JThunder ceti eels exist only on Star Trek!!!
Armadillos. I always thought they were cool, then I found out they can walk underwater, at which point I decided they were the coolest.
Also, wombats, although I’ve never seen a live one.
They are extinct now, but I have always been fascinated by the bear-dog. It was part dog, part bear and a real badass. Imagine if you could get one of those to guard your crib in da’ hood.
You didn’t say anything about extinct species, so I have to nominate Hallucinogenia. Are those spines used for defense or locomotion? Are those legs, tentacles, or feeding tubes? Which end is is the head?
hlanelee i suppose you’re going to tell us that Tribbles aren’t real either!
Another platypus fan chiming in here.
I’ll also give props to the [url=http://www.wildlifesafari.info/antbear.html]Aardvark.
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Not only is it first in any alphabetical listing, it’s so unique, taxonomists made a separate order under class mammalia just for it. How cool is that?
Fixed link: Aardvark.
The “terrifying” coatimundi, www.belizezoo.org/zoo/zoo/mammals/coa/coa1.html.
Three of us are camping in a wilderness area. As our fire burns down, we hear something running around in the tall grass. Its sounds fast, fairly big, and it sounds like a couple of animals might actually be circling us. We arm ourselves with knives and headlamps. We slowly approach the rustling noise, and a coatimundi runs down the trail squawking up a storm. Apparently, he had a disagreement with his pals. So, here you have three big, bad humans huddled together scared of the dark. Meanwhile, the coatis are running around, playing with each other, jumping all over the place, making all kinds of noise, and generally having a good time.
No they don’t. Those’re Ceti Alphan Eels.
While I do appreciate the joys of the sloth, the mola, the echindna… I found out from the SDMB about an awesome weird little animal in my own yard!. I’m at work now so if I wanted to search for the thread I’d have to get back up on the treadmill with the paycheck tied to the fishing pole and run for a while to get the computer up to speed, but I’ll tell you about the Least Shrew here -
It has venomous spit!
It’s teeny tiny itty bitty but ounce for ounce it is a mean bastard!
It takes down grasshoppers and crickets, bites their heads off, and sucks their guts out!
And the best thing: I’d lived in this house for ten years and this town for all my life but college and I’d never seen one!
So there’s this crazy mad samurai shrew culture living under my feet and in my leaf mold and the only reason I clued into it is that I found a poor tiny dead one that the shrew mafia cleanup crews missed.
Maybe that’s a common animal for other people, but I thought it was the neatest thing I’d ever seen in the “wild”.
okay, i’m going to buck the animal trend here and nominate a plant…
Cladophora aegagropila, the Marimo Moss Ball
it’s an “endangered” plant in Japan, but they also are found in some areas in Europe as well
what’s special about it?
it’s formed into a perfect sphere, it can be moved by water currents, under ideal lighting conditions, it will generate so much oxygen (pearling) that it will float, it’s a plant that can “move under it’s own power”
it’s a non-invasive form of algae, it stays in a ball shape and will not spread to other parts in a fish tank
it competes with undesireable algae for the same nutrients, reducig the amount of algae in a freshwater fish tank
it looks like a fuzzy green tribble 
here’s a few pics of my marimos in my puffer tank;
http://homepage.mac.com/mactechg4/PhotoAlbum24.html
Sez you.
Wow, great thread. I’ve got a couple of them.
The ringtail. A smaller, cuter, more graceful relative of the raccoon from the SouthWest US.
http://www.enature.com/fieldguide/showSpeciesIMG.asp?imageID=18702
Now for some extinct critters
The Glyptodon. Imagine an armadillo the size of a volkswagen, with an inch thick shell over its back
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/mammals/armadillo/Glyptodonprintout.shtml
Thylacosmilus, the marsupial sabretooth. We all know about the sabre-tooth cats. But there was a marsupial that evolved convergently to resemble sabre-tooth cats, similar to how the Thylacine (Tasmanian Wolf) evolved to resemble canids. The Thylacosmilus evolved in South America when it was an island continent with its own unique suite of mammals, similar to Australia today. Oh, the Glyptodon evolved in South America too, along with all kinds of cool unique hoofed animals, giant rodents, sloths, marsupials, armadillos and others.
http://www.paleocraft.com/thylacosmilus2.html
And how about the Desmostylus? Sometimes called a sea-pig, it lived around the pacific coasts of North America and Asia. Sort of like a sea-going hippo, with bizzare teeth that look like bundles of pencils…hence the name.
http://www.gsj.jp/Hokkaido/pamf/desmo.htm
http://www.angellis.net/Web/DFG-ung/Desmostylus.htm
The world would be a better place if it had more little hairy rhinos.
Some living critters:
The Kea (Nestor notabilis). Not a terribly extraordinary-looking bird, but it has a nasty tendancy to attack sheep (which can subsequently die as a result of bacterial infection). They also do some scavenging, and rather like both flesh and bone marrow.
The Kakapo (Strigops habroptilus). Another parrot, this one being the heaviest, and the only flightless, parrot. And it’s nocturnal.
The Hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin). Aside from the red eyes and the funky 'do, its chicks retain evidence of their dinosaurian ancestry in the form of two clawed fingers on each wing. It also has a remarkably cow-like digestive system, in which fermentation is used to digest leaves and such, and chicks are fed regurgitated “cud”.
Most of my favorites are extinct, but I’ll have to post those later.
Since I was beaten in listing the okapi, I’ll go with a few others I like:
The tuatara which is a New Zealand reptile but not a lizard and has a pineal third eye in the center of its head.
The rare and bizarre flightless takahe (AKA the notornis) which also lives in New Zealand and is the largest of the rails.
The ratel or honey badger, which may be the most ornery and viscious animal in Africa.
The weird and wonderful gulper eel which can eat fish twice its size!
The smallest armadillo, and the weirdest looking: the pink fairy armadillo
The strange and rarely seen solenodon. The Cuban version was thought extinct until recently.
Well, surprisingly enough I love mongooses. They have absolutely gorgeous huge fluffy tails. Another “interesting” fact about them is that to attract their prey they stick their “rear ends” in the air.
(I would like to point out that I didn’t get my nickname this way 
- It was just something I discovered when visiting my local wildlife park one day)
The Burrowing Owl - so cool even The Dead Milkmen included them in a song…
*You know that Jonny Wurster kid,
the kid that delivers papers in the neighborhood.
He’s a foreign kid.
Some of the neighbors say he smokes crack,
but I don’t believe it.
Anyway, for his tenth birthday, all he wanted was a Burrow Owl.
Kept bugging his old man.
“Dad, get me a burrow owl. I’ll never ask for anything else as long as I live.”
So the guy breaks down and buys him a burrow owl.
Anyway, 10:30, the other night,
I go out in my yard, and there’s the Wurster kid, looking up in the tree.
I say, “What are you looking for?”
He says “I’m looking for my burrow owl.”
I say, “Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick.
Everybody knows the burrow owl lives. In a hole. In the ground.
Why the hell do you think they call it a burrow owl, anyway?”
The octopus. Smart as a dog, can change color in a flash and is completely boneless, so can fit in a hole no wider than one of it’s arms.
The angler fish. Lures it’s prey with a dangly piece of flesh that hangs in front of it’s mouth.
The seahorse. Many interesting unique qualities, including the fact that the male gives birth.
June bugs: I love these things, they are nearly indestructible, are completely harmless and fly like tinkerbell on acid.
Horned toads: look like little tiny spiky dinosaurs and I hear they can shoot blood out of their eyes when frightened.
I’m partial to the bluehead wrasse because of its sexual behavior (although many reef fish species exhibit similar). This species is sequentially hermaphroditic; that is, the females can change into males.
http://animalpicturesarchive.com/animal/APAsrch3.cgi?qt=bluehead+wrasse&type=image
You need a program to tell the players apart:
–larger, with a big blue head = terminal phase male (sexually mature adult)
–largish, brownish-yellow = adult female (or could be a male; or a transitioning fish)
–some small and yellow = juvenile (not sexually mature) male or female
–some small and yellow = sexually mature females
–some small and yellow = sexually mature males
It would take too much to describe all the sexual permutations and behaviors, but some key words are: “harem,” “streaker,” and “premature spawning.” Some of the smaller males use trickeration to spawn with harem members.
(As a side note, if the terminal phase male in a particular harem gets killed or otherwise removed, one of the dominant females will grow a big blue head, change into a terminal phase male, and take over the harem.)