Describe the strangest animal in the universe.
I don't think I can answer this question. Animals are complex and surprising, but the universe is so much more complicated than that! I could go on forever with weird stuff in physics / cosmology, or just about any other field of science you care to name. For instance:
"The strangest thing in biological evolution is not a case where something has evolved from an organism into another one (which happens all the time), but instead is the appearance of two identical species, each descended from the same ancestor — which nevertheless do totally different things." [source] "Now there seems no reason why natural selection should produce large numbers of extremely similar species, except perhaps if they were all parasites of some sort, living off other creatures without contributing anything useful themselves." [Source, commenting on a New York Times article)
Or take a look at these critters:
[Image source: x.]
These organisms all have very specialized ecological niches; for example, many of them only grow during certain phases of life cycles, such as when a seashell pulsates its mantis shrimp larva inside it, or when beans sprouts open up to become tomatoes. But we know next to nothing about how they work internally – we really have no idea what's going on down there in those tissues. And yet they seem to exist for reasons that aren't obvious based solely upon our understanding of their superficial behavior. In fact, given their apparent lack of complexity, it might even be argued that evolution had little use for giving them their peculiar features beyond whatever utility they provide within specific contexts. So . . . yeah . . . strange








