What was the weirdest animal you've seen IRL that you don't know if it's known?Pic unrelated
>>42226730An american.It's italian, irish, jewish a at the same time. Has spent a lot of time in florida so burnt and has bad skin.
>>42226730When I was a kid, my neighborhood was just being built, new house. It was a big suburb in central Indiana. Old cornfield was getting turned into suburban sprawl so there was kind of a weird mix of old field wildlife still hanging around their old area, which was not field anymore.Several retention ponds were build all around the neighborhood before the houses were all put in. Ours was finished and we moved in during maybe the first third of the houses so we were there early with a lot of open space for the future houses.I was maybe 8 or 9 and walking a circle around one of those ponds and looking at the water animals that hang out along the edge of the water. There was this empty pineapple slice can (you know, the really big ones) sitting in the edge, mostly submerged and with the opening facing the water. For whatever reason it interested me and I leaned down to pick it up. When I did, this massive fucking tadpole swam out of it and into the murky water. The fat fucker was almost the entire circumference of the pineapple can. I cannot stress enough how huge and rotund this fucker was. Nearly baseball size. Maybe fully that. It was kind of a bright lavender color and didn’t even appear to have any legs, even the little ones. It reminded me of poliwag because pokemon was popular at the time.No fucking clue what kind of animal that was. Clearly an amphibian and not a fish. Even bullfrog tadpoles don’t get that big or look like that in my understanding.
>>42226824It was probably a small catfish, young catfish look a lot like an oversized tadpole from above, he was hiding from predators in that can, he was probably dinner for a turtle or another larger catfish (yes they are cannibals)
>>42226824Hormone imbalances can cause tadpoles to keep growing rather than transform.
>>42227736Holy shit, I didn't know they could even do that. I assumed they would just die for physiological reasons if they couldn't transform, not be able to live like that indefinitely. Seriously cool, and probably what anon saw.
>>42227736Oh yeah anon that’s almost exactly itThe one I saw was a more vibrant purple color and I don’t remember the tail being quite so robust but this is pretty much it. Case closed I guess. Been wondering about that one for like 20 years now kek
>>42228267in 20 years you never thought to google "big tadpole"?
>>42231542I mean it wasn’t -that- big of a mystery to me kek. I was young enough that there was some doubt that I actually even saw the thing. Even now, tadpole in bright lavender color isn’t something that should have been in my area. The green ones make sense because they’re bullfrogs which are a huge species to begin with. Whatever I saw was equally large but pretty different. I still cannot find an actual picture of what I saw. Just willing to close case on “close enough”
>>42226788good lord
>>42226730I was playing in my grandpa's garden as a kid. In the grass, I found a giant caterpillar around the length of my entire hand. It was so big that I was scared to approach it. It was bright green and had a segmented body. Here comes the strange part: At the top of its tail was a large, fake "face" in bright red. It looked similar to a carved pumpkins face. Its real head had a big red horn on it, and two tiny beady black eyes. I suppose the head was disguised as a tail, and the tail as a head. I tried looking in insect guides for this animalz but could never find it. I know there exist caterpillars who look similar to snakes, but this was different
>>42233716This guy?Elephant hawk moth
>>42226730not a cripted but it was weirdsome months ago I was smoking a cig in my yard, there was this squirrel like clinging onto my tree nearby, like where his head it pointing towards the ground you know? I waved at him and said something like "hello there" and was shocked because he extended one arm out like he was trying to wave. and I cant explain it, but if you watch animals enough you can notice certain sort of facial expressions. his eyes and face during this looked like "uh, ok?" while he waved his arm. he looked like he understood me, then just casually went on his way.I've seen other weird behavior from the squirrels around here, but that event stood out.
>>42233856I talk to all animals like they can understand me kek and also a smoker so I know the sort of interaction you’re talking about. I don’t use the weird baby voice or anything, just talk to them like they’re regular people going about their day.They react almost as if in direct acknowledgment pretty surprisingly often; it’s not just that they looked over at you or whatever, they do something involving your words or mimicking actions.Only animal I’ve ever had wave back was a praying mantis but I release shitloads of them into my yard on purpose every year so I see them more than usual and tbdesu he was probably just threatening me
>>42234017I remember this YouTube comment I read under someone video about mantis intelligence I think. the person told a story that they were boating and saw a mantis trapped on a branch sticking out of the water, they said they pulled up and the mantis climbed on to the boat and stayed still while he took him to dry land and then looked back at him as if understanding before he climbed onto a tree. they might be self aware.it seems like a lot of animals that normally avoid humans seem to understand that when they are trapped, that some human will help them get out. you can find a lot of stories and videos like that. sometimes from their body language they know you're getting them out of this. and in some cases they'll make noise to get a humans attention when they see one and they're stuck, when other wise those same types of animals usually avoid and try to not be detected by people.
>>42234050Huh, no fuckin’ way. Glad I said something because I’ll watch them closer this year. One very interesting thing is that there are three types of mantis which are in my region, with one being fairly rare. That first year I only released the one species but all three showed up in my yard in great number. I unironically wondered if they called their cousins when the party startedPic rel was from the other species. He let me watch him molt like that for an hour or so, then he lived in that coleus and hunted for the rest of the season. Looked at him every smoke break but he seemed to like the mornings of sunny days most of all.I seed so many of them and take care of them by planting flowers which attract their prey that I joke I am a good friend to the mantis community
>>42234073>some XL saxxxx I have for this year.>3 days of 70+ degrees overnight in a row and they’ll be flooding out of these like water>so cool to watch
>>42234073perhaps you could make up some kind of intelligence test for them.animals might be more intelligent than we know, its just w are not paying enough attention, or not looking for the right thing. this past year I've seen one guy in Japan figure out some type of birds words, and a guy here in America decode prairie dog language using tests and observations. both those species were using specific words for different types of predators or humans, with prairy dogs mentioning colors the persons wearing "green human" "blue human" it just took a man investigating it seriously.
>>42234098Sounds like a job for me, honestly. I have family money and don’t work so I just grow plants all year, with a lot of it taking place in indoor tents (ty stonertech. Couldn’t do it without you guys)I’ve got all day to watch them and write and take pictures. First big issue is that they don’t really deal with sound the way we do at all, they mostly respond to vibrations and buzzing as extensions of sound. They’re very gesture heavy but having a head turn toward stimuli alone isn’t going to show any great intelligence kekPlus to your point about the wave: I looked it up and pic rel is their threat posture. None of them ever did this to me, the one just waved when I waved. I think they could recognize me too because many of them just camped a specific plant but wouldn’t be around if I brought my friends or family out there.
>>42234017Hey that looks like my hardiness zone. What are they good for? Do you keep a garden?
>>42234127Pest control for hard body insects, mostly. The smaller ones like >>42234073 are really good for aphids. The big ones like >>42234017 are pretty outclassed in their helpfulness category by assassin bugs. The assassin bugs are just much hungrier and they hunt with a piercing probe kinda thing so they just DESTROY shit and walk around like haughty little tanks kek. The big ones are really majestic to look at, though.Keep a garden every year! Got at least 50 tomato plants alone in the tents right now to give away to friends and family because they’re brainlets who can’t grow shit from seed but also don’t deserve to pay five fucking dollars for a tomato plant kek
>>42226730Not quite an animal, when I was in maybe 4th or 5th grade this giant patch of really bizarre creepy looking mushrooms grew in the schoolyard almost overnight. Looked like guts, for lack of a better description, like the same pink-red color as fishguts and all folded like intestines. I told a teacher about it and later he said that he went to look for it but couldn't find it, and when I went to look at it the next day it was gone and the spot on the ground where it had grown was completely burned.
>>42226730>What was the weirdest animal you've seen IRLCat w wings fly down off the electrical wires and chase another cat.Was not high or under the influence. Went down a rabbit hole after and discovered others have indeed reported similar. I think there may have even been a wikipedia, but I can't remember. Weird shit.
>>42226730One time I was at a beach at night in New England. Three of us were hanging out on the shore, there was a bottle of wine but we were just relaxing after getting out of work late so not intoxicated. The shore was more of a harbor and the water was pretty calm. It was a clear night with the moon and stars out, reflecting on the water. We were there for some time just quietly talking, the shoreline was a backdrop so we didn't notice them at first. At some point we all simultaneously realized there were these glowing jellyfish -like creatures all along the shoreline and off into the water for about 20 feet or so, there must have been a hundred of them? Somehow they had quietly assembled. Only there were parts sticking out of the water - I remember some were shaped like bowling pins and others had longer necks almost swan-like. They were about the size of bowling pins, and others were more undefined still in the water about the size of a volleyball. The color was mostly a yellowish green, bio-luminescent glow. Some were more green and others slightly orange. The weird thing was that we didn't notice them until they were everywhere, about a 50' long school of them bobbing all along the water IN FRONT OF US. And yeah, I've seen plenty of glowing things in the water but never ones reaching up. Some of these necks/appendiges were a good 18" tall, with the rest of the grapefruit sized body in the water. I'm not sure who noticed first but I remember someone said "guys, are you seeing this?" We had a good 5-10 seconds of gazing at whatever was spawning and reaching up out of the water. Then in the distance, a car with a noisy engine, sped along the road behind us and ALL the lights went out at once. It was just complete black again with only the moon reflecting on the water. We were spooked and high-tailed it out of there. The 2 people I was with were from that area and had never seen anything like it. Not my waters so no clue.
>>42234224Stuff that comes out of the ocean is so interesting because anything that’s rare down there at all is going to be gigarare for any human to ever see.For example, Luna moths SEEM like really rare animals but are not. They just hatch and live for a period of about 2 weeks three times per summer and they only fly between midnight and 4am, when humans are least likely to be looking at bugs. Those cycles can’t be predicted to the exact day usually because they’re based on specific soil conditions.But if you look for them when they’re actually around, they’re just as common as any other moth. Could set up a light trap in the woods (spotlight pointed at white sheet) and get many scores of them by morning. But just for those two weeks and only for that one season.So if there was anything in the ocean with any similar lifecycle, how often would any human ever see one? Once ever couple hundred years?Or what if they have a similar lifecycle cycle in the middle of the ocean instead of anywhere near shore? We’d NEVER fucking see that thing. Expeditions to look for new animals take forever to plan, we can never be out there for very long, conditions are extremely harsh for us, and we can only search a ludicrously small area at any given time. There’s all kinds of shit out there, surely, that we just don’t know when and where to look for. Or even if they exist in conditions where we can. I find it even more believable when it’s a story like yours where the creature isn’t fantastically large and you see many at once.
>>42234145Thanks, I was just lamenting the aphids on my collards today and haven't had much luck in the past with neem oil or things like that. I have a couple of cherry tomatoes and jalapenos but pretty soon I'm going to have some acreage so big dreams, haha. As for animals, I also talk to them as I would greet a person, mostly birds and lizards. The green anoles will stop and look you in the eye and there's one curly-tailed lizard who lives in the front who will also stop one last time before darting under the leaves. We also have a mourning dove who made her nest right by the trash cans, so I let her know I'm coming when I'm about to dump something out. She let me bring my kids about 3 feet from her and say hi. Maybe it's telepathy and we're all in the same morphic field. Biblical apocrypha says that we were able to talk to animals at one point, but after the fall, God shut up their mouths to us. In the old testament there's a story of a man riding a donkey that kept stopping so he would whip it to get it to continue, then on the 3rd time God opened the donkeys mouth and he turns around and says "don't you see the angel with the flaming sword right in front of us?" Which then the man also saw. Either way, it's a sentient being who wants to enjoy life just like us and respect seems to be a language they understand.
>>42227736My town's ponds around the walking trails used to be full of these eternal chungus motherfuckers but then a flood came and genocided them :(
>>42226730Secret accidental /fae sightings/ thread. Good job OP.
>>42234321I have a robin that hangs out with me when I’m in the garden. It doesn’t fly away like other birds when I’m out there and nearby. I’ve tried to befriend the local corvids with no luck. They don’t seem to care for my peanutsIf your issue is aphids, you might need help sooner than the mantises will give you. Just looked it up in my photo library and last year mine hatched on June 12th in my zone, which is sounds like is similar to yours. They’re still cool to get but they also usually sell out early in the season for that reason. For more immediate help, you could look at ladybugs. Release a couple thousand of those in the plants that need help, cover with airy net (usually sold by ladybug people), and let them work for 3-5 days. Then just release them. They’re usually available year round in as much quantity as you need because people use them for spot treatment. Now is just the time when a lot of garden stuff runs low on stock because everyone is rushing it. I usually order my seeds and bugs in December because you have to compete with floridafags who can start stuff in fuckin’ January
>>42234266You're right. I'm fully prepared for this to be a real animal and not something paranormal. There's so many creatures you have to be at the right place at the right time to ever see them, especially when it comes to the oceans. Not long ago, those Boston fisherman went nuts over a sunfish but I'd never heard of it either. And now with all the shipping, we're seeing ribbon fish that were once only legendary. Who knows what else is out there.
>>42234050>>42234017mantids are hella cool. i can't remember that story from a breeder of them who was surprised to see his mantis solve a spatial puzzle to get to some prey. the mantis seemed to pause to judge distance and space/area and then did something.on a LOA thread there was some talk of how ignoring mosquitoes makes them attack less, but noticing them makes them more aggressive. in the same convo, they talked about how flies sense aggression and will flee when they sense the intent to harm them.i recently had a fly in my windowsill and i was in mild low-vibe (in a good benign way, just low-powered, not dark or evil) kinda way, and just tried to poke the fly out of the window proper. in typical trapped bug fashion, it would crawl on my fingertip but keep bonking into the glass and refuse to cooperate. took too long to get it out the window. but after that, i remembered how people said that flies sense intent to harm, and since there was none of that, the fly was chill. but dumb and stubborn and not cooperative.
>>42234050>>42234073oh yeah, there's a youtube outdoorsy guy, forgot the specific name, but he did a vid where he went out to the forest to find some vinegroons or pseudoscorpions, and he found many other critters. he was so used to handling random small animals, that he even actuallyput his hand over a wild gerbil and picked it up, and the gerbil remained utterly completely calm the whole time, and casually crawled around on his hand without the slightest concern.that one floored me. i've struggled to gently get birds out of a window without having them break their wings against me or walls (thankfully that didn't happen, because i was careful), mammals seem to be similarly on edge except for toxo rats who are oblivious, but it's arthropods and reptiles that tend to be the most chill and easy to handle.that guy's got some crazy skill. even i typically have to let a spider wear itself out with the hand-treadmill before it cools down. or blows a ton of energy.
>>42234338Good thing they're selling ladybugs right down the street. I like this spot-treatment approach and I even have some mosquito netting tulle-type fabric laying around. This particular area is hell on edible plants. If the scorching heat and intense downpours don't get you, something else is waiting to take it's place! Cheers, Green-Thumb Anon
>>42234345I somehow have a knack for catching rare fish. I didn’t do any fishing growing up but I married into a family that does all the time so I learned. Wife’s uncle lived down in Texas on Lake Toledo Bend for many years so we fished the lake fairly often. The first time I was there, I caught a bigass alligator garr early in the day. About midday I fished something up that really made him say wtf. Said he’d fished that area for many years before and never saw anything like it. I can’t really remember what it looked like because I was 17 and it was spring break of our senior year in high school so I’d brought weed and was highly stoned at the time. I do remember him getting home and looking through his fishing books for a long time, though. Never figured out what it was and it makes me feel proud because we still talk about it 16 years later
>>42226788Another europoor jealous of our hybrid vigor.
>>42234369I honestly have better luck with mammals even through they act super sketchy and suspicious like you’re saying. A big thing is that we are very direct in our approach and have eyes on the front of our face like predators. Small guys are usually prey animals so that wigs them the fuck out. You have to kind of unfocus your gaze or completely look away. They seem to find the side-look suspicious too. Then make your approach less direct. Watch how the prey animals move- they take a few steps one way, stop and look around for a moment, then a few more steps and repeat. So do that on your approach, kind of a zigzag where you pretend like you don’t even give a fuck. I’ve approached some pretty big dear close enough to touch them with that method but then I grew up and realized how easily they could gore me if I fucked up or some dumb shit happened in their walnut brain.
>>42234338robins always gave me dog vibes. idk what it is, the way they prefer to run around, they seem kind of heavy, and their chirping somewhat resembles barking.btw corvids prefer meat. sometimes people will accidentally make too much friends with ravens, even if they do the feeding at a certain location, the ravens follow them all over the area.
>>42234399>I fished something up that really made him say wtf. Said he’d fished that area for many years before and never saw anything like it. I can’t really remember what it looked like because I was 17 and it was spring break of our senior year in high school so I’d brought weed and was highly stoned at the time. I do remember him getting home and looking through his fishing books for a long time, though. Never figured out what it was and it makes me feel proud because we still talk about it 16 years laterhmm. another very important life event with the key detail completely blurred out. there's more discussion around it but the main focus is already forgotten.reminds me of an SCP story from the good ol days (2010's before a bunch of writers quit and deleted their stuff), about an entity that could not be directly referred to, could not be talked about, could not be described... but the researchers found out that it could be un-described, as in "it's NOT one of thsoe things" or "it does not have this trait".there's some greek word for something like that, a thing defined by what it isn't. it has no personal self definition, it can only be described as being unlike other things.
The babayaga has cryptid ears under his baclava. Don't send AI over to go see
>>42234348I always observe this with flies in my home. they will be flying around annoying me, but the second I pick up the fly swatter or bug spray they hide and I cant find them. they know. this happens every time. I tried googling this before and didn't find anything. I even tested this. the area where they would sometimes sit on my porch, I sat the fly swatter and bug spray there and later came out to see them sitting on or around those items. so they aren't just noticing something that they learned was a threat, but they're noticing intent because they leave only when I put my hand on those items
>>42234450Specific ocular method of self control necessary to see spirits and fae etc. while waking also but must usually be practiced first in dream. They scatter easily all parts of themselves
>>42234450Similar dynamic for fellow predator animal and God encounters lol
>>42234519I came into contact with one of these things and concluded it is somewhere past "3" but between 4 and 5 if that makes any sense. Something entirely more automatic and encompassing than a trickster entity.
>>42234753wdym?
>>42234224Pyrosoma quite likely, some are fairly short and some are very long.
>>42234857"Pyrosomes consist of colonies of small zooids." It looks like what I saw, but now I'm learning that each one was made up of a thousand individual organisms? That's wild.
I used to squirrel hunt after school on an oak ridge near my house in the driftless area of sw Wisconsin. One day I shot a squirrel, and it fell out of the tree and I walked to retrieve it. As I got close to the squirrel, I could see it had a large lump on its back just above the front legs. It looked like a tumor. As I bent down to pick it up and examine it, a slimey black thing like a cross between a slug and a snake slithered out of the "tumor". It really freaked me out, and I backed away from it, and the slug/snake disappeared into the leaf litter. I've tried to research what this might have been but I've never found any kind of parasite that could move like that. I've never seen anything like it since.
>>42236711They're not parasitic but the way you describe it moving sounds like a land planarian.
Headed to the garden store guysWhat should I get to attract an interesting animal?
>>42236711Quite possibly warbles from Cuterebrat botflies.
>>42237004Here's roughly what the larva would look like (it's from a sister species but nevermind that)
I surfed for about 20 years of my life, a lot. At least three times a week, often daily. So, spent a lot of time in the ocean. West coast-california up to washington. I'll try to post some of the strange stuff I've seen here in a bit-
One of the most common things that make ya go "hmm?" Out in the ocean- is just random bits and pieces of jelly, just gelatinous random blobs floating around that have no tentacles and aren't jelly fish. They could be any color you can think of, usually translucent and just kinda floating around, but they're moving slow with what seems to be purpose. I sometimes would think that when the waves were big, it was bits and pieces of actual jellyfish that were getting pummeled by the waves. I had a great white shark about 12-14 feet swim directly up under me while surfing a rivermouth in Humboldt county- I had just gotten a brand new short board, colored red- and was testing it out. Beautiful fall day, waves were really fun.There was about 10 of us out surfing, I had just gotten a wave and was kinda just sitting in closer towards shore. Thinking about heading in but just kinda sitting there on my board- at this rivermouth there's a lagoon where the sand from the river empties into the ocean and made a big area of like 10 foot deep water that you'd have to paddle across to get out to the waves. Anyways, I'm looking around and scanning the horizon. And out of my peripheral vision I saw a large silhouette moving snake like up from the bottom and coming towards me. I did a double take and looked to my right again to see grey and white, and then finally as it got directly under me I could see it's mouth, teeth and big beady black eye. It was coming directly up towards my legs, I froze up and just held my breath. But in that few seconds of interaction I realized the sharks body language was casual. He was basically coming up to check me out. He got within kicking distance as I sat on the board and for a split second I thought about kicking him. As I tucked my legs up to avoid him bumping me, there was a split second where we were making direct eye contact.The shark kinda arced away from me slowly and then straightened up like an arrow- and vanished into the depths-
The speed that the shark swam off with was insane. And you could just tell how fuckin powerful it was. The direction he swam off in was right at the little pack of surfers sitting outside. I yelled shark at the top of my lungs to get their attention. We all made it in, but was one of the longest paddles of my life. Took me a few months to have the balls to paddle back out to that spot.I realize it's not a cryptid but just an interesting interaction anyways. I've got plenty more stories. I'll try to post more when I get a chance-
>>42237206>random bits and pieces of jellyPossibly salps. They usually cluster together into rings and chains, but sometimes break up into the individual organisms.
Had grey whales cruise within reaching distance and even been rained down on by their spout. Dolphins are always cruising around and will share a wave with you. They are special but we all know that.Another spot we used to surf all the time down in central California- was a reef and kelp bed. Very sharky, a friend and I paddled out and for whatever reason a small female harbor seal took a liking to us, following us around as we paddled and popping up to look at us. At some point she actually came up directly to me and was acting like she wanted up- out of the water- and into my board. That made me nervous because I have heard of similar instances, when it was known that there was a large predator (shark) in the area. A bit later on in the session as that seal was still hanging around us she actually swam up to me and used her flippers to hug my leg. Just holding my leg and staring at me all super cute like harbor seals are. I was worried of getting bitten by the seal but she was so gentle and literally just seemed to want some attention. Could have been that the wetsuit I had on felt good like seal blubber and she was lonely. No idea, but that same seal hung around the spot for a couple weeks and would always hang with us there.
>>42237375Any stories about squids?In a way, I hope not. I hear Humboldts can be insanely vicious.
Another surf trip, was heading back up the coast through Big Sur on highway 1. Had a great vantage point if the Pacific ocean and looking out I noticed a certain patch, or area of the ocean there was a fuck load of disturbance and commotion going on. Things breaking the waters surface and then massive flocks if birds diving down into it.I busted out the binoculars and took a better look- it was crazy. You could see dolphins, porpoises of all types, seals, all moving a south to north and hunting schools of fish together. With the birds getting whatever they could too, all kinds of diving birds and pelicans hitting the water. And then behind all of that there were whales spouting off- the whole scene was massive. Not just like a small patch of ocean, were talking square miles. I was like whoa.... Anyways when I got home some hours later- flipping thru channels on TV. I believe it was PBS had a special on and it was live, they had helicopters getting footage of that all from the sky. They were filming that whole situation as it came into Monterey Bay and explained it's an annual thing when certain bait fish school in large numbers.
>>42237450It’s so cool to see something in person and then have it reported on the news. I don’t know, something about that is just very satisfying.My fiancée works for a company that is developing flying cars. I rode in one for a night test once and our local news interviewed a couple people who thought we were ayyys kek
No squids, thankfully as well. Lol I want nothing to do with that beak. Giant squid, or Humboldt squid are known to reach crazy size. To think about giant squid and sperm whales battling it out down in the dark inky depths of the ocean is kinda mind blowing to me. I got more, again nothing cryptid but I'll try to get back in here later.
Back in, I think August of last year, I saw a strange creature walking in my garden. It sort of shambled about and looked like a raccoon, and making out its shape was hard in the ~4am darkness. I saw a brief flash of a tiny white light from where it was walking, I think that was its eyeshine. The creature came up to the corner of a flower bed, when it suddenly seemingly cloned itself several times and sprinted off in multiple directions. If it were multiple creatures the whole time they would’ve had to have been lined up perfectly behind each other, I had a top-side view of the beast.
Could have been a possum, they will walk around with their babies attached, clinging to them. Lol that sounds like a funny scenario. Possum gang assembled!They're cool creatures. And good to have around usually.
>>42226730discordgg/7kMhrksaGT
