Are These The Ugliest Animals In The World?

They are certainly pretty ugly. But they have beautiful souls.

In an attempt to counter the idea that only cute endangered animals matter, the U.K.'s National Science and Engineering competition is holding a vote to decide which hideous animal should be the mascot for "the Ugly Animal Preservation Society." Here are the contenders, ranked in order of ugliness:

The Blobfish.

Via youtube.com

Poor blobfish — the saddest little creature in the ocean. Just look at his face. His miserable, gelatinous face.

Update: the Blobfish won.

The Axolotl.

Via youtube.com

An incredibly ugly creature, but great at Scrabble.

The Pig-Nosed Turtle.

Via youtube.com

Combining all the best elements of a pig and a turtle into one ill-advised face.

The Greater Short-Horned Lizard.

Via youtube.com

The greater short-horned lizard just looks pissed off with everything. Also it has this trick of squirting streams of blood out of its eyes when it's startled.

Via youtube.com

The greater short-horned lizard is NOT a popular party guest.

The Titicaca Water Frog.

Via youtube.com

Its Latin name means "aquatic scrotum," on the grounds that it looks kinda scrotum-y. With a name like that, the scrotum frog did not get a good start in life.

The Dromedary Jumping Slug.

Via youtube.com

Take all the aesthetic qualities of a slug, and add a lumpy thing on its back. Then make it jump. Well, sort of jump. It's not very good jumping, admittedly. More frantic wiggling:

Via youtube.com

Look, it's a slug, all right? It's not supposed to jump at all. Give it a break.

The Kakapo.

Via youtube.com

The world's most useless parrot. It's overweight, it can't fly, and its instinctive reaction to predators is mild curiosity, rather than running away in fear. Basically the kakapo is rubbish at being a bird, and as a result it is very, very, very endangered. It's also a bit dowdy, as parrots go.

The Pubic Louse.

© Warren Rosenberg

The pubic louse is currently under threat because of the deforestation of its natural habitat. Basically, people are waxing it to extinction. This a is a terrible way for any species to go.

The Flightless Dung Beetle.

Via youtube.com

It's not really noticably uglier than any other beetle. It's just that it spends its time rolling big balls of elephant and buffalo faeces around. Like, imagine if Joseph Gordon-Levitt was sitting on top of a giant ball of dung. Would he still be hot? It's an important question.

The Proboscis Monkey.

Via youtube.com

It's got a big nose. That's it, really.

Some of these ugly animals aren't ugly enough, frankly.

Here are some suggestions for creatures the Ugly Animal Preservation Society could have included, except presumably they're not endangered enough.

The Star-Nosed Mole.

en.wikipedia.org

Mate, your... your face has kind of exploded there.

The Hairy Frogfish

Flickr: rling

The hairy frogfish has stuff on it.

The Naked Mole-Rat

Flickr: nationalzoo

Dude.

...and this cat.

youtube.com