Leopard Skate

Fish > Sharks & Rays

The Leopard Skate (Bathyraja panthera) is an exceptionally striking, newly described cartilaginous fish native strictly to the icy, storm-swept deep waters of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Formally described by ichthyologists in 2011, this deep-sea elasmobranch...

Priapium Fish

Fish > Ray-finned Fish

The Priapium Fish (Phallostethus cuulong) is one of the most anatomically bizarre and evolutionary startling vertebrates on Earth. Discovered in 2012 swimming in turbid estuarine canals of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, this tiny, near-translucent freshwater fish...

Northern Potoo

Birds > Nightjars & Allies

The Northern Potoo (Nyctibius jamaicensis) is one of the most mesmerizing, eerie, and comical nocturnal avian creatures in the Western Hemisphere. Renowned globally for its uncanny ability to transform its entire body into the spitting image of a dead wooden fencepost...

Hairy-legged Vampire Bat

Mammals > Bats

The Hairy-legged Vampire Bat (Diphylla ecaudata) is one of only three extant mammal species on Earth adapted to feed entirely on blood (obligate hematophagy). Unlike its famous and ubiquitous cousin, the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus), which targets sleeping...

Pelagic Parasite Slug

Invertebrates > Mollusks

The Pelagic Parasite Slug (Phylliroe bucephala) is one of the most astonishing evolutionary transformations in the animal kingdom: a nudibranch sea slug that completely abandoned the ocean floor to live and swim like an open-ocean fish. Drifting through the boundless...