In the animal kingdom, there are the mysterious,
the majestic,
the cuddly,
and the downright handsome.
Why then are creatures like the wolf eel
so unattractive?
These turtles won't win any beauty contest,
so why do they clean up in the skills competition?
Naked mole rats aren't super cute,
but could they possess super powers?
How did the nightmarish lamprey outlast the dinosaurs?
And why is the Suriname toad flat as a pancake?
When it comes to survival, could the big winners
be the most distinct-looking creatures of them all?
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There are many strange-looking creatures
in the Pacific Ocean.
And the wolf eel is high on the list.
It lives in a dark, dangerous world,
where you'd expect only the strongest to survive.
But success can come down to an unlikely love affair.
This is the last place you'd expect to find romance.
But a very curious boy-meets-girl-story
plays out here
and the unlikely star is the not-so-handsome wolf eel.
It lives in the shadows baring its jagged teeth,
slithering in and out of caves.
It invokes nightmarish visions of mythical sea monsters;
creepy, scary-looking, and aloof.
But maybe it's ugly is only skin deep.
Those small scales, a thick coating of slime,
and a long body may give it the distinct leathery look
of an eel.
But the wolf eel is in fact not an eel at all.
It's a fish.
It can weigh as much as forty pounds
and reach lengths of up to eight feet.
Because of its snake-like shape,
it can squeeze its large bulk into tight rocky spaces.
But it must be careful, the slightest nick or scratch
could release the scent of blood into the water
and attract predators like sharks.
To protect its skin,
the wolf eel produces a coating of mucous,
which lets it slip and slide through tight spaces.
One reason it looks so fierce
is a set of strong jaws so powerful
it can devour hard-shelled invertebrates
like sea urchins, snails, and mussels.
Yet these big, slimy, ugly-looking creatures
feel the need to stick close to home.
For the wolf eel, its cave is its castle.
Once it finds a narrow crevice it likes,
it keeps it.
Some have been known to stay in one cave
for their entire lives.
Maybe like some humans
they have issues about their looks
and don't want to be seen in public.
But this monstrous-looking fish is not a lone wolf.
It shares its cave with a single monogamous partner,
a mate for life.
"Come spend your life with me in my tiny crevice"
is hardly the hallmark of a great romance,
but the wolf eel makes it work.
There's is the epic love story of beast and the beast.
When they find a mister or missus right,
they form a bond that usually lasts
an entire lifetime.
They move in together in the same tiny den,
kind of like a human couple sharing a twin bed and a closet.
But wolf eels like to be close and for good reason.
Once a year, the female's belly becomes swollen
with potential future baby wolf eels.
The male is attentive, he nuzzles her gently
until she releases the eggs into the water around them.
Then the male asks the female to dance
and they entwine in a passionate embrace
until the male's sperm fertilizes the eggs
and they stay together,
aggressively defending their brood
for 100 days or more.
It's equal opportunity parenting
as they take turns as one goes out to feed
while the other stays home and vice versa.
When the babies hatch,
two proud parents watch them float out
into the big blue sea.
As juveniles,
they look a little different for a while, almost cute.
But within a few years,
they end up looking just as distinctive
as mom and dad.
And the story repeats:
Hideous boy meets homely girl,
they settle down in a cave of their own
and start working on unattractive offspring.
For the wolf eel
beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Look past the teeth, the slime, and strong jaw
and you'll find a heart that is not ugly.
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There are many strange-looking turtles
in the animal kingdom.
But a special few might be considered
the top three most odd ones in the world.
They are all cold-blooded and live around or in water.
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Their main lines of defense
are like an unusual design experiment.
Turtle shells are constructed as if their ribs
have been fused together on the outside of their body
and made into a bony plate.
Standing out among all turtles,
these three have set themselves apart
for their weird ways and looks.
This is a face only a mother could love
and even then she'd probably have to try pretty hard.
At number three on the list are snapping turtles.
The common snapping turtle is on the plain side
and then there's the alligator snapping turtle,
the heaviest freshwater turtle in the world.
They can weigh several hundred pounds,
have claws like a bear,
can snap off a human finger with their powerful jaws.
They're known as the dinosaurs of the turtle world,
not only because they look prehistoric,
but because they actually haven't changed
all that much.
Snapping turtles evolved 40 million years ago
and aren't very different now from the most primitive turtles
that were around 250 million years ago.
At first glance,
they look like mini dinosaurs too.
Despite their aggressive nature,
they're very slow sedentary creatures
who spend their time hanging out on river bottoms
covered in algae, waiting for food,
using their worm-like tongue to bait in a fish.
And when it's time to breathe,
they stick their snorkel-like nose
just out of the water to get the oxygen they need.
At number two on the world's ugliest turtle list:
the spiny softshell turtles also use their nose as a snorkel
when they reach the surface.
And they like to mix things up by breathing underwater.
These turtles can absorb oxygen from the water around them
through a membrane in their throat
and through their skin.
That's helpful,
because they live in North America
and for six months every year when the climate is colder,
they go into a state of brumation,
which is like a mild form of hibernation.
They basically get very lethargic
like a prolonged lazy Sunday.
Just as their name suggests,
the spiny softshell turtle is one of the few turtles
with a soft flexible leathery shell,
that actually allows them to behave more aggressively
than other species of turtle if need be.
Since they don't have the thick hard shell
to protect them from predators like foxes or eagles.
Instead they prefer to spend most of their time
buried in sand
with just their head and neck sticking out,
perfect for helping them ambush prey
without working too hard.
With a true master of camouflage is a turtle so ugly
it makes the snapping turtle look like a beauty queen.
The mata mata from South America
just looks like a log with warts.
Its shell looks like tree bark,
its head like fallen leaves.
And it has special skin flaps
that look like leaves or moss on its head
and a neck that helps it blend in.
Their name mata mata means "kill kill" in Spanish.
And it's obvious that they're good at it.
Mata matas can literally suck their prey
right into their mouths,
so don't get too close little fishy.
And like most other turtles,
they don't bask on rocks and they don't really swim.
When they do move,
they kind of shuffle along the bottom of the river.
But mostly they're incredibly sedentary,
only leaving the water to lay their eggs once a year.
Other than that,
they spend their days waiting for food
to swim past them.
Patience comes easy
when you look like a rotten log in the bottom of the river.
Turtles haven't evolved much in millions of years
and not looking in the mirror all that time is apparent.
But why change a winning formula
when it's working for you in the survival department.
Oh my, what happened to these rats?
Have they been shaved for surgery, are they diseased?
Are they an experiment?
Why are they so ugly?
Believe it or not, these rats are just fine,
more than fine actually.
These are naked mole rats
and they are well-adapted creatures.
They are 3 inches long, and they weigh 1 to 2.4 ounces.
They have tiny little eyes, no external ears,
and two large unsightly sets of teeth
for digging, eating, and self-defense.
They only wear their birthday suits,
because in the wilds of eastern Africa,
they live underground, so they don't need hair
to protect them from the burning sun.
And their tunnels can reach a toasty 86 degrees Fahrenheit,
so a warm coat would bake them.
Imagine colonies of up to 300 of these exhibitionist rodents
wriggling through elaborate tunnel systems,
some as large as six football fields.
There is one queen who does all of the breeding.
There are also soldiers and workers.
It sounds more like an ant colony
than a rat pack and that's because it is.
Like ants or bees, naked mole rats are eusocial,
meaning they have a queen
and workers that serve that queen.
They are only one of two mammal species
that have this type of breeding structure.
The other is a mole rate too.
The queen spends her day being fed and fawned over
by her harem of bald boy toys.
The rest of the colony dig, forage for tubers,
and defend against snakes
that may penetrate their subterranean fortress.
Incredibly, these little wrinkly balls of flesh
can outlast their more familiar and urbanized rodent relatives
by up to 28 years.
Dig a little deeper and these stripped-down rats
have even more extraordinary qualities.
They live their entire lives underground
in cave networks
where carbon dioxide levels are high enough to irritate
and even burn the skin and lungs of humans.
In response, they have specifically evolved,
so they do not feel that burning pain.
Their skin has adapted to have more elasticity,
which allows them to move around underground even better.
Even more astonishing,
to date, researchers have never detected cancer
in the mole rat.
Its cells have anti-tumor capabilities
that rodents and humans don't.
Maybe that's a trade-off for being so ugly.
Scientists are studying these natural nude wonders
to figure out how these cells have evolved.
It seems good things do come in small packages,
small naked packages that is.
They look like creatures whipped from a gruesome horror film
or another planet.
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Sea lampreys might look like aliens,
but they are some of earth's greatest success stories.
They predate the dinosaurs
and have remained largely unchanged
for the past 340 million years.
Slithering through the waters with its snake-like body,
it is neither serpent nor eel.
To travel more quickly,
it has learnt to attach itself to other fish or mammals
to hitch a ride.
And it catches a quick bite along the way,
feeding like a bloodthirsty vampire.
Built for draining blood, the lamprey has no jaw.
Instead it has a funnel-like mouth
lined with rows of strange teeth made of keratin,
the same substance that's in human fingernails.
When a lamprey chooses a host,
it uses its grotesque-looking suction cup mouth
to attach itself.
Then using its spiked sharp tongue,
it scrapes off the scales and skin
and digs its teeth into the tender flesh.
With the help of little fringe structures
called fimbriae, the mouth forms a perfect seal.
For the surprised host, there is no escape,
resistance is futile.
Now the lamprey secretes an anti-coagulant
called lamphredin that prevents the wound from clotting
and keeps the large blood vessels flowing.
The lamprey is able to suck on its victim until it dies.
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But not all lampreys are bloodsuckers,
some are flesh-eaters.
Using their teeth as pistons to tear thorough flesh,
stripping them down to the bone.
Like other natural-born killers,
the lamprey is forever looking for fresh victims.
On the prowl, they sometimes go
where no lamprey has gone before.
Up until roughly 150 years ago,
the sea lamprey's main hunting ground
was the Atlantic.
But that all changed
when workers deepened the Canadian channel
linking Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.
That's when the lamprey invaded the rest of the Great Lakes.
Silent but deadly,
the lamprey has since decimated fish populations
throughout the Great Lakes.
In the case of the lake trout,
only 2% of the original population remains.
What makes the lamprey such a successful invader
is its incredible ability to reproduce.
A single female can lay up to 100,000 eggs
in her lifetime.
Born as larvae in rivers, baby sea lampreys
bury themselves in the muck on the bottom,
feeding on microorganisms there for up to 10 years,
hiding, biding its time.
After the larval stage, it becomes a juvenile
and rises from the bottom to feed on much larger victims.
For the next 12 to 18 months
the juvenile will eat up to 40 pounds of fish
and any fish is fair game.
Using a powerful sense of smell,
it picks up the scent of its victims
through the murkiest of waters, even several feet away.
When a lamprey is on a feeding frenzy,
there is no safe place to hide.
The very characteristics we find ugly
are why the lamprey has managed to outlast the mighty dinosaurs.
With an amazing fertility rate and no natural enemies,
it has become a true monster of the deep.
What makes the lamprey look ugly
has helped it thrive and survive.
In the murky mysterious rivers in the Amazon basin,
there is a creature that lies perfectly still.
Disappearing into the background like a strange wallflower,
it's camouflaged as a mottled brown leaf
with loose wrinkly pebbled skin that makes it unrecognizable.
Most predators just move on by
leaving the Suriname toad undisturbed,
just how it likes it.
This mysterious toad has tiny eyes,
no teeth, no tongue, and really doesn't move much.
Why?
Because it's saving its energy for something really big.
When a Suriname toad does move, it is surprisingly acrobatic.
And at the tip of its forefingers
are star-shaped sensory organs, which help find food,
because the toad's puny eyes don't help much.
These sensory organs detect movement
and help the Suriname toad pounce
when something catches its attention.
Maybe because of those tiny eyes though,
their accuracy can be a little off.
When the male Suriname toad
wants to get the female's attention,
it sings her a song.
Once the female is properly serenaded,
they mate for an astonishing 24 hours,
somersaulting together through the water
in an impressive display of stamina.
While they are clasped together,
the female will lay up to 100 eggs.
And here's where it gets really strange,
the eggs latch on to the female's back
and her poor skin grows around them
creating a sort of honeycomb of frog eggs.
It's right out of a science-fiction film.
It's an incredible survival tactic.
Instead of exposing her eggs to predators,
she hides them in plain sight right under her skin
until they are fully ready to greet the world.
They incubate for up to four months,
then they hatch
by erupting from her back as fully formed toadlets,
like 100 escape pods fleeing a spaceship.
It's a unique adaptation that gives her offspring
a fighting chance to survive.
And though it may look ugly,
for the Suriname toad that's the magic of birth
and the beginning of a new generation.
Bald, alien, and downright mean-looking,
there's not a pretty face in the bunch,
but they don't care what we think about their looks,
they have deeper issues to deal with,
like staying alive.
Because what's ugly in our eyes
are some of nature's greatest survival stories.
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