The term ‘survival of the fittest’ is misunderstood for two reasons. The first is that it’s not a Charles Darwin original; he yoinked it from British naturalist Herbert Spencer. The second? It’s often over-simplified to the point of being meaningless, breathing life into the idea that it’s always the biggest, strongest, Chad-est critters that survive.
The term more accurately describes the ability of an organism to survive by fitting a biological niche in its environment. It’s survival of the surviviest, which results in critters great, small, and so beyond the imagination that they could only be real.
Today’s Moment of Science… A few critters that seem photoshopped into existence.
I should probably just post a picture of the Philippine tarsier and call it a day. The name is derived from the tarsus, meaning ankle bone, because the little bugger’s all fur, eyes, and ankles. In the sub-order Haplorhini, they’re perhaps a smidge closer cousins with humans and apes than they are with lemurs and galagos. This wide-eyed primate isn’t typically more than six inches tall because if it was, it could literally goddamn kill you with cuteness. Just to be on the safe side, don’t get it wet after midnight.
Then there’s the aye-aye of Madagascar, who looks like a tarsier fucked a bat and their unholy creation hasn’t slept since the goddamn beginning of time. Also, it has some utterly creepy looking hands.
(Of course I want to snuggle one).
Viscachas look like a randy rabbit got wild with a curious chinchilla and this wise looking itsy furball was the result. In the planet’s many attempts at making a Pikachu, five species of these chinchilla cousins evolved. The rabbit ears are an example of convergent evolution, and unfortunately not a fantastical hybridization. Rodents of moderately impressive size, they live throughout South America at elevations up to 16,000 feet above sea level, enough to induce altitude sickness in humans. Maybe we’ve been mistaking a wise look for delirium.
This amphibian has a few common names, but I’m sticking with the wolverine frog because fuck yeah. Also called the hairy frog, this is the most metal non-hallucinogenic former tadpole you’ll ever meet. During egg-laying season (hubba), the male frogs grow these fabulous mutton chops and tuchus padding. It’s not exactly hair, but vascularized skin that helps papa frog absorb more oxygen while he’s watching the eggs. This isn’t the weirdest feature on the MCU’s rejected superfrog; our polliwog overlord actively breaks its own bones in order to shoot claws out itsy footpads.
The immortal jellyfish can die, but it has a pretty fucking neat trick to avoid that. While most jellyfish age in one direction, Turritopsis dohrnii is one of few critters that tapped into the secrets of biological immortality. This doesn’t mean it can’t get its bioluminescent lights permanently knocked out. But it can revert from the medusa stage to the polyp stage of development. If in good health, there’s no apparent reason why one of these meandering bloop-bloops couldn’t just keep getting biologically nostalgic for their youth as many times as they want.
I’m still not convinced that the blue glaucus isn’t plucked from a video game designer’s imagination. A species of nudibranch, it’s an inch long mollusk without a shell that feeds on the Portuguese man o’war. It’s immune to the infamous hydrozoan’s venom, but the blue glaucus is not a vessel to turn that shit into rainbows and vitamin C. So though these pelagic zone swimmers look like alien star sprinkles, they can be chock full of fuck-you-up. Resist temptation to touch the shiny, and let the little star sprinkle dine on venom.
The shoe-billed stork looks like it was plucked from an animator’s dreams. Or nightmares, I’m not sure which. But rather than flesh and feathers, it looks more like it should have wiring, a top hat, and a smoking jacket to host an animatronic display at Disney. This majestic grey beast stands up to five feet tall with a wingspan that’s typically about eight feet across. With that bill that can be 7-10 inches long, they’re known to make a noise that’s oddly similar to a cow mooing.
This has been your Moment of Science, curious if you’d want the superpowers of the immortal jellyfish or the wolverine frog.
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