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Bizarre Animals From Around The World (PHOTOS)

PHOTOS: The Most Bizarre Animals Ever
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Courtesy of The Darwinian Tourist:

In his new travel-adventure-science book "The Darwinian Tourist" (Oxford University Press), biologist Christopher Wills shows why looking at the world in an evolutionary way makes total sense. Wills, a researcher on ecology and evolution at the University of California, San Diego, takes his readers on a tour of the planet that includes shifting continents and simmering volcanoes, emerging species, astounding adaptations, and some of humanity's greatest evolutionary journeys. Here are a few of the amazing creatures that he and his camera encountered along the way.

Bizarre Animals Around The World
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A fierce predator, this mantis shrimp of tropical reefs can snap its claws forward so rapidly that they leave bubbles of vacuum in the water. As the bubbles collapse, they emit flashes of light.
(02 of12)
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If you dive on a coral reef, you will encounter many creatures. They are all your relatives, but this pygmy seahorse may be one of the closest!
(03 of12)
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So is this spiny devilfish!
(04 of12)
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The swollen tummy of this proboscis monkey from Borneo is filled with fermenting leaves. These monkeys eat almost nothing else.
(05 of12)
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This Durban dancing shrimp has adapted to the crowded and fiercely competitive life on the reefs of the Andaman Sea, north of Thailand.
(06 of12)
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A slender cornetfish stays poised above the head of this bumphead parrotfish on a Palau reef. The cornetfish gets a free lunch of tiny creatures as the parrotfish crunches coral with its powerful jaws.
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An Indri lemur from Madagascar sends a mating and warning call echoing for miles through the forest.
(08 of12)
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Another of Madagascar's amazing adaptations, this giraffe-necked weevil uses its long neck as a crane to build a nest for its eggs.
(09 of12)
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This leaf-tailed gecko, yet another denizen of the endangered evolutionary playground of Madagascar, does an astounding imitation of a dead leaf.
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The first of our close human relatives to leave Africa and get as far as Indonesia encountered these fierce Komodo dragons. Wills was almost bitten by this one as it chased everybody off the dock on Rinca Island.
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The ancestors of this crested black macaque, which lives on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, took a long journey on a continental tectonic plate. They eventually met the animal on the next slide.
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This bear cuscus, which also lives on the island of Sulawesi, is a relative of the kangaroos of Australia. It has finally met up with black macaque after 180 million years of separate evolution.

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