TOP 10 GIFS OF SEA CREATURES STRAIGHT FROM SCIENCE FICTION NIGHTMARES

Top 10 GIFs of Sea Creatures Straight from Science Fiction Nightmares
By Karl Smallwood, Toptenz, 1 June 2014.

There’s an oft-repeated quote that we know more about the surface moon than we do about the depths of our own oceans. Which makes perfect sense because the moon is a barren ball of dust and the ocean is a teeming ecosystem of stuff that punched its way out of a sci-fi movie. Today we’re going to show you 10 GIFs that prove our ocean is pretty much full of alien life. Alien life like…

10. The goblin shark’s extendible xenomorph-esque mouth

The goblin shark is described by some as a “living fossil” because it looks like something a T-Rex would fish out of the sea and then thrown back when it got a good look at it. It’s an ugly creature that science has never really bothered trying to study because it lives so far beneath the waves. Also, it eats things by throwing its own jaw a foot forward and inhaling whatever unfortunate creature failed to pay proper homage to Cthulu the previous day.

Scientists attribute this unique feeding method to the fact that the shark is naturally slow and sluggish in the water, thereby necessitating jaws it can “catapult” towards prey. If a creature that can bite you when it’s on the other side of the room wasn’t scary enough, the goblin shark is what’s called “naturally buoyant” which allows it to swim almost silently through the water. Meaning one of these could be right behind you right now, just waiting to kiss the nape of your neck.

9. The spider crab leaving its shell will haunt you forever

The spider crab isn’t technically a spider, it just looks exactly like one and is 6 foot across with pliers attached to its front legs, which is supposed to make us feel better. If a 6 foot wide spider you couldn’t kill with a sledgehammer isn’t enough to make you at the very least contemplate throwing a notice of surrender into the ocean right now, here’s a GIF of one shedding its shell, whole! If you told us that image was a deleted scene from The Thing, we wouldn’t question it in the slightest, because we know better than to question the spider gods.

Now even though we know that, that GIF is of a single spider crab shedding its shell to become a bigger, more powerful threat to humanity. Just look at it and tell us it doesn’t look exactly like it’s splitting into two, separate crabs that’s equally as pissed that they’re trapped in a giant plastic tub. We honestly think the only reason that GIF cuts short is because the crab kept splitting and the cameraman burnt the entire building down.

8. The very stealthy octopus

The thing about creatures that live in the ocean is that we have the advantage because on land is where we keep all of our knives and cream cheese. It doesn’t matter how much ass octopuses kick in the ocean, on land we could elbow drop them into a fine paste, unless of course they figured out how to suddenly turn FRICKIN’ INVISIBLE!

Holy crap, that octopus just blended in with the deck of that guy’s boat in like 2 seconds. That’s, that’s amazing and kind of frightening because now we’re unable to stop imagining what would have happened if that guy threw it at somebody’s face. Would the octopus have been able to blend in with it? Would it have killed the guy and stolen his identity before trying to mate with his wife? Is the lady we spoke to at the bank this morning just an octopus stuck to someone’s face? We need answers!

7. The brinicle is an alien-like tentacle of pure cold that kills anything it touches

Now today we’re not just here to talk about animals that call our oceans their home that wouldn’t look out of place in a B-movie, we’re also here to talk about the very curious phenomenon of “brinicles.” An icy bolt of pure cold that creeps along the ocean floor killing anything it comes into contact with.

These underwater doom-bolts are caused by a combination of freezing temperatures and brine (which is heavier than regular water and thus sinks). As the brine sinks towards the bottom of the ocean is freezes the water around it, resulting in “brinicles” or as we like to call them, “proof even the ocean itself could rip our faces off.”

6. The Cuttlefish’s disappearing act

Cuttlefish are Houdini's of the sea. Their ability to change colour on a whim is legendary amongst scientists to the point there could literally be one sat on your laptop right now and you probably wouldn’t notice it until it tried to correct your spelling. They’re that good.

Even if you managed to notice it, the cuttlefish could just turn into a cloud of smoke and explode out of existence. That’s not hyperbole. Here’s a GIF of a cuttlefish doing exactly that, then turning entirely black just to prove that it could have disappeared into thin air at any point, but it just wanted to spit ink in your face first. Man, that’s just cold.

5. Mudskipper and its magic eyes

Mudskippers are ocean creatures that are able to live (in a sense) on land by filling their mouths with water and dragging themselves around like it ain’t no thing. Weirdly, the fact they’re able to go against all known logic and walk around on wonderful, fish-smothering land isn’t the thing we find most alien about the mudskipper. No, that honour belongs to its eyes. Which it can seemingly sprout from its own head whenever it feels like it.

We don’t know why mudskippers need to be able to suck their eyes back into their skull and to be honest we don’t care, because we just spent the last 20 minutes watching this GIF with this playing in the background and we think we’ve discovered the cure for drugs.

4. The Sea spider is, just, urgh...

Yes, the ocean is home to two giant creatures that look exactly like spiders because the ocean is a cruel unforgiving mistress who wants you to never stop fearing her. Unlike the spider crab, which can grow to be several feet across, the sea spider can only grow to be around a foot in length. To make up for this, there are around 1300 known species that live in our seas, right now.

Unlike spider crabs, which can be quite illusive, sea spiders have no qualms about walking around on the bottom of the ocean like they own the place. Presumably because they do. Let’s all be straight with one another on this - if you saw this creeping along your floor, you’d throw the deed at it and emigrate.

3. The sea pig is basically an alien landing craft

Now we know what you’re all thinking, because we can see you through your webcam. All of these GIFs are cool, but they’re not showing anything alien-like because we all know that real aliens glow. That’s like sci-fi rule numero uno, baby. With that in mind, please enjoy this GIF of a (glowing) sea pig slowly trundling along the ocean floor without a care in the world.

The sea pig ticks pretty much every box on the alien checklist: it glows and it has tentacles, and if it had a ray gun we could pretty much call these things our overlords right now. Because oh yeah, according to experts, sea pigs and their cousins, Elasipoda, make up 95% of the animals on the deepest parts of the ocean floor.

If that wasn’t enough to unsettle you, their primary purpose is to make the ocean floor habitable for other creatures. Yes, these things are literally terraforming our planet as we speak and they’re so deep in the ocean we can’t do a thing to stop them.

2. The Bobbit worm is a 10 foot long worm that could snap your femur

Though a lot of the stuff we’ve shared with you today is weird or odd looking, virtually none of the creatures we’ve shown you are capable of causing you lasting harm. Even the goblin shark and that thing has a mouth that could double as a bear trap. However, that all changes when we show you this GIF of the Bobbit worm. A creature that so deadly that it’s literally named after a lady who cut her husband’s penis off with a pair of scissors.

Though it doesn’t look like much in that image, the Bobbit worm can grow to 10 feet long and it has been known to eat fishing hooks specifically designed to catch it. If it really wanted to it could have pulled itself from the ground and inhaled that fish like a cheap taco, but it didn’t because the Bobbit worm will never let us humans know its true form.

The worm is so mysterious that only a handful, if any, have ever been observed properly in the wild, meaning that their eating and reproduction habits are essentially unknown to us. All we really know for sure is that their jaws are sufficiently strong enough to snap a man’s thigh bone in two, and they strike so fast Bruce Lee would probably be caught off guard by one.

1. The flatworm is a floating carpet of colours

Because we felt bad about the last entry basically telling you that the ocean was home to a 10 foot long penis eating monster, this entry is a little more fabulous. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a flatworm.

Though this thing looks more like someone dropped a Snickers wrapper into the ocean and it got picked up by an undercurrent, it is a living breathing creature that calls our ocean its home. Known to scientists and fans of scrabble as platyhelminthes, flatworms are an odd bunch of creatures mostly known for their strange habit of stabbing each other with their wangs (penis).

And that is the image we want to leave you with today, because nothing says that our ocean is full of alien-like creatures more than a flying string of colourful snot that stabs other creatures with its manhood. Nothing!

Top image: Flatworm gif via Giphy.com.

[Source: Toptenz. Edited. Top image added.]