I recently found a page called “The most awful creatures in nature”. It’s a collection of photos, with no labels or accompanying commentary, of strange-looking creatures. Some of them I recognize and some of them I don’t; some of them I suspect may be photoshopped or models of extinct creatures. Can you help me identify all the photos?
Here’s a list of the photos in order, with the ones I recognize in bold:
[ol]
[li]limpetty thing with a tail[/li][li][Japanese spider crab](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_spider crab)[/li][li]spiky lizard thing[/li][li]horseshoe crab[/li][li]bird with a huge wattle[/li][li]baboon[/li][li]some kind of salamander[/li][li]axolotl[/li][li]aye-aye[/li][li]mudskipper[/li][li][Belgian blue cattle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_blue cattle)[/li][li]sharky thing with fin on nose[/li][li]coconut crab[/li][li]colossal squid[/li][li]colossal squid[/li][li]caterpillar with huge horns[/li][li]transparent polka-dot marine creature[/li][li]blimpy cyan and pink cephalopod[/li][li]puffy yellow cephalopod[/li][li]cattle with impossibly large horns[/li][li]fish with viper’s head[/li][li]gharial[/li][li]gharial[/li][li]unicorn sharky thing with spiky teeth[/li][li]sluggy thing with spiky teeth[/li][li]ugly chicks[/li][li]aye-aye[/li][li]ocean sunfish[/li][li]some kind of arachnid[/li][li]some kind of centipede[/li][li]camel spider[/li][li][naked mole rat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/naked_mole rat)[/li][li]pink snaky thing with legs[/li][li][giant marine isopod](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/giant_marine isopod)[/li][li]dirty arachnid[/li][li]stripey blue thing with feathery limbs[/li][li]primate with a cavernous nose[/li][li]possibly hog-nosed turtle[/li][li]another large crab; possibly another [Japanese spider crab](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_spider crab)[/li][li]some sort of creature with a large mouth and pointy teeth[/li][li]fish with enormous, widely spaced pointy teeth[/li][li]a giant beetle[/li][li]a large black spider[/li][li]vampire squid[/li][/ol]
Sorry for the double post but after looking through all of them I can also identify #37, from the same documentary incidentally (it’s called Wild China. And those monkeys happen to be native to China). It’s a snub-nosed monkey, specifically either a black or gray snub-nosed monkey.
#1 – a species of tadpole shrimp Robyn's Error Page #5 – Marabou Stork Marabou stork - Wikipedia #12 – an immature shovelnose dogfish (sorry, no linkie)
I’ve got more, but I have to start work.
“Awful?” Come on. It’s not like they can help the way they look!
And a lot of them don’t even come close to looking like what I would call awful. Seriously - this? That’s like, one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. How could anyone call that awful?
Thanks to everyone who’s contributed so far. Here’s a revised list showing what’s been recognized (in bold) and what still needs identification. I’m particularly interested in the fish with giant spiked teeth.
17 is some species of teuthowenia, which is a type of glass squid.
29 is sea spider (or Thomas Dahlgren).
40 is an alligator gar.
41 is a goliath tiger fish.
42 is a titan beetle.
