The ocean is a vast territory still almost unknown to mankind. Every day scientists make new discoveries while traversing the ocean floors and the more date they get, the more weird the stuff becomes. Usually there are two instances when oceans enter the main news stream – when there is a serious environmental problem caused by insufficient efforts put forward into the protection of oceans and seas, or due to inadequate waste disposal policies of big companies and city administrations, or when some new, unknown to this moment, sea creature emerges from the depths in order to startle or, at least make us laugh.
Just in the past several years the list of strangely looking beasts that have been registered living in the world’s oceans has increased significantly. We are talking about animals that look more like alien life forms, or at least something that has come out the famous Pokemon anime, but the fact is that those creatures exist, live and thrive under the ocean’s surface. Let’s have a look at some of the most peculiar examples available to this day:
- The Longhorn Cowfish looks more like an UFO with spider legs, and to make things even better – it has a poison that can kill you almost instantly. But it is nice to admire its weird beauty from the safe distance of your desktop chair.
- The basket star does not look like the sea stars we are all used to watching on cartoons. In many respects this brittle star shares many of the characteristics of the ordinary sea star, with the exception that it lives more than 35 years – which is a long time for species from its family.
The Weedy Seadragon is the emblem of the Australian State of Victoria and we can easily see why this is so. This creature has an almost psychedelic quality to its coloring, shape and the grace in which it roams the waters of the Pacific Ocean near the Australian coast. In the water they can easily be mistaken for some sort of a leaf – a quality they use for camouflage and the one that give them the name.- The Tongue-eating Louse is, in our opinion, the direct inspiration for the monster in the Alien franchise. It name is pretty self explanatory – the creature attaches itself to the base of the tongue of the host – usually a fish, and then eats it up while growing until the tongue is basically replaced by the parasite. It is just as disgusting as it sounds.
- Matsuba Koi as one can easily deduce, is a type of fish to be found off the coast of Japan. The literal translation of its name means “human faced fish” and in reality it is exactly as it sounds – certain specimens have pretty convincing human faces complete with lips, noses and eyes as nearly to the human ones as possible.
