3 Weird Animals

Whenever I see a picture of an animal that I’ve never seen before I’m always taken aback which is a pretty stupid response really. After all there’s between 3 and 30 million species in the world (depending on who you ask), so seeing an animal you’ve not come across before should be no surprise at all.

It’s hard to know exactly how many critter types we have in total because some die off before we’ve met them and some of them have managed to live very far away from our meddling fingers. Also, some categories, such as birds, have been studied in depth so we have a more inflated number of them than those that live at the bottom of the ocean for instance.

The BBC reported on “the most accurate” count to date back in 2011, and they put the figure at 8.7 million. Either way, it shouldn’t be a shocker to find something new, but it is…. so have a look at these.

BEARDED VULTURE/ LAMAGEYER

These manga looking guys mainly eat carrion and chill out on crags in high mountains in southern Europe, the Caucasus, Africa, the Indian Subcontinent, and Tibet. They’re lumped in with other vultures but they are actually fairly distantly related to them.

Lamageyers attack live prey more often than other vultures and are the only living species that pretty much exclusively eats bone marrow. Also, in the Bible, Leviticus, it is made clear that you are not to eat Bearded Vultures. Not even if you’re really peckish.

GERENUK/ WALLER’S GAZELLE

It looks like a Photoshop joke doesn’t it? That tiny little pin head. Ridiculous. The Gerenuk comes from East Africa, from Somalia, Djiboutiand eastern Ethiopia through northern and eastern Kenya to northeastern Tanzania. African tribes call it ‘Queen of Humblness’ because apparently they always help each other out. Aaaahhhh.

GHARIAL/ GAVIAL

The gavial is one of the longest crocodiles in existence, reaching up to 20ft in length. To put that in perspective, that’s nearly three times as long as Andre the Giant was tall. I hope that helps.

The gavial are Indian and very rare. They have 110 teeth and can’t run on land (they can slide on their belly only) so don’t get in the water with them is my suggestion. Although they don’t attack humans normally, I’m not risking it.

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