11 Creepy Facts About Cute Animals That'll Make You Say "Why Did You Ruin This For Me?"

I'm so sorry. H/T AskReddit

1. Ladybirds are so cute, right?

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Well, turns out they like to eat their own young.

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It's like a form of self-culling, it reduces competition and food shortages – individual larvae are more likely to survive when they have fewer siblings to compete with.

2. Dolphins are definitely cute though, right?

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Actually, they are aggressive predators and males will regularly participate in gang rape.

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Groups of male dophins will single out female dolphins and rape her repeatedly. If she tries to escape, they will make threatening noises, smack, bite, and body-slam her.

3. Snails are cute though!

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They're also super kinky and like to stab each other with "love darts" during sex.

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These "love darts" are pointy calcium structures that remain attached to the shooter and bind the two slimey lovers together. As you might expect, shooting pointy things as foreplay can be dangerous, and these love darts often pierce the internal organs of fornicating snails.

4. Otters are definitely cute though, look at them holding hands!

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Well, they also rape baby seals, which usually results in the seal's death. (TW: The source article contains images some may find distressing)

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Male otters are known to mount baby seals. Because otter copulation involves the male holding the female's head under water, this act often also results in the drowning of the baby seal (and sometimes that of the female otter, too). Sometimes, the male otters are known to continue mounting the body of the dead seal for up to a week after its death.

5. Koalas are soft cuddly babies, yes?

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Sure, but they're also riddled with chlamydia, and they pee, poo, and reproduce with the same orifice, known as a cloaca.

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They can also pass the infection onto humans through their urine.

And baby koalas can't digest the poison in eucalyptus leaves – the only thing that koalas eat – the same way adult koalas can, so they eat their mothers' poo.

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Well, not poo exactly, but a slightly less digested waste – fecal pap. Right from her cloaca.

6. Pigs are cute though!

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They are, but they're also very unfussy eaters who will eat an entire human body.

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There have been multiple, gruesome stories involving pigs eating human flesh. They don't lust after human flesh or anything, they will just eat almost anything.

7. Deers are beautiful and harmless creatures that wouldn't hurt a fly, right?

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Well, they're beautiful, but they know the taste of human bone.

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Deers have been known to eat all sorts of animals – including birds, rabbits, and even human remains, as pictured above. The reason they do this is likely because they're lacking in certain nutrients such as phosphorus and salt. They're not really the harmless herbivorous we perceive them to be, but opportunistic omnivores.

8. Armadillos are cute and harmless, and the closest thing we get to real-life Pokemon, right?

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Wrong! They carry leprosy, and if you touch an infected one, you could catch it.

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Few animals carry leprosy as it is a pathogen that can only survive at a very specific temperature – i.e. human body temperature. Armadillo body temperature is remarkably close to that, which is unfortunate for them, because that's how humans actually passed the disease onto them some 400 years ago. They're returning the favour.

9. Bunny rabbits are surely the cutest creatures in existence, yes?

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Yeah, okay, but they're also nutritionally required to eat their own poo.

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They digest food so quickly that not all nutrients are absorbed, and some of their waste still contains nutrients. So rabbits start their mornings with a nice helping of soft and nutritious feces, directly consumed from the anus. Frankly, it's pretty clever – they're just recycling their food.

10. Look how cute wallabies are!

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But, wallaby mothers will toss their joey out of their pouch if they're being chased or threatened by a predator because it makes escape easier.

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11. Okay, but surely the beloved clown fish can't have a sinister side?

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Well, sorry to ruin everything you hold dear, but it does. If the sole, dominant female in a school of clownfish dies, the most dominant male will develop female reproductive organs, and reproduce with the other male fish in the school that are often its own offspring.

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All clownfish are hermaphrodites, meaning they are born male and later may develop into females.

Also, male clownfish will eat any damaged or infected eggs after a female lays them.

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That would have been a totally different ending to Finding Nemo.

CORRECTION

Oct. 27, 2017, at 13:53 PM

Hansen's disease/leprosy is a bacterial infection. An earlier version of this post said it was a virus.