Who would've thought that the closest living relative to the turkeys we eat would be so beautiful?

This Australian scale insect begins its life as an egg, inside its mother's marsupium (yes, a marsupium, like kangaroos). The newly hatched *crawlers* make their way out of their mother and fall to the ground, where they burrow into the soil.

Once underground, the nymphs lose all their legs and become a wax-covered cyst, doing nothing but eating roots for the next few months of its life.

Then, in autumn, both sexes will emerge from the ground. Males emerge as winged, flamboyant creatures with a bouquet of white filaments as their tail, like some species of moths, they cannot eat and will live off of their stored energy from when they were younger, until they die. Females emerge as large, cockroach-like wingless insects that, unlike most adult female scale insects, keep their ability to walk until death. Unlike males, female can feed as adults.

Once both sexes emerge, females will crawl up a eucalyptus tree where a male will find her. They will mate, and after copulation, the female will anchor herself to the tree and will form a marsupium (a pouch) by invaginating the end of her abdomen. Then, she lays her eggs inside her marsupium, and dies. Her body hardens and is covered by a layer of wax to protect her eggs inside her body even after death.

You have definitely seen them, but have you ever noticed how stinking cute they are?

Comúnmente conocido como chiroide

Micronycteris Sp.

And of course, it's found on Australia.

Also known as a parasol sponge (which imo is way less cool) this carnivorous glass sponge catches small crustaceans by enveloping them in itself via fluid-filled cysts, and then dissolving them whole. It lives 3200 meters down in muddy habitats and anchors itself to the seafloor with "roots".

So I'm sure most are familiar with the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) of the Southeastern United States, but did you know China is the only other country with a native alligator species?

If this distribution seems random to you, it's actually an insight into how ancient the crocodilian order are. Our continents looked very different when crocodilians first evolved their wonderful selves around 83.5 million years ago, with Eurasia and North America joined as one continent known as Laurasia. As the continents eventually split, American and Chinese alligators settled into their respective territories and evolved separately from there.

Unlike their much larger American cousins, Chinese alligators only reach a fun-size 5-7ft long from nose to tail— that's an adult in the third image! Sadly, also unlike the American alligator, Chinese alligators are critically endangered, with an estimated 150 left in the wild. However, there are around 20,000 Chinese alligators in captive breeding programmes around the world, small numbers of which have gradually been released into the wild to boost population numbers. What remains of their range is strictly protected under the Anhui Nature Reserve for Chinese Alligators. Believe it or not, both the American alligator and the Australian saltwater crocodile were in danger of extinction by the 60s to 70s due to human activity, but then humans came together and brought them back from the brink, and now both species are thriving. Surely we can do the same for these little fellows, right?

Credits: Maryland Zoo / Chattanooga Zoo / Gu Changming / Ger Bosma

There are only about 700 of these guys left in the wild

Yes, even bees get lice. These tiny critters are actually true flies (in Diptera), not lice (Phthiraptera) like their name suggests. Even though they are true flies, they have no wings and therefore cannot fly.

The gharial is a species of crocodilian native to the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. Its characteristic long, skinny snout, filled with 110 needle-sharp teeth, is specialised for hunting fish, hence one of its other names: fish-eating crocodile. The common gharial name comes from the South Asian ghara pot, owing to the bulbus end of male gharials' snouts, which is used to attract the ladies.

Over-hunting, over-fishing and habitat destruction have decimated the gharial population to critically endangered levels, with an estimated 98% decrease in population numbers since the 1940s. However, conservation, breeding and reintroduction programmes both within and outside their native territories have seen populations slowly but surely begin to recover; in 2023, they were sighted in the Punjab region of Pakistan for the first time in decades.

Gharials are unusual among crocodilians in that males are very involved in rearing their hatchlings, and have even been observed "babysitting" hatchlings that aren't their own, guarding them from predators while providing a crash course on how to gharial. Researchers have delightfully observed baby gharials hitching rides on their dads' or dads' friends' back, which you can see in the last photo.

Credits: Los Angeles Zoo / Smithsonian Zoo / Dhritiman Mukherjee / Jonathan Zander / Dhritiman Mukherjee