Top 12 Most Insane Photos From National Geographic That You Swear Aren't Real

THIS JUST IN: National Geographic photographers have access to some kind of alternate universe. Here's a peek.

1. Octopus in Italy

Photo by Pasquale Vassallo

Contemplate coming across this guy during a leisurely swim at the beach.

2. Nightly Swirl

Photo by Alex Cherney

"A long-exposure picture—posted to the night-sky photography community The World at Night (TWAN) in November—captures the stars' nightly swirl while auroras set the horizon aglow over Australia's Mornington Peninsula."

3. Cocooned Trees, Pakistan

Photo by Russell Watkins

"An unexpected side effect of the 2010 flooding in parts of Sindh, Pakistan, was that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising floodwaters; because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water took so long to recede, many trees became cocooned in spiderwebs."

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this is probably not something to mess around with if you're arachnophobic.

4. Oh, just an eye.

Photo by Suren Manvelyan

"Beauty is in the beheld eye of a 16-year-old boy in Yerevan. In this highly magnified view of his iris’s surface architecture, the central black pool is the pupil, and his lashes are reflected by the cornea. His eyelids appear as pink rims at top and bottom."

5. This guy.

Photo by Stephen Dalton

"England. Sporting feathery gills, a Mexican axolotl, about six inches long, paddles around a West Sussex fish tank. The unusual salamander species, whose numbers are dwindling in the wild, retains its larval features as an adult."

6. No, this is not SimCity.

Photo by Oscar Ruiz

"A few years ago when I was working as a helicopter pilot for a local radio station, we were required to fly around all of Mexico City chasing news and traffic. I remember flying up to the highway that connects Mexico City with the neighboring state of Puebla, and on my way back this housing complex that seemed to go on forever caught my attention. I decided to circle around to observe from up close what I later found out was the recently built San Buenaventura complex, which is located in Ixtapaluca, on the eastern outskirts of Mexico City."

7. Damselflies, Mating

Photo by Yeo Weng Sang

"A pair of mating damselflies forming a heart shape when mating."

Mating in the shape of a heart. So ideal.

8. Camel Thorn Trees, Namibia

Photo by Frans Lanting

"Tinted orange by the morning sun, a soaring dune is the backdrop for the hulks of camel thorn trees in Namib-Naukluft Park."

9. Archers National Park, Utah

Photo by Brett Webster

"The mighty weight of the entire Milky Way teeters precariously on Balanced Rock in Arches National Park."

10. Bee-Wearing Contest

Photo by Chinafotopress

"China—On his way to second place in a bee-wearing contest in Hunan Province, a contestant disappears beneath a carpet of insects lured by a queen bee in a cage. A scale he was standing upon tallied his total take: about 50 pounds of bees."

11. Invisible Man, China

Photo by Liu Bolin

"Invisibility becomes art at a Beijing sawmill in an image from Liu Bolin's "Hiding in the City" series. For each photograph the artist sports painstakingly painted camouflage. The assistants position his body so that he disappears from view."

12. Parrotfish Smiling, Great Barrier Reef

Photo by David Doubilet

"The clownish grin of a bridled parrotfish reveals its power tools: grinding teeth used to scrape algae from rock. Though sometimes destructive to individual corals, the fish's efforts are mostly beneficial. Without them, algal growth could smother the reef. Scarus frenatus"

OK, but really. What's with the missing tooth?