Gallery: Absurd Creatures of the Week: Nature's Weirdest Eaters Will Make You Feel Better About Your Gluttony
GIF by Nurie Mohamed/WIRED. Source: Discovery Channel’s <a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week/videos/alien-sharks-goblin-shark.htm" target="_blank">Alien Sharks</a>01600-grey-goblin
If you live in the deep sea [like the goblin shark does](http://stag4.wired.com/2013/10/absurd-creature-goblin-shark/), you need to be damn sure you can wrangle anything that comes your way, e.g., fishes' hopes and dreams of living a peaceful life. Those spring-loaded jaws fire forward in a flash, and needle-like teeth teeth hold tight to unfortunate prey.
Roberta Zimmerman, <a href="http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=1265046" target="_blank">USDA APHIS</a>02giant
At up to a foot long, the giant African land snail was introduced to Florida by a little boy who'd pocketed some while on vacation in Hawaii. [Now the things are out of control](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/01/absurd-creature-of-the-week-foot-giant-african-land-snail/). They breed like mad and eat the stucco off houses for the calcium to grow their shells, which are so strong they can pop car tires. And they're laying waste to agriculture as officials scramble to control them. So, really you could have done worse on Thanksgiving.
Getty Images03backpack-660x447
I'm just going to go ahead and assume that at this point you're not wearing what remains of the turkey you had for Thanksgiving. The assassin bug, though, would be appalled, *appalled*, at such waste. These insects stab their prey with a needle-like mouth, [then suck out the good stuff](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/06/absurd-creature-of-the-week-assassin-bug/). Instead of discarding the shell, they'll actually stick it to their back, building up huge piles of corpses. This helps break up their profile and assume the scent of their prey.
<a href="http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?enlarge=0000+0000+0712+1776" target="_blank">Theodore Papenfus</a>041776
This here is the giant salamander of Asia, which can grow to an incredible 6 feet long. That huge maw is good for one thing: [creating a vacuum](http://stag4.wired.com/2013/10/absurd-creature-6-foot-salamander/). If an unfortunate fish happens to wander near it, the giant salamander rapidly opens its mouth, and the fish tumbles right in. Also, it may look cuddly, but it's more than capable of defending itself against your fingers, and by defend I mean relieve you of them.
Copyright Matthew R. Gilligan05snapper
Hollywood couldn't make this stuff up, folks. The tongue-eating isopod seeks out a fish, infiltrates its gills, and [attaches itself to its tongue](http://stag4.wired.com/2013/11/absurd-creature-of-the-week-the-parasite-that-eats-and-replaces-a-fishs-tongue/). It'll then slowly suck the blood out of it, until it withers away. But the isopod wouldn't be so rude as to leave the fish without a tongue, so it'll actually hang there as the fish uses it to grind food against the top of its mouth. Hurray for being human!
Jenny/<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eunice_aphroditois.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia</a>06bobbit-660x686
Beautiful, isn't it? Too bad it hunts it preeetty much [the most horrific way possible](http://stag4.wired.com/2013/09/absurd-creature-of-the-week-bobbit-worm/). This is the bobbit worm, which can grow up to 10 feet long. Buried in the sea floor and poking just its head out, it waits for fish to come along, then strikes so powerfully and quickly that it can chop its prey in two. Then it drags the poor critter down into its burrow, where God knows what happens next.
Drew Avery/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/33590535@N06/3125601642" target="_blank">Flickr</a>073125601642-9647a83ea9-b
No PR is quite as bad as eating kittens. But the [three-foot-wide, nine-pound coconut crab](http://stag4.wired.com/2013/12/absurd-creature-of-the-week-2/) doesn't give a hoot. It's so powerful it can tear through coconuts when it's not assaulting cats.
George Burgess08teeth
Having cookies this weekend? So is the cookiecutter shark, only it's making its cookies out of flesh. It uses its teeth to excavate plugs of meat out of things like whales and even other sharks. Oh, and also Mike Spalding, who was night swimming between two Hawaiian islands when a cookiecutter [dug a hole out of his leg](http://stag4.wired.com/2013/11/absurd-creature-of-the-week-cookiecutter-shark/). One hospital visit later, Mike was back in the water, completing the swim that was so rudely interrupted.
Jodi Rowley/Australian Museum Research Institute09Rhacophorus-vampyrus-tadpole-side-head
You're looking at the world's only fanged tadpole, known appropriately enough as the [vampire flying frog](http://stag4.wired.com/2014/10/absurd-creature-week-vampire-frog-devours-mothers-eggs/). You see, its mother drops it off in a tiny pool of water in a tree, where there isn't much food. So mom comes back every once in a while and drops in an unfertilized egg covered in a kind of jelly, which the tadpole slices through to get to the yolk. *Paging Dr. Freud.*
