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.