Here are the weirdest animal behaviors discovered in 2022

It's surprising how little we actually know about the animal kingdom relative to the mysteries yet to be solved and secrets still to be revealed. From a "human-cockatoo arms race" to lemurs' habit of picking their noses with impressive depth, Scientific American presents "6 Weird and Wild Animal Behaviors Revealed in 2022." Here are two:

YUM, FOSSILS FOR LUNCH!

Researchers got a big surprise when their underwater cameras showed colonies of fuzzy deep-sea sponges carpeting extinct volcanoes in the extreme conditions at the bottom of the frigid, ice-covered Arctic Ocean. How were these creatures surviving in an area notoriously thin on food? It turns out they have bacteria that help them digest the fossils of long-extinct tube worms.

THE CREEPIEST NOSE PICKING YOU'LL EVER SEE

Little kids aren't the only ones who pick their nose and eat what they dig up. An aye-aye—a type of lemur—was spotted on camera "digging for gold." And it did so with its three-inch-long middle finger, typically used in the animals' nocturnal hunts for insects in logs. When inserted in an aye-aye's nose, the finger can reach all the way to its throat! As for why aye-ayes practice extreme nose picking, scientists aren't sure, suggesting perhaps they do it because they can.