That time a snake wore a decapitated fish head plus 9 other bizarro animal moments

In 1856 Charles Darwin penned a letter to his pal J.D. Hooker, whom he affectionately addressed as "My dear Hooker." In that message the revolutionary behind evolutionary theory touched on the question of whether jellyfish take in sperm orally. He then darkly remarked, "What a book a Devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature!"

Clearly, Darwin needed to vent to his dear Hooker about the weirdness he witnessed in the wild. Nature had filled his head with thoughts of jellyfish drinking baby-making juice and probably exposed him to the kinds of deaths that would give serial killers nightmares. Such scenes must have been extra shocking back in his day because Darwin didn't have the Discovery Channel to warn him about what he might see. But even now in the age of Shark Week, Mother Nature comes up with scenarios strange enough to give our heebie-jeebies a case of the willies. Here are 10 bizarro animal moments that feel like examples of unnatural selection.

Just as Smokey the Bear reminds Americans not to set forests alight, Bushy the wallaby teaches Australian children about bushfires. Unfortunately, Australia also has pyromaniacal raptors that are every bit as cunning as the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. Obviously, the raptors Down Under aren't dinosaurs; they're birds, which are widely believed to have evolved from dinosaurs. Only they're worse than their prehistoric ancestors because they figured out how to weaponize bushfires by intentionally spreading them.

According to Live Science, the aerial arsonists in question come in three varieties: brown falcons, black kites, and whistling kites. Known as fire foragers, these particular birds wait at the outer boundaries of wildfires so they can pick off fleeing animals. Because everything's deadlier in Australia, these hunters scare even more animals out of hiding by picking up smoldering grass blades and twigs and dropping them in previously unburned areas.

Claiming that untrained animals strategically set wildfires in order to prey on would-be escapees might sound like irrational paranoia about the lethal insects and brutal beasts that make Australia the bustling murder-scape we all know and fear. But Aboriginal people have known about the bird arson since forever, and scientists have observed it since at least the 1960s.

Remember when Kermit the frog's face got ruined in a terrible accident at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade? If you imagine that story as a horror movie about a real amphibian and crank up the creepiness to 11, the result still won't be nearly as eerie as what herpetologist Jill Fleming experienced in 2016.

As Live Science described, Fleming was in a Connecticut forest researching newts. What she didn't see was the eyeless, nose-less, tongue-less creature about to greet her. When she sat on a log to analyze her findings, a toad bumped into her feet and other things. When the collisions kept happening, it soon became clear that the animal wasn't just clumsy or saying hello.

It was probably saying "Help me," because the toad had a "stump covered by smooth tissue" and a tiny mouth hole where its face should have been. Fleming spent more than a year wondering how such a thing was possible and presumably screamed in her sleep each night before finally consulting Twitter for answers. A veterinary expert suggested that flesh-eating toad fly larvae feasted on the poor animal as it hibernated, and its otherwise healthy body hadn't yet succumbed to malnutrition. Alternatively, perhaps a predator ate its face.

What's not to love about raccoons aside from the scary parasites they carry, those aggressively beady eyes that radiate ill intent, and the fact that they raid your trash can and leave an absolute mess that you have to clean up in the morning? Well, if you live in Youngstown, Ohio, you might not have loved it when raccoons started acting like furry versions of the undead.

In 2018 Youngstown police fielded over a dozen calls about unsettling raccoon encounters. Resident Robert Coggeshall described one such run-in to WKBN. A seemingly entranced raccoon "would stand up on his hind legs, which I've never seen a raccoon do before," Coggeshall recalled, "and he would show his teeth and then he would fall over backward and go into almost a comatose condition." Attempts to shoo away the animal failed as the raccoon repeatedly fell in and out of its stupor and eventually followed Coggeshall to his door.

The uncomfortable incidents were made even more jarring by the fact that they mostly happened in broad daylight despite the fact that raccoons are nocturnal. Obviously, this was a job for science. Health officials quickly ruled out the possibility of zombies. In reality, the raccoons had distemper, a nasty neurological malady that spreads virally and mimics the symptoms of rabies.

When they aren't flashing their murder fangs, bears look downright huggable. So when footage of a black bear walking through Jefferson, New Jersey, on its hind legs surfaced online in 2014, the public was abuzz. The clip racked up hundreds of thousands of views, with some speculating that the bear was injured and others dismissing the footage as fake, per the Daily Record. Sadly, Option A proved true.

The bear, whom people dubbed Pedals because he was bipedal, had injured forelimbs and adapted by walking upright. By surviving in his compromised state and looking as cuddly as furry teeth can be, Pedals became an internet celebrity. Unfortunately, he also attracted real-world trolls. Angi Metler, the director of the Bear Education and Resource Program, wanted to place Pedals in a sanctuary because "hunters were gunning for him."

Metler's fears were realized when a hunter killed Pedals in 2016 during one of New Jersey's first bow-and-arrow hunts in decades.

Did you know that birds don't pee? In lieu of tinkling, they produce white "white paste" they like to dump on people's vehicles. But even though our feathered friends can't make urine, they can still get piss drunk like the birds in Gilbert, Minnesota.

In 2018 the weather was warm for too long and a frost arrived too early in Gilbert, according to ABC. But that may have made the climate just right for berries to ferment before birds consumed them. The result was a succession of unintended benders for young fliers whose livers weren't well-equipped for liquor. And you can probably guess what happens when a birdie throws back too many berry brews.

Blitzed birds dive-bombed cars and houses. One feathery menace crashed through a window. They recklessly weaved in and out of traffic, per the Washington Post, and one motorist claimed that two birds smacked against her windshield in one day. Another said she hit seven in a week. Inexplicably, some people called the police to … arrest the birds? Officer Chelsea Trucano probably didn't have small enough cuffs, but she did suggest building a "detox box" for birds by cutting holes in a cardboard box. At the very least people should warn the birds not to drink and dive.