Favorite weird/unusual/less known animal?

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lots and lots of Genets!

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The infamous Billy Mays!
A species said to be exstinct but I believe somewhere, there are still some out there
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Also, the Salamander man
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sorry if these have been posted before lol



 
The Shoebill, the Lowland Streaked Tenrec, the Patagonian Mara, the Okapi, the Saiga Antelope, the Tufted Deer, the Blue Parrotfish, the Maned Wolf, the Irrawaddy Dolphin, the Thorny Dragon, the Pink Fairy Armadillo, the Aye-aye, the Gerenuk, the Dugong, the Fossa, the Sunda Colugo, the Zebra Duiker, and the Gobi Jerboa. That's enough, right?
 
quokkas are my all time favourite animals. I visited the zoo recently and refused to leave these lil guys :3

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I could probably fill a book telling you about all the weird/obscure/insanely cute animals I really like (I am a biologist, after all). But for the sake of saving space, I'll only elaborate on five:

One of the weirdest birds on the face of the planet. They live in trees in the Amazon rainforest, can't fly very well, and can swim, but that's just the surface. As chicks, they have little claws on their wings that they use to grip tree limbs--because of that, some people think they're descendents of Archaeopteryx, the first bird-like reptile on Earth. And if that's not enough, they emit a foul smell to protect themselves, earning them the nickname "stinkbird".

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When you think of rodents, you usually think of rats and mice. But the South American capybara is the largest rodent in the world, standing about 2 feet tall at the shoulder, and weighing about 100 pounds. Not only that, they're also excellent swimmers, they eat their own poop (to extract all the nutrients), and some people in the Amazon even eat them.

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Also called the "slime eel", and for good reason. These scaleless, finless fish are very slippery, and produce copious amounts of slimy mucous to protect themselves from predators. They can then purposely tie themselves in a knot, then untie themselves, scraping off the slime and letting them escape. Gross as this may sound, hagfish slime may have medicinal properties, and there are people who actually farm hagfish for scientific research!

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Also called the tiger quoll, this cute little guy is native to Australia. A marsupial, he's a cousin of the famous Tasmanian devil, and like Taz, he hunts other animals for food, both large and small. Sadly, these guys are highly endangered in the land Down Under, but efforts are being made to save them by breeding them in zoos and national parks.

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And my personal favorite:

Officially known as tardigrades, these microscopic relatives of insects are tiny, squishy, and really cute--but don't let their chubby exteriors fool you. These creatures may be the toughest things on the planet. When faced with drought or cold weather, water bears will curl up, lose 97% of their body fluids, and "die". They can survive this way for years before emerging when times are better, completely unharmed! Nobody is sure how they do it, but in their "suspended animation", water bears can survive temperatures between absolute zero and the boiling point of water, and even the vacuum of space!

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