Everyone loves cute animals. Whenever we see one, something clenches deep inside ours heart and we just want to love and squeeze and hold them forever. But behind every cute face lies the capacity for utter and complete monstrosity, savagery beyond imagination, and just plain grossness.
Here are a few horrifying facts about some animals you may have wanted to squishy face in the past. Some of these are utterly disgusting. You've been warned.
Baby koalas eat poop.
We all love baby koalas. They're fuzzy, heartwarming little bears that we just want to cuddle and love forever. But did you know they eat poop?
"The leaves are really hard to digest, they're tough and fibrous," Caroline Monro, Wild Life's main koala keeper explained. "So once the joey feeds on pap it allows them to get that gut bacteria into their stomach, so they can then digest these eucalyptus leaves."
Koalas have chlamydia.
See that fuzzy bear clinging to a tree? Don't pick it up because it might have an STI. In fact, in some parts of Australia, up to 90 percent of the bears are infected. Australian wildlife officials are doing everything they can to combat the illness, but it's an uphill battle.Male dolphins are extremely rapey.
Male bottlenose dolphins are known to form gangs that abduct females of their kind, who they then proceed to violently rape for weeks and weeks. When the poor female tries to leave, they slap and abuse her. Oh, and if there are no females around, they'll rape a male instead.Dolphins carry STIs.
LOTS and LOTS of STIs. Dolphins really like to have sex – they even masturbate a lot – so they're factories of sexually transmitted infections, which they spread among their kind. So next time you see a dolphin, just know that it probably has the dolphin version of the clap.Dolphins engage in "nasal intercourse."
Which is exactly what it sounds like. Male dolphins stick their penises into the blowholes of other dolphins and they stimulate themselves. Nature is fascinating.Dolphins have a brutal way of killing octopi.
See, octopi are really smart animals – so smart, they have a decentralized nervous system, which means some of their neurons are in their tentacles. Because of this, the tentacles will keep moving even after other parts of the creature is dead, trying to escape.
To prevent choking to death from wriggling tentacles, dolphins rip apart octopi, slam them repeatedly into the water, and generally bludgeon the living daylights out of them before they eat them.
Fascinating.
Otters rape baby seals.
Don't be fooled by all those pretty pictures of otters holding hands so they don't drift apart, these animals are extremely brutal. Sea otters are known to rape baby seals to death, and then, to sometimes guard the corpse for weeks while they continue doing so.
Other animals aren't the only ones that suffer from the sexual aggression of male otters. About 10 percent of female otter deaths are because of copulation, and when there's a scarcity of females... well, then they start chasing other animals, so keep Fido locked up if there's otters nearby.