idk if anyone has mentioned it here but... the pangolin?? such a cool looking animal
unfortunately they're endangered, found out about them from a documentary
This is a sand cat and they are one of the cutest things I have ever seen. Aren't they adorable?
What animal do you think more people should know about?
binturongs
I read about them in a magazine a while back and they have this thing they use to mark their territory and it smells like popcorn
ANY SIPHONOPHORE!
They're multiple organisms working together as one, which is my favorite type of organism
(Thank you Wikipedia for helpfully grouping some of these dudes all together in one picture)
a lot of people know the crash bandicoot games but the actual animal is a lot less well known. i did a few presentations about them in high school (god bless teachers who let you pick your topics) and both times everyone had either never heard of them or assumed it had been made up for the game lol. personally i especially like the eastern barred bandicoots but theyre all cool
also hydras! i remember the internet being obsessed with tardigrade's "immortality" ages ago, but that was...highly overstated lol, and hydras are a much better example of "immorality" as far as it can actually exist. they're actually biologically immortal (which still isn't immortal exactly but they have constantly renewing stem cells so they don't age, so theoretically in perfect conditions they can live forever) and far more difficult to kill. i will always be convinced that tardigrades only became popular because they look more like animals we're used to, hydras are way better idc
Moonrats! They’re hedgehog relatives that look like opossums. They have an prehistoric ancestor called Deinogalerix, and these guys were the size of a small-medium sized dog.
Secretarybirds! They're part of their own separate family, and are considered endangered. :[
Although, they stomp on their prey with their legs, and have been known to prey on adders and cobras, which is pretty cool.
I also think about the vampire squid a lot, ever since I watched Octonauts.
Oh! And the dumbo octopus. I remember that one video where the researchers were observing it as it was just vibing on the seafloor, and it was very shy and hid itself with its tentacles. Adorable. :)
EDIT: Saw someone already post secretarybirds, so I offer another birb!
The black-naped pheasant pigeon! Their numbers have been slowly declining to a point where it was thought to be lost to science (due to no more sightings of it since the 19th century, from what it seemed)... until it got rediscovered 140 years later in Papua New Guinea.
