-
The stealthy ghost crab
The ghost crab is about as big as your hand but as fast as lightning. The eight-legged little creature moves across sandy beaches at 100 body lengths per second, up to 10 miles per hour. That’s blazing-fast compared to the size of a human and a cheetah, who achieve speeds of 11 and 20 body
-
The Potoo bird may be the scariest bird you’ve ever seen
The Potoo bird, or Ghost bird from Central and South America, gives off a startling expression. The strange-looking bird possesses a hooked snake-like bill with a massive gape the animal uses to swallow moths and other insects. But even more freaky are their yellow googly eyes that glow up at night. Potoo birds control pupil
-
The famous Zlatni Rat beach on Bol Brac Island, Croatia
Zlatini Rat, or Golden Cape, is one of Croatia’s most unique and popular beach destinations. It’s not hard to see why. The magnificent horn-shaped beach resides on the southern coast of the Croatian island of Brac, outside the resort town of Bol. The 1700-foot white-pebble beach formed by the collision of two currents also runs
-
Asperitas clouds form rippling waves in the sky
There are all types of stunning clouds — Lenticular, Mammatas — to name a couple. But the asperitas clouds take center stage. These clouds, which are dark and storm-like, look like Van Gogh painted waves in the sky. Asperitas clouds form in the wake of thunderstorms like Mammatus clouds, yet unlike the latter, asperitas clouds
-
The satanic leaf-tailed gecko wears nature in disguise
The satanic leaf-tailed gecko (uroplatus phantasticusis) wears many disguises. It has superior camouflage — special skin that evolved to look like plants — and can also scare away predators by opening its bright red mouth and hiss like a cat. These geckos can even shed their tail to deceive predators and lick their corneas to
-
The Patagonian mara is a strange and speedy rodent
The Patagonian mara of Argentina may be one of the most appealing animals on the planet. The world’s fourth largest rodent looks like a mashup of a small deer with the long ears and short tail of a rabbit. Along with being a large rodent — they can grow up to 2.5 feet long —
-
All that fur makes the Pallas’s cat look like an absolute unit
The Pallas’s cat is a cute little furball. Pallas’s cats are about the same size as domestic cats — they measure up to 26 inches in length and weigh around 10 pounds. But their body hair is twice as long as the hair on their head, so they appear much larger than they are. The fluffiest cats
-
The ghost of the rainforest: inside the hidden life of the Agami Heron
Hidden in the dense, waterlogged forests of Central and South America, the Agami Heron is a bird that even experienced ornithologists may never see in the wild. Known to many as the “ghost of the rainforest,” it slips along shadowy creeks and under mangrove canopies, more often heard than spotted. For those who do encounter
-
The Wave in Vermilion Cliffs National Monument
The Wave is a sandstone rock formation located in North Coyote Buttes of the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument on the Arizona and Utah borders. The swirling stone waves combine water and wind-eroded sandstone dunes, calcified vertically and horizontally, and fossilized over 190 million years. The rich red-vermilion rocks get their colors from iron oxide pigments. Only 20