves via news.nationalgeographic.com

1

The Quasimodo Fish

Wiki Commons

The Asian sheepshead wrasse is the Rocky Dennis of the sea. Adults of the species develop aggressively bulbous protrusions on their foreheads and chins which make them look remarkably similar to a sheep, if you've never seen a sheep before. They look like some kind of bar-brawlin', hard-drinkin', wife-beatin', oceangoing Dick Tracy villain, though the only things they're known to terrorize on a regular basis are shellfish and crustaceans. Still, we're betting even Cthulhu wouldn't dare to look at an Asian sheepshead wrasse's lady friend the wrong way.

Wiki Commons
Of course, we're not sure there's a "right" way to look at an Asian sheepshead wrasse.

And speaking of their uncouth mating behavior, that's one of the few things we know about these loutish fish. Mating involves the strongest male beating up the smaller ones like a barroom lummox, and then hauling the female to the surface to spawn like it's the bathroom of some crowded New Jersey dance club.

Walt Disney
A directional hydrophone survey of this ritual captured no less than 143 repetitions of the phrase "come at me, bro."

As to exactly why they look like someone's gone to town on them with a cartoon mallet, we know precisely bupkis. We do know that, though they're considered a "valued food fish" in some corners of the world, apparently the Japanese don't like to eat them. That's right: Even a people who have no qualms about chomping down swollen fish testicles tap out after one look at these hideous bastards.

E. Reid Ross is a columnist at Man Cave Daily. Feel free to follow him on Twitter here.

For more curve balls from Mother Nature, check out 6 Unassuming Animals That Are Secretly Immortal and The 6 Cutest Animals That Can Still Destroy You.

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