Giant Red Leech

It's nightmare in paradise!

Mantisfly

Image: cotinis

It looks like a mantis, eats like a mantis, it might even fly like a mantis...

But it's not a mantis!

Picasso Sponge 16

This Picasso Sponge depicts three male skeletons comparing the lengths of each others femurs.

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Pompom Sea Anemone

Image: Ed Bowlby, NOAA/Olympic Coast NMS

Give me a P!

Give me an O!

Give me an M!

Give me a P!

OK, this is going to take a while.

JAWS: Party Pooper

Image: NOAA OKEANOS Explorer Program

Squid just love to party! Even in the most desperate of circumstances...

Armed Bullhead

Image: Biopix: N Sloth
Agonus cataphractus

It's a fish with a neckbeard!

Picasso Sponge 15

This Picasso Sponge depicts a future world in which the inhabitants of a lunar base sell advertising space. "Walt Disney" is seen etched into the face of a full moon.

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Axolotl and the Fountain of Youth

Image: John Clare
Ambystoma mexicanum

Botox, facelifts, miraculous anti-ageing cream and hair loss pills, Viagra... These are our weapons of choice in our never-ending battle against the arrow of time and the tragic effects of its inescapable, slow-acting poison.

It's all useless of course. We can fill our days with as much old people yoga and sudoku puzzles as we like, we'll still end up looking like an unmade bed who can't remember why it went to the bedroom.

Not so Axolotls. They watch our efforts and smirk their childlike smirk. They with their silky smooth skin aglow, their sparkling eyes a-twinkle and their vibrant red gills aloft like lusciously hirsute tentacles. Not for them the wrinkling and the crinkling, the aching and the waking up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. For them, life is a sea of unceasing youth.

Bastards.

Image: John Clare

Axolotls start their life like many other amphibians: as a small punctuation mark surrounded in jelly.

Image: John Clare

The embryonic Axolotl grows and develops eyes, a dorsal fin and six feathery gills.

Image: kori monster

After 2 weeks, the egg hatches and a tiny Axolotl escapes into the world. It's baby steps for our little darling, and even that's not easy since he has no legs and looks just like a tadpole. Still, he's only 1 cm (0.4 in) long at this point and he spends a further two weeks attached to aquatic plants.

Over the next couple of months he grows and grows. He starts to develop front legs and only once they're well under way will the back legs begin to sprout. Soon we have a tadpole with four short, spindly legs. But he's not quite done yet...

The Axolotl just keeps on growing. After about a year or two he reaches a maximum length of 30 cm (a foot). The one thing he doesn't do is metamorphose into an adult salamander. Axolotls retain childish, tadpole features like gills and their dorsal fin for the entirety of their lives. And that can add up to some 10 or 20 years. They even reach sexual maturity and reproduce while still looking like a gigantic baby. Which is something you probably shouldn't think about too much.

Video: Rathergood
Not actually a change in species :P

Axolotls can in fact grow up into proper, adult salamanders if they need to, they just require a better reason than the mere accumulation of years. If the lakes of their native Mexico dry up, Axolotls can finally metamorphose so as to be better equipped to wander the land in search of a new aquatic home. By all accounts, it's an extremely stressful process which most Axolotls would much rather they never go through. And once they become an adult, there's no going back to the joys of larva-hood. It's that darn arrow of time again!

The terrible thing is those Mexican lakes have in fact largely dried up. Or rather they've been drained to prevent flooding and make way for the enormous sprawl of Mexico City.

Image: sharkhats

And yet, despite all that, Axolotls are remarkably easy to keep at home! They can also be bred so that no-one has to take them from those fragile wild populations.

All you need is a large tank or aquarium, about twice as long as the Axolotl, from some place like Swell Reptiles. Add some gravel, and make sure it's too large for a hungry Axolotl to swallow (we're dealing with overgrown children, remember), and a plant pot to hide in. Fill the tank with cool, dechlorinated water and a good filter and you're all set. Axolotls will eat all sorts of easily available meaty foods.

Image: MaffersToys

For an extra-special treat you could show them your carefully worked out beauty routine. They'll laugh like only a child can laugh!

Acoela

Image: Samuel Chow

How to live with almost no body at all!

Venom in Furs

Image: David Haring / Duke Lemur Center

Venom: a fang's best friend. If you want to ruin someone's day, it's hard to beat the one-two punch of a piercing tooth and a high-quality toxin. We got toxins for instant death, toxins for festering wounds, toxins for paralysis and many more! Whether you want to swiftly despatch your enemy with a minimum of fuss or simply leave him helpless while you explain your villainous plans and the deep-seated psychological issues that led up to them, there's always a toxin to suit your needs.

For the rest of us, it seems the best we can do is be scared of the guy with venomous fangs and run away as fast as we can. Some people are REALLY good at that. Maybe even too good. It's called arachnophobia and ophidiophobia. Probably if you're sweating and shivering at the sight of a photograph of a spider or snake, you're too good at being scared.

But not all venomous animals have too many legs or no legs at all. There are venomous mammals out there. Soft, fluffy mammals with big, brown eyes. Actually they almost all have tiny eyes but even if they have difficulty seeing us, we can still see them. So let's do that!

Picasso Sponge 14

This Picasso Sponge depicts 10,000 moles of Mole Kingdom working to construct the Mole King's greatest monument: Mole Mountain

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Boring Sponge

Image: Sean Nash

It's a BORING SPONGE!!!

Are you stifling a yawn? Because you wouldn't if the boring sponge was digging and delving into your flesh.

Asian Vine Snake

Image: Bernard DUPONT

It's Tarzan's worst nightmare! It looks like a long, green vine, just perfect for the swinging, but it's actually a long, green, venomous SNAKE!

No wonder the poor guy's always screaming and crying.

Japetella

Image: NOAA/MBARI

An octopus with two different kinds of invisibility cloak!

Picasso Sponge 13

A crab, presumably a King Crab because of the six walking legs, hangs out on a Yellow Picasso Sponge.

This particular specimen depicts an inchworm taking a mile.

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Mystery Mushroom-shaped Deep Sea Jelly Animal

Image: Just et al.

Scientists have finally revealed the Mystery Mushroom-shaped Deep Sea Jelly Animal to an excited and baffled populace! Isn't it exciting and baffling?

Flying Pig!

Well... it's a Sea Pig. Sort of... drifting and floating like a drifty-floaty thing.

Video: EVNautilus

Speaking of unusual events, my cousin from Austria got married!

It took place in an enormous church called Herz Jesu Kirche, in the city of Graz. I went over for a few days and had to go up to say a bit of Corinthians. I did it quite well, so I'm told! If I remember correctly, it was one of only two bits of English in the whole event. The rest was in German with a bit of Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian (as far as I know). Also there was an American and an Australian there. And the next day a bunch of us went to a salsa bar.

Aren't we all ever so international these days!

So, to Bernhard and Maja: May your Sea Pigs float and your detritus be soft and fresh!