mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
You’ve heard jokes like these all your life: What do you get if you cross an octopus with a cow? An animal that can milk itself. I didn’t find such an animal, but the world has plenty of strange species that at first glance appear to be hybrids of unrelated species because they have attributes that surprise us. However, we are only surprised because our personal experiences don’t encompass all that nature offers.
1. Turtle + Hedgehog = Armadillo
Rudyard Kipling wrote the story The Beginning of the Armadillos, in which the animal came from a tortoise and a hedgehog. They didn’t join to give birth to armadillos; instead, they taught each other their talents. The hedgehog helped the tortoise learn to curl into a ball, and the tortoise taught the hedgehog to swim, which toughened up his spines into armor. Before they knew it, both had turned into armadillos.
Here in the real world, armadillos are related to both sloths and anteaters and are native to Latin America except for the nine-banded armadillo we see in the US. In certain states they are called “speed bumps”. Armadillo image by Flickr user Ben Cooper.
2. Giraffe + Zebra = Okapi
The okapi (Okapia johnstoni) appears to be a short giraffe with a zebra’s legs tacked as an afterthought. The animal, which lives only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (and in zoos), is actually related to the giraffe but was “shorted” in the neck department. To make up for that oversight, the okapi has a tongue long enough to lick its own ears! The zebra stripes are thought to be used as camouflage, and to make it easy for okapi young to follow their mothers through the rain forest. Okapi image by Raul654.
3. Anteater + Armadillo = Pangolin
The pangolin is also known as the spiny anteater. They are mammals, but have keratin scales over their bodies. They roll up into a ball in defense like an armadillo or a hedgehog. Recent genetic studies show that pangolins are related to neither anteaters (despite the fact that they eat ants) nor armadillos. But the weirdness doesn’t stop there: pangolins can spray a nasty musk just like a skunk. And they don’t have any teeth!
4. Bird + Fox = Fruit Bat
Fruit bats encompass several species and are also called megabats or flying foxes. What sets fruit bats apart from your garden variety insect-eating belfry-hangers is the fact that most fruit bats do not use echolocation to get around. They need their eyes big and their noses long to sense where they are going, so their faces look like more familiar land mammals -particularly dogs. No doubt that’s where the term flying fox came from. If you couldn’t see a fruit bat’s wings, you might have a hard time guessing the species. Fox image by Flickr user Kris *Thirty6Red*. Bat image by Flickr user smccann.
5. Duck + Beaver = Platypus
The platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) of Australia looks like a taxidermy experiment in which a mammal has been accessorized with a beaver’s tail, a duck’s bill, the venom of a snake, and the feet of an otter. This animal is not related to any of the others, however. The platypus is a monotreme. It shares that order with only four other species which are all echidnas. It is truly unique in the animal kingdom, and the most likely of any in this list to be an example of God’s sense of humor. Platypus image by Stefan Kraft.
6. Hoop Snake + Lizard = Armadillo Girdled Lizard
This lizard might be what people saw when they came up with the legend of the hoop snake (featured in a previous post). You don’t find too many lizards that protect themselves by rolling into a ball, but the Armadillo Girdled Lizard (Cordylus cataphractus) does just that. This lizard grabs its tail with its mouth and forms a ring with its spines pointing out. Any predator will have a hard time figuring this thing out, much less eating it! The name is just a descriptor; this lizard has no relation to an armadillo, which is a mammal.
Can you think of other examples of animals that look like hybrids of unrelated species?
More from mental_floss…
16 Attractions Open Christmas Day
*
10 Creepy Santas (Whose Laps We Want Nothing To Do With)
*
9 Holiday Characters From Around the World
*
Quiz: Doogie Howser’s Diary or Random Twitter Update?
*
6 Great Christmas Comic Book Adventures
*
8 U.S. Presidents With Statues Abroad
*
9 Muppets Kicked Off Sesame Street
Comments (63)
Comment
- Follow mental_floss
Speed bumps, as in they run them over? awww….
posted by Not That Guy on 12-22-2009 at 8:55 am
I’ve also heard armadillos called “possum on the half shell”
posted by cradus on 12-22-2009 at 9:12 am
Armadillos are also the cause of a significant percentage of radiator repairs. Apparently they can also jump pretty high.
posted by Andy on 12-22-2009 at 9:35 am
It is very confusing to read vertically the way you guys often start entries. What’s wrong with an extra horizontal line of writing?
posted by Bubba on 12-22-2009 at 9:56 am
So then then it would actually be
PANGOLIN=Anteater+turtle+hedgehog
;-P
posted by JaneM on 12-22-2009 at 10:13 am
The okapi is the most interesting looking in my opinion. I feel like it hasn’t been fully developed.
posted by Levinson Axelrod on 12-22-2009 at 10:26 am
The only example you left off is the combination of bear and dragon…
My mother-in-law.
posted by Geo on 12-22-2009 at 10:27 am
@Geo – great!
Yeah, seeing a dead armadillo on the side of the road in Oklahoma/Texas is pretty common. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a live one, actually…
posted by OkieMelissa on 12-22-2009 at 10:36 am
that lizard tried to sell me car insurance…
posted by vegebrarian on 12-22-2009 at 10:58 am
I’ve seen armadillos wandering around Texas… they shuffle and look very awkward. Very cute.
posted by Elissa on 12-22-2009 at 11:14 am
“What do you get if you cross an octopus with a cow? An animal that can milk itself. I didn’t find such an animal…” Humans are an animal that can do this.
posted by Nathan on 12-22-2009 at 11:23 am
@Andy
Not so much that they jump, the one I hit curled up and bounced around under my car. Yes, all the animal lovers let me have it now. But when you are doing 55 or better at night (they are nocturnal) on a rural highway, it was the armadillo or me.
posted by Mary on 12-22-2009 at 11:38 am
I heard if you cross breed a sheep with a kangaroo you create a sweater with pockets!
posted by Devin Greaney on 12-22-2009 at 12:19 pm
We don’t run over them on purpose, but they move slowly and their instinct when startled is to jump, which causes many of them to die on the roads.
posted by Troy H. on 12-22-2009 at 12:35 pm
OHMYGOSH #5 IS PERRY THE PLATYPUS xD
posted by Cassy on 12-22-2009 at 1:18 pm
He’s a platypus. He doesn’t do much.
And you couldn’t find a better lizard picture than the Geico gecko?
Cute article, thanks!
posted by MarMar on 12-22-2009 at 1:25 pm
The platypus (an Echidna) is one of two egg laying mammals! The other being the spiny echidna. Man, Australia has some weird ducks!
posted by duke on 12-22-2009 at 1:44 pm
Also Armadillo’s are mostly nocturnal so that doesn’t help their survival on the roads. They’re slow moving, asphalt colored and out at night along rural stretches of unlit highway.
I say mostly because I actually have seen them during the day. We had a sudden rain storm at daycamp once during a picnic and several armadillos came out to investigate and ate all the dropped food. They’re really adorable.
I always though sloths looked like a cross between a koala, an anteater and a rock (they’re kind of green and mossy).
posted by Angela on 12-22-2009 at 1:49 pm
Platypus is not an echidna, Duke. Echidnas look more like long-nosed hedgehogs (being covered with spines). There are three species of echidna, and they aren’t all that closely related to the platypus, which is the source of some controversy in the world of taxonomy as well as paleontology (especially as pertains to mammal evolution).
Hey, I thought of another! Hedgehog + elephant shrew = echidna. Elephant shrews have long noses. Or, hedgehog + kiwi bird, to get both the long snout and the eggs (though kiwi eggs are hard-shelled like all bird eggs).
posted by Calli Arcale on 12-22-2009 at 1:57 pm
Correction: four species of echidna. Sorry about that. These are the Western Long-beaked Echidna, Sir David’s Long-beaked Echidna, the Eastern Long-beaked Echidna, and the Short-beaked Echidna. (Thank you, Wikipedia!)
posted by Calli Arcale on 12-22-2009 at 2:00 pm
How about the narwhal? Porpoise + unicorn = narwhal. I always felt sorry for them because they look like they could get those tusks stuck in the ice. Then what??
posted by TC on 12-22-2009 at 2:29 pm
@ TC: then they spin around in place and drill themselves out of the ice!
When I was in 4th grade, we wrote a play about how the platypus came to be: siamese twins wished to be a duck and a beaver, and their two wishes combined and they became a platypus!
posted by Megan on 12-22-2009 at 2:41 pm
some other fun facts about Armadillos:
They have litters of 4 babies at a time…and all of them are the same sex- all male or female. They carry leprosy on the soles of their feet, so be careful handling them.
I see them all the time in central Texas. I spied one the other night on my way home…
posted by donner on 12-22-2009 at 3:08 pm
2 funny stories about armadillos:
1. An armadillo got caught inside my husband’s barracks in Louisiana once. He said he had never seen so many grown men squeal….they had to get the MP’s to come and escort it out. (Alive, BTW)I heard the same thing about leprosy, only that they carried it under their “scales” not their feet.
2. My uncle lived in Arkansas for a while and acquired an armadillo belt buckle. He wore it with the feet up because he said he never saw one on its feet since the only ones he ever really saw up close were on the side of the road dead. Morbid, but funny.
posted by Stellar on 12-22-2009 at 3:16 pm
Doo-be doo-be doo-ba!!
reCaptcha: very bitingly
Seems fitting
posted by kokopeli420 on 12-22-2009 at 5:47 pm
The platypus is venomous but will not kill a human. The venom only produced by males can be really painful…it could a last a few days to a few weeks and is strong enough to knock someone out. Morphine can not bock the pain of platypus venom…so if your play with one make sure its female.
posted by CJ on 12-22-2009 at 6:54 pm
gonna play…
posted by CJ on 12-22-2009 at 6:55 pm
“In certain states they [armadillos] are called ‘speed bumps’.”
Yeah, Florida (where I was born) would be one of those states. I was about 10 years old when I finally realized armadillos aren’t BORN squashed on the side of the road. Hehe.
posted by dooflotchie on 12-22-2009 at 7:10 pm
The armadillo lizard looks like Xev of B3K.
posted by Antinous on 12-22-2009 at 8:26 pm
These are examples of the genetic mutations which are the real “evolution”. All modern animals, man included, are the result of mutations caused by environmental actions (i.e. Central America raising from the ocean caused man to live on the ground and antelopes to switch from browsing to grazing) or genetic changes, who knows how many similar species died out (survival of the fittest). Also, man is not the product of one line, we interbred with others.
posted by gus on 12-22-2009 at 9:29 pm
Armadillos are actually kind of sweet animals–we had more than a few at a wildlife rehad in Oklahoma that I used to work at. They feel like a live football when you handle them.
From what I can recall, they don’t actually carry leprosy but they are the only animal besides humans that will be effected by it. Or something like that. In other words, you don’t really need to be worried.
The babies are particularly cute and really pink.
posted by Amanda on 12-23-2009 at 12:14 am
The pangolin is actually known as the “scaly anteater”. It’s the echidna that is known as the “spiny anteater”.
posted by WG on 12-23-2009 at 9:14 am
Crocodile + snake = Dragon lizard
Frog + goat = Kingaroo
horse + frog = Hippopotomus
camel + donkey = Lama
posted by M. Wahab on 12-24-2009 at 1:33 am
what about man bear pig im super cereal about this guys hes real
posted by Sean on 12-24-2009 at 12:34 pm
Armadillo: so that’s where sandrew (pokemon) came from.
posted by Ch**** on 12-24-2009 at 3:06 pm
My girlfriend’s from Oaxaca, Mexico. She says that the armadillo is a delicacy. They make a stew from it for the Holidays. Yum!
posted by david wayne osedach on 12-24-2009 at 4:40 pm
very interesting
posted by Cheap on 12-24-2009 at 10:51 pm
Addition: Lung fish
posted by Mark on 12-25-2009 at 1:27 am
6. Firefox + Lizard = Armadillo Girdled Lizard
Mozilla’s next browser FireLizard :D Almost looks like the dragon that wraps around world of warcrafts elite mobs avatar.
posted by Hollen-B on 12-25-2009 at 1:48 am
God’s sense of humour, newsflash, god, doesn’t exist
posted by cristi on 12-25-2009 at 4:26 am
‘mother earth’ = Atheist substitute for ‘God’
posted by james on 12-25-2009 at 4:47 am
@duke actually, the two egg laying mammals are the platypus and the echidna(spiny anteater). The pangolin is the scaly anteater
posted by Fry23 on 12-25-2009 at 9:49 am
You forgot one. Rabbit + squirrel = chinchilla. It’s cute, nicely tempered, as divine fur and is utterly batshit INSANE!
posted by DannyJane on 12-30-2009 at 10:39 am
The Okapi was thought to be extinct until it was discovered in 1901.
posted by Kari on 1-8-2010 at 12:57 pm
What do you call the cross between a rhinocerous and and elephant?
Eliphino!
posted by Klinger on 1-22-2010 at 3:50 pm
Is it weird that I want a pet fruit bat? it’s so cute!
posted by Melodye on 1-27-2010 at 4:39 pm
Ugh. Just read that fruit bats harbor all sorts of fatal diseases. Never mind. :(
posted by Melodye on 1-27-2010 at 4:41 pm
Does anyone else not realize that the lizard is the geico lizard
posted by Kevin on 1-29-2010 at 3:30 pm
okapis are my favorite animals. the babies are completely adorable! i always liked them as a kid (we have some in the denver zoo) because of their weird mix, I just thought they were the coolest. also, no one else in my class knew what one was :)
posted by tess on 1-31-2010 at 9:20 pm
“Armadillos are also the cause of a significant percentage of radiator repairs. Apparently they can also jump pretty high.”
I have never seen it myself, but a friend who is obsessed with armadillos (she is a wildlife rehabber) says that many of them will jump a foot straight up in the air when they are startled/frightened. She says that is why they never survive being driven over, unlike a turtle who would be fine as long as a tire doesn’t go over them. An armadillo on the other hand will jump up into the bottom of a car and get thrown around under it. :( They are pretty cute.
Kevin, yes. Almost everyone who read the article probably noticed that that is the Geico lizard. :P
I adore armadillo lizards. They are hard to find in the US (pet stores sell “armadillo lizards”, but 99% of them are not true armadillo lizards), but one day we will definitely have a couple. I think they look more like little dragons than any other living animal. Gorgeous.
posted by Rebecca on 2-8-2010 at 8:57 pm
Where is the Horned toad?? Who would win in a fight? Armadillo Girdled Lizard, or Horned Toad?
posted by RIchard Y on 2-11-2010 at 6:21 pm
@cristi.
ok, whatever helps you sleep at night. how do you explain everything then? do tell. am i really supposed to believe that i can breathe, eat, sleep, and do all these other great things by chance? it just happend that a giant explosion came and made me into the person i am? ya next time think things through before you talk, ok hun? do you even see some of those animals on this page? how the heck is everything so diverse yet so beautiful? please explain that! there are over a billion of different creatures that all breathe eat and sleep and some big bang caused that? ya, right. some freak of nature accident created everything? ill take my chances in the Lord who created me and still is apart of this world, thank you very much.
posted by dan on 2-23-2010 at 4:42 pm
@dan,
Though I am aware of the futility of trying to change the mind of someone with your…conviction, the extent to which people still cling to superstition in this world is staggering. Ok. So…to explain everything. As far as your “explosion” statement, I can’t really shed much light on the Big Bang theory. Theoretical physics and astronomy aren’t really my forte. Perhaps someone else can help here? Regarding evolution, which seems to be your main point of contention, there are immense spans of time and incremental changes between organisms through generations that result in the diversity of life that you can see in the world. By no means does anything suddenly appear, including modern man. So…no. The Big Bang did not directly cause organisms to appear. Good luck “taking your chances” and “thinking things through,” “hun.” Your “giant infinite man in the sky” idea is certainly compelling.
posted by t on 3-25-2010 at 1:10 pm
I am also from Fl. Some folks shoot armadillo’s because of their tendency to wreck your lawn in search of grubs.
ReCaptcha: Trillion lesson
posted by Susan on 3-29-2010 at 4:11 am
Hey Dan, bring your god down here to face me in person.
posted by I.M. Pistoff on 5-16-2010 at 11:37 pm
Um, with regards to a couple previous comments, when did this turn into a theology debate? Can a person even use the term “God” in their subject title without it igniting a flame war in the comment section below? This is an irreverent article on curious-looking creatures- not a liberal arts college course. Let’s save those kinds of arguments for places more appropriate, please.
Okay, now that that’s out of the way… er… Well, I don’t seem to have any ideas for animals, myself. Only that some of these listed are so bizarre I’m amazed they truly exist (and would donate all of my money to see that none of them ever went extinct during my lifetime). Also, chinchillas are indeed freaking cute, and slightly insane- let more than one in a room alone and they’ll be rocketing around it like little roadrunners. They also are often unafraid to use people as ledges to leap off of. Fascinating animals- such an interesting combination of wild mannerisms and domesticated ones.
posted by Araxie on 6-26-2010 at 2:37 am
@IM Pistoff and @T
Two words: Pascal’s Wager
posted by Austin on 7-2-2010 at 2:38 pm
Thats a tortoise in the photo not a turlte.
posted by Jake on 7-7-2010 at 2:42 pm
@Christie
Newsflash: This article is about animals, not a debate on whether or not God exists.
posted by K on 8-11-2010 at 12:24 pm
Here in southwest Missouri, we see armadillos all the time, although in the time I’ve lived here I’ve only seen live ones three times (excluding captive ones) – and two of those were the same one. All in the middle of the day, strangely enough.
AS far as getting hit by cars though, it’s a tough call between the armadillos and the possums as to who’s the most-used speedbump. My favorite joke – “Why did the chicken cross the road? To show the possum it could be done.”
posted by Kate on 8-18-2010 at 11:59 pm
I WANT A HEDGEHOG!!! grrrr
posted by Shaba laba! on 8-20-2010 at 9:01 am
Sorry to be the “angry atheist”, but “God’s sense of humor”?
How about how friggin’ awesome that evolution is the process by which completely unrelated animals came to similar ends by unrelated processes?
If there is a God, at least I know he used evolution to accomplish it all…and that’s the most amazing thing about these pictures, but you left out that amazing fact…sad.
posted by Charlotte on 8-25-2010 at 7:20 pm
Is that Gecko Gex?
posted by Ed on 8-28-2010 at 9:36 pm