Animals Who Are Clearly Glitching In The Simulation
Some animals are majestic, powerful, and awe‑inspiring.
Others look like the universe hit “randomize character” too many times and just… shipped it.
This is a tribute to those creatures: the ones that look like bugs in reality’s code, walking proof that the simulation is being run on Windows 95. By the end, you’ll either be convinced we’re in a glitchy video game, or you’ll just have five new animals to aggressively send to your group chats.
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The Mantis Shrimp: Nature Installed 16K Resolution For No Reason
The mantis shrimp is what happens when evolution gets bored and starts modding.
This chaotic rainbow murder-shrimp can see colors humans literally cannot comprehend. While we get three types of color receptors (red, green, blue), mantis shrimp have up to **16**. That’s not “better eyesight.” That’s DLC.
Scientists think they may use this super‑vision to detect mates, prey, and predators, but honestly it feels like overkill. They’re essentially walking around with God-tier RGB gaming monitors installed in their faces, while we’re out here squinting at the TV like, “Is that dark blue or black?”
Oh, and their punch? Their little shrimp fists can accelerate as fast as a bullet fired from a gun. The impact can cause the water around them to literally boil and produce light for a split second (a phenomenon called cavitation). So yes, this animal can:
- See more colors than we have names for
- Punch so fast it breaks physics
- Do both while looking like a Lisa Frank folder that started a bar fight
If that’s not a glitch, it’s at least a very aggressive patch update.
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Axolotls: The Salamanders Who Refuse To Grow Up
Axolotls are salamanders that basically said, “Adulthood? No thanks.”
Most amphibians go through a glow‑down: cute baby tadpole → awkward teen → weird adult. Axolotls just… stop halfway and stay there forever. It’s called **neoteny**, which is science’s fancy way of saying “eternal baby mode.”
They keep their fluffy external gills, wide smiley faces, and general “I just spawned in this level, what’s happening?” vibe for their entire lives. On top of that, they can:
- Regrow limbs
- Regenerate parts of their spinal cord
- Repair parts of their heart and brain
Evolution basically gave them built‑in respawn with bonus cosmetic features. Meanwhile, you sleep wrong one time and your neck is broken for three days.
Scientists study axolotls to understand tissue regeneration and potential medical breakthroughs. The axolotl, presumably, is just vibing in a tank like, “Sure, I’ll grow another arm, whatever, man.”
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Platypus: The Animal That Looks Like A Mistranslated Drawing
The platypus is irrefutable evidence that the universe has a sense of humor.
Imagine describing this animal to someone who’s never seen it:
- It’s a mammal
- It lays eggs
- It has a duck bill
- It has webbed feet
- It has fur
- The males have **venomous spurs** on their back legs
At some point, this stops sounding like biology and starts sounding like a Dungeons & Dragons character created by a chaotic neutral player. When European scientists first saw a platypus specimen in the 18th century, they genuinely thought it was a fake stitched‑together hoax.
To make this even weirder, platypuses don’t have nipples. They “sweat” milk through pores in their skin, and the babies just lick it off the fur like it’s a living cereal bowl. Also, their bills are loaded with electroreceptors that detect tiny electric fields from underwater prey, like some kind of organic radar system.
So yes, nature put egg‑laying, venom, fur, duck parts, and electro-sensing onto one animal. That’s not evolution; that’s a randomizer setting someone forgot to turn off.
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Tardigrades: The Indestructible Potato Crumbs Of The Universe
Tardigrades, aka water bears, are microscopic little blobs that look like vacuum lint with legs—and they are nearly impossible to kill.
When life gets rough (no water, extreme heat, freezing, radiation, outer space, Monday mornings), tardigrades don’t die. They just fold themselves up, turn into a crunchy little survival mode called a “tun,” and wait it out. They’ve survived:
- Temperatures close to absolute zero
- Heat over 300°F (150°C)
- The vacuum of space
- Intense radiation
You can’t get your phone to survive a minor splash of water, but this crunchy micro-potato can take a casual stroll through space and come back like, “Anyway, what’s for dinner?”
Scientists think tardigrades might help us understand how life endures extreme environments, or even persists on other planets. Personally, they just feel like the default NPCs the universe uses for stress testing.
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Lyrebirds: The Forest’s Unhinged Voice Recorder
Lyrebirds are Australian ground birds with one main hobby: **perfectly imitating basically any sound they hear.**
Other birds learn songs. Lyrebirds download the entire soundscape and hit play. They’ve been recorded copying:
- Chainsaws
- Camera shutters
- Car alarms
- Construction sounds
- Other bird calls
- Human voices (a little too well, honestly)
Imagine a forest where you hear a car alarm, a camera clicking, and someone whistling—only to realize it’s just one bird doing the audio equivalent of stand‑up comedy.
They use this talent mostly for mating displays, because nothing says “I am a strong and capable mate” like accurately reproducing the sound of heavy machinery and human chaos. It’s like Mother Nature invented a bird and then accidentally installed “Full TikTok Audio Library” in its brain.
If the simulation ever crashes, it’ll be because some lyrebird tried to imitate the error message.
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Conclusion
Some animals are majestic symbols of nature’s power.
These are not those animals.
These are the walking patch notes, the biological Easter eggs, the “oops I hit random but it’s kind of fire so I’ll keep it” creatures. They’re proof that the universe is either:
1. A chaotic improviser with zero design rules, or
2. A very bored programmer seeing what they can get away with
Either way, the next time you’re feeling weird or “not normal,” remember: somewhere out there is a venomous, egg‑laying, electro-sensing mammal with no nipples, and that is considered a completely valid life choice.
So go ahead and send this to someone who needs to see how unhinged reality truly is. If we’re living in a simulation, at least the DLC content is entertaining.
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Sources
- [Smithsonian Ocean: Mantis Shrimp](https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/invertebrates/mantis-shrimp) - Overview of mantis shrimp vision, behavior, and ultra-fast punching abilities
- [National Institutes of Health (NIH): Axolotl Regeneration Research](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/decoding-axolotls-ability-regrow-body-parts) - Explains how axolotls regenerate limbs, spinal cord, and other tissues
- [Australian Museum: Platypus](https://australian.museum/learn/animals/mammals/platypus/) - Details on platypus biology, venom, egg-laying, and milk secretion
- [NASA: Tardigrades in Space](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/tardigrades-and-baby-squid-head-to-space) - Discusses tardigrades’ extreme survival skills and space experiments
- [BBC Earth: The Superb Lyrebird](https://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151109-the-lyrebird-the-greatest-mimic-in-the-world) - Describes lyrebirds’ mimicry of chainsaws, cameras, and other human-made sounds