300million-year-old relic used to create extra-terrestrials in sci-fi classic

Squeaky the Squirrel

This relic is in fact the ancient fossil that inspired the extra-terrestrial antagonists in Ridley Scott's classic sci-fi horror, Alien.

The creator of Alien was Swiss surrealist artist, Hans Rudolf Giger, who was sought out by Ridley Scott to design the creatures after he saw Giger's artwork Necronom IV, one among his many designs that are said to have been based on the fossils.

Mr Giger's designs - one of which was all too memorably seen bursting out of a character's chest on screen - went on to win his team an Academy Award for Best Achievement for Visual Effects on the 1979 film and the franchise that followed.
But the stranger than fiction fossil is actually the remains of an early form of life that existed on our own planet an incredible 300 million years ago.

And the extremely rare fossil captured the public imagination so much when it went on display in Switzerland that it not only attracted plenty of visitors, it also tempted a thief.
Police believe the thief - who broke into the case and stole the Aathal dinosaur museum's prize exhibit - is a fossil collector.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269655/The-300-million-year-old-fossil-inspired-Alien.html

Adam Khor

Yet some say the creature that inspired the adult Alien is still alive:







Its name is Phronima, and it does live inside the hollowed out body of another animal...

Capt'n Midnight

Moray eels have pharyngeal jaws

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utuxlfvlLEQ

Adam Khor

More bout eel bite

I remember seeing once an X-Ray video that showed the jaws in action but couldn´t find it anymore

Capt'n Midnight

cymothoa exigua the parasite that takes the place of the hosts tongue

http://izismile.com/2009/09/09/the_tongue_eating_louse_is_a_gross_parasite_living_in_a_fishs_mouth_18_pics.html

Rubecula

Good grief this is becoming a thread about horror stories. I am not eating cheese before I go to bed tonight after reading this stuff.

(Keep them coming folks)

http://blogs.discovery.com/animal_oddities/2010/09/killer-fungus-eats-ant-brains.html

Adam Khor

The parasitic barnacle Sacculina not only invades the body of a crab (even growing "roots" to suck the nutrients from its host) but also causes the male crab to transform into a female and become a slave to protect the parasite's brood:

The female Sacculina larva finds a crab and walks on it until it finds a joint. It then molts, injecting its soft body into the crab while its shell falls off. The Sacculina grows in the crab, emerging as a sac, known as an externa, on the underside of the crab's rear thorax, where the crab's eggs would be incubated.
After this invasion of the Sacculina, the crab is now unable to perform the normal function of molting. This would result in a loss of nutrition of the Sacculina and impair its overall growth. The natural ability of regrowing a severed claw that is commonly used for defense purposes is therefore lost after the infestation of Sacculina.
The male Sacculina looks for a female Sacculina adult on the underside of a crab. He then implants himself into her body and starts fertilizing her eggs. The crab (male or female) then cares for the eggs as if they were its own, having been rendered infertile by the parasite.
When a female Sacculina is implanted in a male crab it will interfere with the crab's hormonal balance. This sterilizes it and changes the bodily layout of the crab to resemble that of a female crab by widening and flattening its abdomen, among other things. The female Sacculina then forces the crab's body to release hormones, causing it to act like a female crab, even to the point of performing female mating dances.
Although all energy otherwise expended on reproduction is directed to the Sacculina, the crab develops a nurturing behavior typical of a female crab. The natural hatching process of a crab consists of the female finding a high rock and grooming its brood pouch on its abdomen and releasing the fertilized eggs in the water through a bobbing motion. The female crab stirs the water with her claw to aid the flow of the water. When the hatching parasite eggs of the Sacculina are ready to emerge from the brood pouch of Sacculina, the crab performs a similar process. The crab shoots them out through pulses creating a large cloud of parasites. The crab then uses the familiar technique of stirring the water to aid in flow.[3]

Galvasean

Freakin' house of horrors here! :eek:

Squeaky the Squirrel

Rubecula

If you like looking at horrible images I can recommend the images of Parasitic Worms. I think they are too awful to post on here and off topic a bit too. But when I saw them I was "OMG" mode.

Adam Khor

Rubecula wrote: »

If you like looking at horrible images I can recommend the images of Parasitic Worms. I think they are too awful to post on here and off topic a bit too. But when I saw them I was "OMG" mode.

I don´t like looking at horrible images... but then I have very specific standards for what is "horrible" and what is not... the creatures above are ok, but parasitic worms and insect larvae... no. Just, no.

Let's go back to topic, I say. :pac:

Capt'n Midnight

from another thread
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-terrifyingly-advanced-ways-animals-know-how-to-kill/

no doubt extinct species also used diverse strategies

Specifically, the fact that it is the only spider in the world that both manufactures and uses weapons to kill.

...
And even though shankin' a punk with your own ribcage is pretty hardcore, the Iberian ribbed newt doesn't even stop there: It also secretes a toxic poison through its skin -- not to try and ward off potential predators before it's chest-smashing time, but so the spiked ribs that it's shoving through its own abdomen will come out coated in its own poisonous flesh.

Jesus, that's not "stabbing a dude on your first day to show 'em you mean business" crazy; that's a "stabbing yourself just to show your enemies how to do it right, for a change" level of madness.

...
Over the generations, the blanket octopus evolved an immunity to the poison of the man o' war, not because it was getting preyed on by that species, but so it could get in nice and close to the thing and rip off its poisoned tentacles, which it then carries around the ocean and uses to whip anything that looks at it sideways

...
There's a scale for that stuff, the Schmidt Pain Index, and the tarantula hawk ranks No. 2 on it, second only to the bullet ant.

The tarantula hawk is one of the few insects that get drunk recreationally. It often gets off on fermented fruit juice for kicks, sometimes to the point that "[they] fly around a bit unsteadily."

So even if they're not actively out to kill you, just remember: Somewhere out there in nature, somebody's drunk driving a tiny helicopter with a 1/3-inch blade instead of a bumper, coated in the second most painful thing on the planet.