Recently, Weird Asia News reported on the imminent invasion of Japan by legions of humongous jellyfish. The 6-foot-wide, 440-pound monsters known as echizen kurage threaten to devastate fisheries and even damage nuclear powerplants.

The pressure to find a practical use for these troublesome creatures has triggered the usual creative reaction from the Japanese. Unfortunately, “creative” and “appetizing” are not necessarily synonymous. Um, jellyfish caramels, anyone?



That’s right: In what is surely a first for the confectionery world, students at Obama Fisheries High School have developed a type of caramel candy flavored with a powder made of jellyfish. The students harvested the critters themselves, as well as devising the process for producing the powder.

Word hasn’t reached us yet on the taste of these scary-sounding sweets, but it probably bears some similarity to that of the team’s previous product, the not-quite-an-international-sensation-just-yet Ekura-chan saku-saku cookies, also jellyfish based.



Where to from here? The possibilities seem endless. It can’t be long before we’re introduced to the peanut butter and jellyfish sandwich, the jellyfish jellyroll, the jellyfish-flavored jellybean. And for God’s sake, someone get in touch with the folks who make Jell-O!

(link) and weirdasiannews.com

Seapig

This is some kind of weird deep sea sea-cucumber.

Ajolote

Not to be confused with the Axolotl (which comes later) this is an Ajolote, which is a freaky long retile found in Mexico with only two legs.

Aye-Aye

looking like a hellspawn, the aye-aye is a native of Madagascar (where you find the cute lemurs).. it uses it’s extremely long finger to tap out and find grubs burrowing in wood and then uses the same digit to dig them out…

Chinese and Japanese Giant Salamander

Chinese Version

Japanese Version

both grow up to about 2 metres long… are predators which eat fish and crustaceans..

Pygmy Jerboa

cute as hell, they’re desert rodents which are found in north africa and asia.. see one of them hop around here => Jerboa!!

Giant Isopod

looking like a giant roach or worse, they inhabit the deep atlantic and thankfully, not the beaches off the east coast..

Thorny Devil Lizard

resident of australia, it lives in the desert and eats ants.. the thorns prevent it from being eaten by other creatures

Hagfish

it’s an ugly fish.. but what makes it more disgusting is the huge amounts of slime it can produce..

Hairy Frog

native to central africa… it’s weirdness is.. that.. it’s a frog.. with hair!! ’nuff said

Human-Faced Carp

some hobbyist in Korea cross-bred a couple of types of fish and this appeared..

Sea Devil

some kind of deep sea angler-fish with a huge expandable stomach… it has lots of hair-like things which may be used to attract its prey…

Proboscis Monkey

the male of this species has this idiotic nose… but this doesn’t help this Borneo native much as it’s now considered critically endangered

Goblin Shark

looking like your worse deep sea nightmare, the goblin shark is real..

face your fears here => Goblin Shark chomping on some guy

Purple Frog

looking like The Blob of the frog family, this Indian frog lives underground most of its life… but it just looks… obese..

Pygmy Marmoset

native of brazil, the marmoset is one of the smallest monkeys on the planet.. aren’t the babies adorable?

Sea Dragon

a type of seahorse, they look very pretty, yet freaky..

Tarsier

insect-eating creatures with eyes bigger than its brain, the huge eyes are for nocturnal hunting… the eyes are so big the skull is the same size as each of the eyes.. living in south-east asia, they’re also critically endangered

Axolotl

this weird creature is here because it can reach maturity without metamorphosis… and when it does, it turns into a salamander-like creature without the frilly gills.. they usually do not.. they can also regrow a complete new limb if they are injured..

Angora Rabbit

all i can say is.. wtf??

Blobfish

again, this is another wtf? a deep sea fish… which is.. blobbish…

Candiru

the fabled “vampire fish” of the amazon… legends say it swims up the penis of unsuspecting victims and lodges itself inside!!

Giant Soft-Shelled Turtle

growing up to about 2 metres, it’s critically endangered…

Dumbo Octopus

a deep deep sea octopus.. cute isn’t it?

Olm

it’s a blind amphibian found in the subterranian caves of southern europe.. looks kinda gross…

Rosy-Lipped Batfish

why is it wearing lipstick? ahahaha!! found in waters off costa rica, near the cocos island, it’s one of the weirdest things around

Saiga Antelope

okay.. i’ve put it here because it looks like Alf… but it is found around mongolia and the steppes region.. sadly, it’s critically endangered..

Star-nosed mole

weird as heck, it uses the “fingers” of its nose to feel things… especially its earthworm prey.. found in North America

Turtle Frog

looks like an unholy union of frog and soft shelled turtle.. the turtle frog is found in southern part of western australia..

Weta

found in new zealand, one of the biggest insects around..  it’s classified under the genus Deinacrida.. which means.. Terrible Grasshopper… oh ya.. it bites.. and it’s jaws are HUGE!!

politics.sgforums.com

A new species of giant rat has been discovered deep in the jungle of Papua New Guinea.

The rat, which has no fear of humans, measures 82cm long, placing it among the largest species of rat known anywhere in the world.

The creature, which has not yet been formally described, was discovered by an expedition team filming the BBC programme Lost Land of the Volcano.

It is one of a number of exotic animals found by the expedition team.

Like the other exotic species, the rat is believed to live within the Mount Bosavi crater, and nowhere else.

“This is one of the world’s largest rats. It is a true rat, the same kind you find in the city sewers,” says Dr Kristofer Helgen, a mammalogist based at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History who accompanied the BBC expedition team.

Initially, the giant rat was first captured on film by an infrared camera trap, which BBC wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan set up in the forest on the slopes of the volcano.

The expedition team from the BBC Natural History Unit recorded the rat rummaging around on the forest floor, and were awed by its size.

Immediately, they suspected it could be a species never before recorded by science, but they needed to see a live animal to be sure.

Then trackers accompanying the team managed to trap a live specimen.

“I had a cat and it was about the same size as this rat,” says Buchanan.

The trapped rat measured 82cm in length from its nose to its tail, and weighed approximately 1.5kg.

It had a silver-brown coat of thick long fur, which the scientists who examined it believe may help it survive the wet and cold conditions that can occur within the high volcano crater. The location where the rat was discovered lies at an elevation of over 1,000m.

Initial investigations suggest the rat belongs to the genus Mallomys, which contains a handful of other out-sized species.

It has provisionally been called the Bosavi woolly rat, while its scientific name has yet to be agreed.
ratserver.org and news.bbc.co.uk