40 Wild Animals That Have Mind-Bending Hidden Talents

When a spider wants to travel a long distance it can simply release a strand of silk. In the right conditions, the fine thread catches the breeze and twists and turns to act like a parachute, lifting the arachnid into the air. Amazingly, spiders can “fly” for hundreds of miles using this clever technique. The downside of this method is that the creature can’t govern its direction or destination.

Hippopotamuses live in hot regions with intense sunlight. So sunburn could be a real problem. Fortunately, though, the animals can actually produce their own sunscreen. They do this by secreting a substance through their skins containing an orange pigment that blocks UV rays. The clever goo even includes a red pigment boasting antibiotic properties. 

Pit vipers, a group that includes rattlesnakes, have a very high-tech way of tracking down their prey in the dark: they actually have heat-seeking organs. The snakes have sensors set between the eyes and nose which can detect infrared light, which is invisible to humans. So they can see the heat radiated by the small animals upon which they prey, enabling them to strike for a tasty snack. 

Venomous mammals are few and far between, but one of those is the duck-billed platypus, found only in eastern Australia. It’s the males you need to watch out for, as they can sting using spurs on their back legs. In 2010 the American Chemical Society website noted that a sting from a platypus “causes immediate, excruciating pain, like hundreds of hornet stings, leaving victims incapacitated for weeks.” So never try to cuddle one of these critters.

The Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish has a unique distinction. It is the only animal known to science that can lay claim to eternal life. This jellyfish is a tiny thing, about a fifth of an inch across as a mature adult. Diminutive it may be, but it has an extraordinary superpower. Faced by stress such as damage or food shortage, it can actually revert to an earlier part of its lifecycle. It can do this repeatedly, making it effectively immortal. Unless it gets eaten, obviously.

We all know one key fact about penguins: they can’t fly. At least, they can’t power themselves into the air with their wings. But they can leave the ground with an impressive leap. For example, the Adélie penguin, resident in the Antarctic, can jump to a height of 6 feet. That’s pretty impressive since they stand just a few inches over 2 feet tall. 

Many birds of prey swoop down precipitously on their prey. But when it comes to speed, none can match the peregrine falcon. The Guinness World Records website recorded a diving speed of 242mph by one such bird in 2005, achieved from a height of almost three miles. That makes the peregrine not only the fastest bird, but also the world’s fastest animal. 

Any animals that spot a bombardier beetle and think they’ve come across a potential meal will be in for a very nasty surprise. Why? Well, this critter packs an extraordinary deterrent. When threatened, it starts a chemical reaction in its innards. This creates a superheated toxic liquid which the insect then jets at the potential attacker. 

It’s common knowledge that bats have a clever system that they use both to navigate and to find their prey. They emit high-pitched squeaks which bounce off objects, enabling the creature to “see” them. But one potential prey, the tiger moth, has evolved a tactic to counter this sonar system. It emits a series of rapid ultrasonic clicks which effectively jam the bat’s signals. Very cunning.

Animals such as chameleons have the ability to change their color to match their background, a clever and effective method of camouflage. But cuttlefish take the ability to disappear into the background a massive step further. For these marine animals can change the actual texture of their skins as well as the color. As The New York Times newspaper noted in 2018, cuttlefish “can make themselves look like a cobbled seafloor, a spiny piece of coral or a hunk of granite.”

If you happen to be wandering around in the Arctic, just because you can’t see a polar bear doesn’t mean that you’re safe from it. That’s because this formidable predator is known to have a sense of smell so acute that it can detect prey at distances of up to 20 miles. The bear can even smell just the scent left from a seal’s breathing hole in the ice from half-a-mile off.  

Goats are known for their extraordinary climbing abilities. But the Alpine ibex is probably the most astounding of all when it comes to scaling impossibly steep cliffs. Proof of that comes from the near vertical 160-foot walls of the Cingino Dam in northern Italy’s Gran Paradiso National Park. The goats scamper up this implausibly steep wall the way you’d walk up a staircase. 

The aptly-named superb lyrebird lives in the forests of south-eastern Australia and when it comes to mimicking sounds, it’s an outstanding champion. This pheasant-sized creature can imitate the song of as many as 25 other avian species. Yes, the feathered pretender can perform with an accuracy that sometimes fools the actual bird which owns the call. And it can even convincingly imitate electric drills and saws.

The tardigrade is a microscopic creature that also goes by the name of water bear, and it can survive the most hostile of environments. For instance, the European Space Agency sent a rocket into low Earth orbit in 2007 and some tardigrades aboard survived for 12 days. But what’s utterly astonishing about that is the creatures were not inside the spacecraft – they were clinging to its exterior. 

Several lizard species can re-grow a lost tail. But some salamanders can go one better than that. They can actually regenerate a missing limb. The University of Kentucky’s Jeremiah Smith told the Smithsonian magazine’s website in 2019, “Salamanders have this unique ability to regenerate almost anything you cut off them. Salamanders can even regenerate spinal cords, eyes and parts of their brains.”

In relation to its size, the water boatman is the loudest animal in the world. It’s capable of producing a noise measuring nearly 100 decibels. That’s about 10db louder than a passing motorcycle. It gets weirder: the aquatic insect creates the noise with a process called stridulation, which involves rubbing its reproductive organ against its abdomen. No, really.

The archer fish takes out its prey with the deadly accuracy of a skilled sharpshooter. Of course, the fish doesn’t have a sniper’s rifle. Rather, it shoots out a jet of water from its mouth with such force that it stuns its unfortunate target. Incredibly, the 4-inch archer fish can disable its quarry at a distance of more than 6 feet.  

Birds in flight always amaze – if only we humans could do that! But hummingbirds add another whole layer of intrigue to the secrets of avian aeronautics. For these extraordinary creatures can fly like no other bird. Because they have a unique physiology, hummingbirds can actually fly backwards. No other bird can accomplish this trick.

Virginia opossums, the only marsupials native to the U.S., have an amazingly high level of immunity to snake venom. They laugh at stings from scorpions and bees. They are almost entirely immune to Lyme disease. And rabies rarely affects them. So next time you yell at one as it tips over your trash can, remember what tough little critters they really are.

The title of the world’s strongest apparently belongs to the horned dung beetle. The University of London’s Rob Knell went to the trouble of verifying this intriguing fact. He found that the beetle could haul up to 1,141 times its own weight. The average U.S. citizen weighs 178 pounds, according to a 2013 Live Science article. So this average American would need to pull a weight of over 100 tons to compete with a horned dung beetle.

You can call it the green, double-crested or plumed basilisk lizard. But its most memorable alias is the Jesus Christ basilisk. It earns that nickname because it can walk, or rather run, on water. And it does this standing on its hind legs at a speed of 5-feet-per-second for up to 15 feet. The basilisk’s secret is the flaps of skin on its hind legs which create a pocket of air keeping it above water.

There are 33 species of dragon millipedes known to science and their habitat spans from northern China down to southern Malaysia, taking in Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam on the way. Sporting dangerous-looking spikes and bright colors, these are critters to avoid. That’s because they generate hydrogen cyanide within their bodies. When threatened, they can fire off jets of the lethal substance. Nasty.

Kevlar is used as a material for bullet-proof vests, so it’s robust, to say the least. But there is a denizen of Madagascar's jungles that can create threads stronger even than Kevlar. Step forward the Darwin’s bark spider. Measuring an inch across, this spider weaves a web that can cover 30 square feet. In 2010 Wired quoted Igni Agnarsson of the University of Puerto Rico as saying that the Darwin bark spider’s web was “ten times better than Kevlar.”

How does a red fox locate its prey when it’s covered in three feet of snow? Well, it turns out that these clever animals may actually use the Earth’s magnetic field as a hunting aid. For reasons unknown the foxes are most successful if they plunge into the snow at a compass point 20 degrees from north. And, some scientists believe, they can determine direction by sensing the planet’s magnetic field. 

Bees can’t talk and they don’t send texts. So just how do they communicate? Through dance. Yes, the nectar-loving insects can pass messages to each other by wiggling their bodies in movements which look very like dancing to us humans. The bee’s movements can tell a colleague which direction to fly in so that they’ll find a particularly productive patch of pollen-yielding flowers.

It’s hardly a popular insect, the flea. But even those of us who’ve had the unpleasant experience of being bitten still admire one thing about the tiny beasts: their jumping ability. Yes, the flea can leap up to 100 times its own body length. Let’s suppose you’re 6’ tall. To compete with a flea, you’d need to jump 600 feet. Mike Powell holds the human world record for the long jump; he only managed a tad over 29 feet back in 1991.

Agriculture is one defining characteristic of Homo sapiens, separating us from the animal world. Right? No, wrong! Certain species of ant look after herds of aphids, protecting them from danger. The aphids produce a sweet excretion which the ants collect and eat. Other ants rot down leaves in their nests. Edible fungus grows from the compost. And ants have been in the farming business for about 50 million years, while we only got started about 12,000 years ago.

Voodoo wasps have a sinister ability: they can control the lives of other creatures. The parasitic wasp Glyptapanteles does this by laying its eggs inside a geometrid caterpillar. Once hatched, the wasp larvae eat their way through the caterpillar’s innards. The caterpillar somehow survives this ordeal and actually protects the wasp larvae when they emerge from its body and create cocoons. The caterpillar only dies when the wasps break out of their cocoons. How spooky is that?

There are many species of birds which migrate each year from one territory to another. But, without a doubt, the prize for the longest migratory journey goes to the elegant Arctic tern. Since it travels each year from the Arctic to the Antarctic, it could scarcely fly further. It migrates from Greenland to the Weddell Sea and back each year, flying a distance of as much as 56,000 miles since it doesn’t follow a direct route. 

It’s birds that build nests, isn’t it? True enough. But it turns out that there are also fish that have the nest-building habit. One of those is the African bonytongue, a freshwater fish. Its nest has a floor of flattened mud and walls built from vegetation. These walls are up to 1 foot tall and almost 8 inches thick. The structure can be as much as 5 feet across and the fish guard their young inside it.

Snakes slither. But, rather terrifyingly, some can also fly. To be precise they can glide through the air from a tree branch. They achieve this trick by writhing their bodies so that they catch the breeze and float through the air. Exactly why they fly is something of a mystery, but researchers believe it’s probably a method of evading predators. Alternatively, it may be a hunting technique. 

It’s a strange animal, the sea cucumber. It looks like an oversized gherkin and it moves slowly across the seabed scavenging for food. But it has an amazing power: it can radically change the consistency and shape of its body, which is normally fairly rigid. Yes, to escape predators, it can actually liquefy its innards, allowing it to escape by jamming into inaccessible rock crevices. 

Found in Alaska and the north-eastern states, the wood frog is easily recognizable by the black bar that runs over its eyes. It seems like a fairly standard type of frog, but there is something truly startling about this creature: in winter it freezes itself. Its heart doesn’t beat and it stops breathing. Meanwhile, its cells produce antifreeze – if it froze, the frog would die. Then, when the spring finally arrives the frog emerges from its suspended animation.

When it comes to shedding a tail, many species of lizard are well practiced at this predator-avoiding strategy. But mammals? Well there is one who displays this behavior, the African spiny mouse. Not only can it shed its tail, it can also cast off sections of skin. And there’s something else strange, even puzzling, about this small rodent. Despite its name, it has no spines. 

Sea eagles, herons, ospreys. The list of birds that live by catching fish is long. But how about a fish that takes birds? This behavior was first captured on film by the BBC in 2017. The fish is the giant trevally, which lives around the Seychelles Islands off the South African coast. Leaping from the water open-mouthed, these fish are capable of catching a bird on the wing.

The short-horned lizard surely has one of the most gruesome defense tactics in the animal kingdom. When a predator threatens, this creature can actually squirt blood from its eyes. The blood vessels around the eyes are especially thin, and it can deliberately cause them to tear so that blood spurts from the orifice. If that’s not enough to deter, this crafty beast can also inflate its body to twice its normal size. 

Trichobatrachus robustus is a frog capable of some very weird behavior indeed: it can deliberately break its own bones. Researchers believe that this is actually a tactic to deter other animals that want to eat it. When threatened, the amphibian fractures bones in its feet, and these emerge as claw-like appendages to frighten off attackers. It would certainly scare us.

The brightly colored mantis shrimp has limb-like appendages called dactyl clubs. Most of the time, these lie prone on the crustacean’s flanks. But when they see their prey – and they have very acute vision – the clubs come into play. The critters punch them out at speeds of up to 50mph. That’s enough to smash the shells of the creatures they hunt, revealing a toothsome morsel for the shrimp.

Watch swifts as they soar through the sky and their incredible aerobatics will undoubtedly impress. But these birds aren’t just highly skilled fliers: they also have unbelievable stamina. Three swifts observed by researchers in 2011 appeared to stay in flight for a solid 200 days. They ate and slept entirely on the wing. During that time, the birds flew from south-west Africa to the Mediterranean, crossing the Sahara on the way.

Sea stars have an incredible capacity to regenerate missing legs. But their talents go even further than that. Some species can recreate a whole creature starting with nothing more than a fragment of the original animal. All they need is a section of limb to grow a new sea star. So a predator can eat up most of a sea star, but as long as it leaves a fragment, there’s hope – and from the predator’s point of video, more food – for the future. It's just one of many instances of totally different species interacting in unexpected ways...

When carrier crabs travel from one place to another, sometimes they feel the need to bring along some extra protection. These crabs will use their back legs to pick up a sea urchin and hold it over their head. The spines keep the crabs safe and the slow sea urchin gets a speedy trip to a new feeding area.

Did you know that Nile crocodiles have their own avian dentists? When they have something stuck in their teeth, they'll hold their mouths open until a plover bird stops by. The bird picks bits of dead animals out of the crocodile's mouth for a meal and the croc's teeth avoid infection.

Pawpaw trees grow across the eastern U.S. and Canada and are known to produce a tasty fruit with yellow flesh and enormous black seeds inside. This makes the pawpaw the perfect habitat for zebra swallowtail butterflies, as their caterpillars eat the leaves of these trees while simultaneously helping to induce pollination.

On the Saharan plains, tiny white birds land on the backs of rhinoceroses and zebras grazing on the grasses. These oxpeckers nibble ticks, fleas, and any other bugs off the large herbivores. Yet this relationship is a little one-sided: if the animals have open sores, the oxpeckers will drink their blood like vampire birds.

The flowing tentacles of the sea anemone provide a blanket of protection for the bright-orange clownfish. These fish have a thick mucus layer that keeps the tentacles' poison from sinking into their scales. In return, the clownfish keep predators away from the anemones.

These herbivores graze on similar grasses on the Serengeti and are stalked by the same kinds of predators: hyenas, lions, and other carnivorous beasts. If a zebra, wildebeest, or impala sees a predator, they let out a warning call to alert their nearby companions, giving them all a better chance of escaping the danger.

Flowering panic grass normally grows in Central America and the eastern US, but one special variety grows in of Yellowstone National Park. Some areas of Yellowstone can reach a scorching 150 degrees Fahrenheit, making them a difficult spot for vegetation to thrive. Thanks to Curvularia protuberata, this Yellowstone panic grass can tolerate the intense heat and shelters its fungus friend in return.

Another bug/tree alliance exists between lemon ants and duroia trees. With their own specially produced formic acid, worker lemon ants inject the leaves of surrounding plants, usually killing them within 24 hours. This creates an area known as a "devil's garden," which contains only the plants that these ants reside in and eliminates any competition to the duroia.

These species have developed a close relationship. Acacia ant queens dig into the trees' thorns to lay their eggs and also use the leaves' nectar as nourishment. Some acacias are completely full of these ants. Like the lemon ant, acacia ants fight off potential harm to their fortress home.

As goby fish and pistol shrimp mature, they form a mutualistic bond. The pistol shrimp will dig the pair a home on the ocean's sandy floor while the goby watches for predators. The fish can see better than its shrimp companion and lets its buddy know when they need to hide in their burrow.

Large herbivores like cows, buffalo, and goats have multiple stomachs to break down the tough grasses they eat, and their digestive systems are aided by the bacteria that live there. These microorganisms consume sugar molecules for energy, which helps to fuel the host animal's digestion.

These worms, also known as boneworms or zombie worms, need the help of Oceanospirillales bacteria when they’re hungry. Boneworms get their name from their habit of tunneling into dead animals' bones for food. The Oceanospirillales bacteria then convert the bone material into a special worm food, getting a taste for themselves along the way.

Sloths are lazy creatures who expend their energy to make weekly trips from their homes in the trees to the ground so they can use the bathroom. They make this trip because their feces fertilizes the ground floor, which helps pyralid moths survive. These moths also fertilize the algae that lives on sloths, which is eaten by both creatures.

Zooxanthellae is a type of algae that lives on coral reefs. As the zooxanthellae photosynthesizes, it provides its host with organic carbon products that make up a large portion of its metabolic needs. In exchange, the zooxanthellae is provided with vital nutrients and an elevated place to absorb sunlight.

There isn’t much diversity among the animals and plants that reside on the Galápagos, so some creatures can struggle to get what they need to survive. To remedy this, some species of flowers encourage multiple types of native birds to pollinate them by developing nectar and fruit that their feathered friends can subsist on.

The ocean is full of gunk. When a fish that lives on a coral reef gets dirty enough, they’ll find a cleaner wrasse to eat the things clinging to them. These striped fish hang out on the reef and live to clean other fish. The wrasses get to fill their bellies, and the fish get a free cleaning.

These two species coevolved, meaning they developed a codependent bond for survival. Yucca moths lay their eggs on the yuccas, which hatch into larvae and consume the shrub's seeds. This process helps the plant to spread its seeds while giving the growing insects a reliable food source.

Although tarantulas can be vicious killers, they don't hurt tiny microhylid frogs. Instead, they keep them around as "pets" because the frogs help protect the spiders' eggs from ants. Scientists suspect the toxins in the frogs' skin makes them taste bad, so the spiders use them to their advantage instead of consuming them.

Another creature algae works with is lichen. Lichen are composite organisms made up of groups of algae and fungi, each feeding and sheltering the other. Because lichen are essentially their own mini ecosystems, these organisms can live for hundreds — even thousands — of years.

Although emperor shrimp normally live inside sea cucumbers, they will occasionally hop a ride on the back of sea slugs for a scenic little trip around the ocean floor while they feast on the debris the slugs kick up.

When the Earth was young, our cells were still evolving. Researchers believe that one of the earliest evolutionary developments concerned host cells capturing mitochondria — a.k.a. the powerhouse of the cell — and chloroplasts. This is believed to be one of the earliest instances of mutualism.

If you live in Central India, chances are you've seen a langur monkey riding a chital deer. These animals maintain an alliance for better access to food. Langurs watch for danger while the chitals use their powerful sense of smell to find the perfect fruit. The monkeys will then climb the fruit trees and knock down more food for their deer friends.