Buzz
From strange to unsettling, animals and insects showcase a variety of bizarre habits. While many are harmless, others are peculiar, and a few are so disturbing they’ll leave you feeling itchy just by thinking about them. Take, for example, the following...
10. Tarantulas Travel in Massive Swarms
Among the last creatures you'd expect to form groups, tarantulas are up there with goldfish and sealed packages of animal crackers. Yet, surprisingly, they do travel in massive herds.
Each year, in regions like southern California, thousands of male tarantulas emerge from their burrows during autumn to search for a mate. These tarantulas abandon their usual cautious ways in pursuit of their partners, sometimes even barging into people's homes if they happen to be in the way. It's not unusual to find dozens of massive tarantulas scuttling across your floor right behind you. This phenomenon is so frequent that animal control receives numerous calls each year from panicked homeowners discovering these eight-legged giants inside their houses.
But don’t fret, as experts point out, this doesn’t technically qualify as a “migration.” It’s simply a swarm of several thousand of the world’s largest spiders all moving in the same direction toward your home, which, in theory, should sound much less horrifying, right?
9. Vampire Bats Will Return to the Same Victim Night After Night
When it comes to blood-sucking creatures, a vampire bat is among the less terrifying. These furry creatures are remarkably disease-free, meaning your chances of contracting rabies or other illnesses from a bite are minimal. They only hunt at night and have such sharp teeth that their bite is virtually painless.
However, vampire bats possess one highly unpleasant trait that will likely make you despise them forever. For reasons that scientists still can't fully explain, these bats tend to feed on the same victim every night. What's worse, researchers have discovered that the common vampire bat can identify an individual human simply by the sound they make while breathing.
So, if a bat ever bites you and decides you’re delicious, it won't just seek you out for another meal—it will remember the unique sound of your breath, almost like a tiny winged ex-girlfriend.
8. Fire Ants Strike Simultaneously
Fun fact: Fire ants got their name because their sting feels just like being burned. They can sting multiple times in one bite. As if that weren't terrifying enough, fire ants have another eerie ability: psychic-like coordination.
When fire ants launch an attack, they usually don’t bite right away. Instead, they pause for a few seconds to synchronize their bites across the entire colony. How exactly they manage to do this remains a mystery, but one theory suggests that the ants respond to a trigger, such as a person flinching in shock at the sight of hundreds of ants swarming up their arm.
Whatever the reason behind it, this synchronized assault makes their stings far more agonizing. By attacking all at once, they ensure the victim doesn’t realize they’re under attack until they’re already swarmed by hundreds of ants. In other words, if you ever step on a fire ant nest, you won’t even notice until a massive wave of ants is already claiming your skin for their all-out assault.
7. The Brown Tree Snake Targets Sleeping Babies
The brown tree snake, an invasive species, was accidentally introduced to Guam during World War II. While generally harmless to humans, it has caused significant problems for the island’s residents over the last six decades.
To start, the brown tree snake population is so high that power lines have been brought down due to the weight of the snakes resting on them. If having three furious snakes drop onto your head isn’t scary enough for the people of the island, the brown tree snake has earned a notorious reputation for attacking children and babies while they sleep.
Scientists and researchers remain perplexed about why the snakes engage in this behavior, as sleeping humans pose no threat to them, and even the smallest baby is far too big for a brown tree snake to consume. This rules out feeding or aggression as motives. As a result, experts have no clear explanation for why these snakes go to such lengths to enter a baby’s room just to bite a defenseless sleeper.
If that wasn’t disturbing enough, studies have revealed that the snakes are drawn to the scent of menstrual blood and will actively seek it out. Researchers couldn’t determine whether it was the menstrual blood specifically that attracted the snakes, or if they were simply drawn to human blood in general. But honestly, would either answer put your mind at ease? And just to give you an idea, the experiment was conducted by dangling tampons in front of the hungry snakes.
6. The Hairy Frog Breaks Its Own Bones for Defense
The hairy frog, also known by its scientific name Trichobatrachus robustus, is a small amphibian with perhaps the most revolting defense mechanism in the entire animal kingdom.
When threatened, the hairy frog grows a set of tiny bone claws that protrude from the tips of its toes. These claws are typically housed inside the frog’s body, and to reveal them, the frog must break the bones and force them through its own skin.
Imagine, for a moment, breaking your own fingers and pushing the jagged bone fragments through your palms—this is essentially what the hairy frog does every time it faces danger. No one knows for sure if the frog can retract its claws after they’ve pierced its skin.
If that wasn’t disturbing enough, during mating season, the frog also develops long, hair-like strands of skin and arteries along its sides to help it absorb more oxygen. So, in addition to having Wolverine-like claws, it also grows Wolverine-esque sideburns.
5. Tasmanian Devils Are Born Scarred
Much like their animated counterpart, Tasmanian devils are fierce, loud, and dangerous. They're also one of the few creatures on Earth that enters the world already engaged in combat. A mother Tasmanian devil typically gives birth to 30 to 50 pups, but she only has four teats for them to feed from.
You don’t need a PhD in math to see the problem here, and you don’t have to be a biologist to predict what happens next. Immediately after birth, the pups begin fighting for access to a teat. They will bite, scratch, and even try to kill their siblings just eight seconds after being born. Since Tasmanian devils are marsupials, all of this chaos occurs inside the mother’s pouch, which supposedly writhes and squeals as the battle unfolds.
Very few newborn pups make it through this brutal ordeal, and it’s incredibly rare for more than a few to survive. The fighting is so intense that some pups leave their mother’s pouch covered in wounds, scars, and the blood of their dead siblings. Now that’s hardcore.
4. The Horse Bot Fly Lays Its Eggs In A Horse’s Tongue
Bot flies are a type of insect that deposit their eggs inside the bodies of living creatures. While Dermatobia hominis (the bot fly that lays its eggs in humans) tends to steal the spotlight, its relative, Gasterophilus intestinalis (the common horse bot fly), deserves more attention for its creepiness, even though it doesn’t lay eggs under your skin.
The common horse bot fly gets its name because it lays its eggs on the hair of horses, donkeys, and other members of the equid family. As the animal grooms itself, the eggs hatch, and the larvae either make their way into the animal’s stomach or burrow into its tongue, gums, or the lining of its mouth to grow.
Once the larvae have matured for several days, they make their way into the equid’s stomach, where they attach themselves to the intestinal lining, joining hundreds of their companions. They will remain there for around nine months, waiting to be excreted. And just to clarify, yes, these creatures can also infect humans. However, they cannot survive inside us and will die after a few days—after burrowing into your lips, of course.
3. There’s A Type Of Bee That Drinks Your Tears
No exaggeration here—there is indeed a species of bee that feeds off your tears. While they generally prefer sweat, these bees will choose tears over anything else if given the chance.
To make matters worse, researchers in Thailand observed that when given the opportunity to drink from a person’s eyes, it took multiple failed attempts before the bee gave up and sought food elsewhere. The most unsettling part is that these bees are so skilled at feeding on tears that most of the time, the people they’re feeding from don’t even notice. You might even have bees feeding from your eyes right now.
2. Mosquitoes Can Smell Your Blood
A 2004 study conducted in Japan revealed that mosquitoes are drawn to people with type O blood far more than other blood types. This means that around 45 percent of the people reading this have a target on their veins, and it also means mosquitoes can literally sniff out your blood.
To make matters worse, mosquitoes will deliberately seek out those they find more attractive, while completely ignoring others. In the same Japanese study, mosquitoes bypassed dozens of people in favor of repeatedly biting just a few unlucky ones.
So, if you have type O blood, even if you're surrounded by a crowd of people, the mosquito will pinpoint you with precision and make sure to bite you no matter how many others are in the way.
1. Komodo Dragons Swallow Prey Whole
While they are stealthy and powerful hunters, capable of tracking their prey for miles before delivering a lethal blow, Komodo dragons abandon all that finesse once they begin feeding.
Komodo dragons will stop at nothing to ensure they’re well-fed. They’ve been seen charging into trees to force food down their throats, even breaking bones in the process. The impact is so powerful that it has been known to uproot small trees.
If you’re not already disturbed by the image of a giant lizard crushing half a goat against a tree to swallow it whole, know that Komodo dragons are also notorious for raiding freshly dug graves in search of food. The problem has become so widespread that on Komodo Island, it’s standard practice to cover graves with large, heavy rocks to prevent the dragons from digging them up.
The locals on the island are so fearful of these creatures and their unsettling eating habits that they construct their homes on stilts, ensuring that the creatures can’t enter their living spaces.
