Orange Fan Sponge

Image: Richard Ling
Echinoclathria leporina

It's the most absurdly dramatic sponge in the world!

YAWN!

Video: Dr N Kimura

At up to 1.5 metres (5 feet) long, the Japanese Giant Salamander is the second biggest amphibian in the world, second only to its closely related and almost identical, Chinese cousin.

Seeing them yawn is, well, you know how Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale? This is probably about as close as you can get without getting your feet wet.

Merry Christmas!

Original image: NOAA

Lapland looks truly magical this time of year. The trees decorate themselves, you know. So does the moon. Even the tentacles have a warm, fireplace glow about them. It's a wonder how Santa Claus can bear to tear himself away.

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas! I know I sort of dropped off for a good 2 months or something crazy like that, but I reckon this year I'll give myself the gift of lots and lots of monstrosities. And of course, I'll share. Should be great!

Video: Wayne Jagdeo

Shaggy Scarlet Cup

Image: Kathie Hodge
Microstoma floccosum

Did you know Santa Claus had his own range of bespoke cups?

I sure didn't.

Image: Patrick Harvey
Line 'em up, drink 'em down

They don't have 'Best Father Christmas in the World' written on the side, or even 'Only Father Christmas in the World'. No. They have fur, instead!

That's... inconvenient. It looks nice, though. And Christmas is nothing if not the season for inconvenient things that look nice.

Image: Dan Molter

Santa's little mulled wineglass is the Shaggy Scarlet Cup, a mushroom found in parts of North America and Asia. They grow on rotting logs and sticks on the forest floor.

If you'd like to give Santa a nice surprise and leave the milk in his favourite tumbler alongside the cookies, you may be interested to know that they particularly enjoy half-buried branches of oak.

Image: Dan Molter

The cup reaches less than 1 cm (0.4 in) across and rests on top of a stalk about 1 to 5 cm (0.4 to 2 inches) tall.

Perfect for your favourite, Christmas tipple!

And the Number of the Hallowe'en Horrors is 666

Its Halloween! That time of year when we draw black waters from the well of cosmic truth with death, draw deep breaths of chill, grave-leaden mist with darkness, and draw white, chalk outlines around corpses in the alleyway with evil. Woo!

Behold Death. He's wearing his Loch Ness Monster costume this year. Basically it's a dark green robe, a dark green handle for his scythe and a kind of lizard mask on the blade. It looks great and boy is he committed to the role. We've been trying to get him out of the swimming pool for hours!

Here be Darkness. She's been trying to teach the zombies about the miraculous power of make-up. I don't think it's going too well. Lipstick is supposed to stick to lips, not the other way round. There's bits of face everywhere!

Yonder is Evil. He's dressed up in a long, white robe with a little cardboard halo fixed onto his head with a piece of wire. He does that every year but it's hilarious every time!

Attack of the Giant Snip-snip

It was a close thing, but this jelly-legs just barely escaped from the enormous snipper of a giant snip-snip.

Webspinner

Image: Mike Quinn

Spiderman. He just doesn't make sense!

It's not the whole 'bitten by a radioactive spider and now he's a bit like a spider' thing. That's fine. That's great. That makes perfect sense. Well known fact, that is. The problem is the 'now he's a bit like a spider'.

Gnome Plant

Image: Tab Tannery
Hemitomes congestum

Gnomes are well-known for their love of mushrooms. They sit on them, play fiddle on them, fish in the lawn from them. And judging from those hippy beards and the fact they so often try to catch fish in the lawn, they probably eat some carefully selected ones, too.

So you know their special plant is going to be odd.

A Whole Lot of Leg

Image: NOAA

You might think that the strange thing about this deep sea Hermit Crab is that it's walking around with a giant flower on its arse...

But that's because you haven't seen it walk yet!

Not Baskets With Stars On

Image: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

You'd think something called a 'Basket Star' might be a little gold sticker, or maybe a nice knitted affair to tie onto your wicker basket.

Mueller's White Knifefish

Orthosternarchus tamandua

Darkness will do strange things to a body...

Urocoptid

Image: Carlos De Soto Molinari

Look at this cute, little snail!

Berried Anemone

Image: Oceana in Europe
Alicia mirabilis

Well now, that's a lot of berries. A whole pile of them, in fact.

But where's the anemone?

Jabiru

Image: Francisco Severo Neto
Jabiru mycteria

It's a well known fact that roughly 50% of all babies are delivered by stork. Originally a failed attempt to reduce nepotism, the practise continues due to its efficiency, cost effectiveness, and the fact that storks are both great believers in tradition and surprisingly quick to violence when roused.

Munnopsis

Ah, the deep sea... It gives you wings!

Derby Hat Bryozoan

Image: Donna Pomeroy
Eurystomella bilabiata

Oh dear, someones's dropped their... hat?

Thread-legged Bug

Image: Carlos De Soto Molinari

It's the 21st century and such things as agriculture, antibiotics and the ever-increasing speed of bad news have conspired to ensure that there are more humans alive today than ever before.

And you know what that means...

Blind Cusk Eel

Humans have never been great at the whole ghost thing. They all look like white bed sheets with black circles for eyes.

Blind Cusk Eels, on the other hand, now they're almost 100% pure ectoplasm!

Apheloria virginiensis

Image: Marshal Hedin

Hey, look! It's a beautiful, brightly-coloured millipede! You know what that means, right?

That's right. Cyanide! Yaaaay!

Bullseye Electric Ray

Image: Steve Ryan
Diplobatis ommata

BULLSEYE!

Possibly not the best accessory for a relatively small fish in a big, bad sea with sharks in...

Button Zoanthid

Image: Stéphane Duquesne

Looks like I've been getting buttons all wrong this whole time. All my buttons consist of about one colour and have approximately zero tentacles. Also I've got them mostly on shirts.

I never thought of gathering them up into a bouquet of buttons!

Jewelled Chameleon

Image: Bernard DUPONT
Furcifer campani

Camouflage?

What camouflage?

Red Palm Mite

Image: Eric Erbe, Chris Pooley
Raoiella indica

Uh oh! Sometimes big problems come in teeny-tiny packages!

African Clawed Frog

Image: Brian Gratwicke

When you see the unconventionally cute face of an African Clawed Frog, you'd be hard-pressed to imagine you were looking into the beady eyes of a ravenous, meat-eating beast.

Angaria

Image: Shellnut

Here come those snails again, showing us once more that you don't need to live fast to leave a good-looking corpse.

Jellynose Fish

Image: fishpix.kahaku.go.jp

WARNING: High concentration of gelatinous material in the schnozzle area.

Big, Voluminous Sleeves

Big, voluminous sleeves... the trend that keeps on giving. And billowing. After all, who doesn't want to look like a rakish buccaneer or ostentatious wizard?

Carpet Anemone

Image: Nevit Dilmen

Nylon? That's just plastic. Wool? Keep it, sheep. Tiger pelt? I'd rather a live, trained tiger to do my bidding.

No. When it comes to carpets, it's teeny-tiny tentacles tickling my tootsies from now on.

Lophogastrid

Image: Alexander Semenov

It can be difficult to describe things you've never seen before. Just think of the medieval bestiaries. Beavers have fish tails, don't they? Rhinos are covered in ornate steel plate, aren't they? Elephants... Where do you even begin with elephants?

Snaggle-tongue of the Gumboot Chiton

Cryptochiton stelleri

Yuck! What devilry is this? It's like that bit in Jurassic Park with the giant T. rex eye except he's made of mash potato and appears to be staring actual daggers.

Microdon

Image: N Sloth

It sounds like a dinosaur but it looks like a... slug?

Bryozoa Nudibranch

Image: Donna Pomeroy

This has to be one of the more eye-bending examples of camouflage out there.

Cusk-eel

Image: NOAA/Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

I'd like to call this thing a "fish-shaped lump of flab" but it's scarcely even fish-shaped!

Kinabalu Crested Dragon

Image: Bernard DUPONT
Hypsicalotes kinabaluensis

I love miniature dragons! So much more convenient than the full-sized ones, wouldn't you agree?

Brain on Holiday

Some might claim this is Leuckartiara octona, a jellyfish widespread in chillier parts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans...

Stability, Prettily

Image: James Niland

Struts, braces, load-bearing walls... Our efforts at structural integrity are all very well for boring endeavours like holding up bridges, holding up houses and holding up random other stuff. You know, the actual 'structural integrity' part of it. But when it comes to aesthetics. When it comes to beauty. When it comes to looking like you have lightning coming out of your hands. There, the spiders emphatically win.

Or so it was once thought...

Queen of the Andes

Image: inyucho
Puya raimondii

*pew pew*

Commander Humperdinck grimaced as he fired photon-rockets from his shoulder mounted, heavy light-bazooka. White trails arced over the carnage of the Andesian Royal Hall and exploded into multi-coloured sparks that sent vegetable men sprawling in all directions. The hall filled with the stench of vegetarian roast dinner.

Phylliroe

Image: Fabien Michenet/nuditahiti.com

It's a sea slug that thinks it's a fish! And it's so good at being a fish you may well need a second look to decide if it's a weird-looking sea slug or a weird-looking fish.

Rat-tailed Maggot

Image: Biopix: N Sloth

Goodness me! Whatever next? Louse-headed mouse? Flea-legged parking inspector? Cockroach-winged PR guru?

Big Stick Diplomacy

Walk softly...

Video: Inner Space Center

Drag a big stick behind you.

Hairy Shrimp

Phycocaris simulans

It's a tiny shrimp...

Two Worms a' Weirding

Image: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2015 Hohonu Moana

Avert your eyes! This worm is completely NAKED!

It's a Scale Worm... but he has no scales! In their place is what looks like a smooth, gelatinous blimp of translucent flab tip-toeing on feet made of bristles. It's disgusting. It's beautiful. It's precisely the kind of thing we expect from the deep sea.

Image: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2015 Hohonu Moana

On the other hand, here's another polychaete worm with a more stylish sense of the peculiar.

It looks to me like she might be related to the Green Bomber and the Squidworm, and she's splendidly attired in luxurious, feathery bristles. I'm sure she uses them to swim through the gloomy water in a manner that looks both disgusting and beautiful. Because when you live in the deep sea, that's what you do.

Pretty Little Jellyfish

I know absolutely nothing about this jellyfish except that it's gorgeous and I want one on my ceiling.

Video: oceanexplorergov

Even better would be if it floated a few feet above my head. Then it'd be on all the ceilings.

Bottle Tree

Image: bathyporeia
Pachypodium lealii

Desert plants like this are definitely my favourites. In their effort to survive the arid conditions, they end up looking like they long since succumbed to them.

Snipefish

Image: Oceana in Europe

Schnoz alert!

Crowned Nudibranch

Image: John Turnbull
Polycera capensis

Crowned in tentacles, that is.

Barking Gecko, Ptenopus

Image: Bernard DUPONT

Geckos. That bark!