6 animals with super-abilities

6 animals with super-abilities

1.The Dung Beetle:  Dung beetles live in many habitats, including desert, farmland, forest, and grasslands. They do not prefer extremely cold or dry weather. They are found on all continents except Antarctica. They eat the dung of herbivores and omnivores, and prefer that produced by the latter. Many of them also feed on mushrooms and decaying leaves and fruits. One type living in Central America, Deltochilum valgum, is a carnivore preying upon millipedes. Those that eat dung do not need to eat or drink anything else, because the dung provides all the necessary nutrients.A dung beetle can bury dung 250 times heavier than itself in one night.Dung beetles are currently the only known non-human animal to navigate and orient themselves using the Milky Way.Male Onthophagus taurus beetles can pull 1,141 times their own body weight: the equivalent of an average person pulling six double-decked buses full of people.Know more on Wikipedia.

2.The Frog-hopper: The frog-hoppers, or the super-family Cercopoidea, are a group of Hemipteran insects, in the suborder Auchenorrhyncha. Adults are capable of jumping many times their height and length, giving the group their common name, but they are best known for their plant-sucking nymphs which encase themselves in froth in springtime.Adult frog-hoppers jump from plant to plant; some species can jump up to 70 cm vertically: a more impressive performance relative to body weight than fleas. The frog-hopper can accelerate at 4,000 m/s² over 2mm as it jumps (experiencing over 400 gs of acceleration). Spittle bugs can jump 100 times their own length.Know more on Wikipedia.

 3.The Axolotl:  The axolotl is a neotenic salamander, closely related to the tiger salamander.

 The species originates from numerous lakes, such as Lake Xochimilco underlying Mexico City. Many species within the axolotl's genus are either entirely neotenic or have neotenic populations. In the axolotl, metamorphic failure is caused by a lack of thyroid stimulating hormone, which is used to induce the thyroid to produce thyroxine in transforming salamanders.The feature of the salamander that attracts most attention is its healing ability: the axolotl does not heal by scarring and is capable of the regeneration of entire lost appendages in a period of months, and, in certain cases, more vital structures. Some have indeed been found restoring the less vital parts of their brains. They can also readily accept transplants from other individuals, including eyes and parts of the brain—restoring these alien organs to full functionality. In some cases, axolotls have been known to repair a damaged limb, as well as regenerating an additional one, ending up with an extra appendage.Know more on Wikipedia.

 4.The Electric Eel:  Despite its name, the electric eel is not closely related to the true eels , but is a member of the neotropical knife-fish order, which is more closely related to the catfish.The electric eel has three pairs of abdominal organs that produce electricity: the main organ, the Hunter's organ, and the Sachs's organ. These organs make up four-fifths of its body, and give the electric eel the ability to generate two types of electric organ discharges: low voltage and high voltage. These organs are made of electrocytes, lined up so a current of ions can flow through them and stacked so each one adds to a potential difference.In the electric eel, some 5,000 to 6,000 stacked electroplates can make a shock up to 860 volts and 1 ampere of current (860 watts) for two milliseconds. Such a shock is extremely unlikely to be deadly for an adult human, due to the very short duration of the discharge.Know more on Wikipedia.

 5.The Peacock Mantis Shrimp:    It is a large mantis shrimp native to the Ind-Pacific from Guam to East Africa.Their ability to see circularly polarised light has led to studies to determine if the mechanisms by which their eyes operate can be replicated for use in reading Cd's and similar optical information-storage devices.It is an active hunter, it prefers gastropods, crustaceans, and bivalves, and will repeatedly smash its prey until it can gain access to the soft tissue for consumption. It is reported to have a "punch" of over 50 miles per hour (80 km/h). This is the fastest recorded punch of any living animal. The acceleration is similar to that in a .22 calibre handgun, with 340 pounds-force (1,500 N) per strike. In addition, the surface of its appendages is made up of extremely dense hydroxyapatite, layered in a manner which is highly resistant to fracturing. Glass aquarium can be broken by them.Know more on Wikipedia.

 6.The Water Bear:  Tardigrades(water bears) have barrel-shaped bodies with four pairs of stubby legs. Most range from 0.3 to 0.5 mm (0.012 to 0.020 in) in length, although the largest species may reach 1.2 mm (0.047 in). The body consists of a head, three body segments with a pair of legs each, and a caudal segment with a fourth pair of legs. The legs are without joints, while the feet have four to eight claws each. The cuticle contains chitin and protein and is moulted periodically.Tardigrades are one of the most resilient animals known: they can survive extreme conditions that would be rapidly fatal to nearly all other known life forms. They can withstand temperature ranges from 1 K (−458 °F; −272 °C) (close to absolute zero) to about 420 K (300 °F; 150 °C) for several minutes, pressures about six times greater than those found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 30 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to re-hydrate, forage, and reproduce. Tardigrades living in harsh conditions undergo an annual process of cyclomorphosis.Know more on Wikipedia.