The Plot Chickens

Alien Empire

Evolution has created countless wondrous creatures that are colorful, amazing and strange. The darker side of nature reveals some of the most bizarre forms natural selection has produced. Alien animals reveal their otherworldly features. Stick insects disguise even their droppings as twigs, water striders glide on liquid as if defying physics, and dragonfly nymphs strike with spring-loaded jaws while breathing through gills in their abdomen. Beneath the beaches of South Africa, plough snails lie buried, breathing through siphons as they swarm dead flesh in the surf. From kelp forests to freshwater pools, camouflage, mutation, and isolation have created animals that are stranger than fiction.