• Question: Which animal is the most weirdest/interesting?

    Asked by weirdboblet to Carol, Ellie, John, Philip, Rebecca on 3 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: Rebecca Lacey

      Rebecca Lacey answered on 3 Jul 2012:

      I reckon that sloths have to be one of the weirdest animals. They spend their time hanging around in trees and have weird claws on their limbs which allow them to hang upside down on branches.

      Their metabolic rate is really slow and it can take them up to a month to digest food! That’s a seriously long time!!

      Their fur is full of bacteria which help the sloth to camouflage into its environment, and they also move very slowly making them hard to spot in the trees.

      The only time they come down from the trees is to wee and poo. They only poo about once a week!

      It used to be thought that sloths were one of the creatures which spent the most time asleep but this is actually not true – they actually sleep about 10 hours a day. I know a lot of humans that sleep more than that!!

    • Photo: John Welford

      John Welford answered on 3 Jul 2012:

      I’m going to go with the Tardigrade, or “Water Bear”. It’s not really a bear but a tiny segmented 8 legged animal that grows to a maximum of about 1.5mm in length. Check out how weird they look:
      http://goo.gl/DYCCp

      But not only do they look crazy, they are also really interesting. They can live in all kinds of different environments from the Himalayas to the deep sea and they can survive almost anywhere. They can suspend their metabolism and survive in a dehydrated state for nearly 10 years. They can also survive temperatures close to absolute zero and up to 150 °C.

      Radiation and pressure don’t seem to bother them much and they have even been shown to survive in the vacuum of outer space!

    • Photo: Carol White

      Carol White answered on 4 Jul 2012:

      As some of you will know from the live chats, I have a bit of an obsession with…

      ZOMBIE WORMS!

      They’re officially called “osedax” (boring…) but they’re really cool deep sea worms that are often found eating their way though dead whales!

      My friend Nick works with them specifically, so I love going to his lab to see them! They use acid to eat bones… pretty cool but disgusting things!

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/15493634
      http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/18594493

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