# Hispaniolan Solenodon vs Barreleye vs Lord Howe Tree Lobster: A Venomous Fossil That Smells Like a Goat, a Fish With a See-Through Skull, and a Bug That Came Back From the Dead > A mammal older than the last dinosaurs, a fish that looks up through its own transparent forehead, and the rarest insect on Earth walk into a bar. One leaves with a crown. By someone who loves to compare irrelevant things. Daily matchup. ## Contestants ### Hispaniolan Solenodon (Solenodon paradoxus) Taxonomy: Mammalia > Eulipotyphla > Solenodontidae > Solenodon > The venomous goat-scented fossil that has been doing this since the dinosaurs. - COOL - Venom delivery: Through a groove in its tooth - COOL - Lineage age: ~73.6 million years - WEIRD - Nose bone: Ball-and-socket joystick snout - GROSS - Signature scent: Musty goat musk from groin glands Photo: Solenodon joe, CC BY 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons) - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hispaniolan_Solenodon.jpg ### Barreleye (Spookfish) (Macropinna microstoma) Taxonomy: Actinopterygii > Argentiniformes > Opisthoproctidae > Macropinna > Looks at you through its own transparent forehead, judges you silently. - WEIRD - Head: Transparent fluid-filled dome - COOL - Eyes: Green tubes that rotate up and forward - WEIRD - Those face spots: Not eyes, they are nostrils - GROSS - Feeding style: Robs stinging siphonophore tentacles Photo: NOAA Ocean Exploration, Public Domain (PD-USGov-NOAA) (Wikimedia Commons) - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barreleye-fish_GoK.jpg ### Lord Howe Island Stick Insect (Tree Lobster) (Dryococelus australis) Taxonomy: Insecta > Phasmatodea > Phasmatidae > Dryococelus > Declared extinct, hid under one bush for 80 years, came back and spoons. - COOL - Comeback: Extinct ~1920, rediscovered 2001 - COOL - Size: Up to ~15 cm, heaviest flightless stick insect - WEIRD - Last stand: 24 survivors under a single shrub - WEIRD - Mating habit: Male drapes three legs over the female Photo: Peter Halasz (Wikimedia user Pengo), CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons) - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dryococelus_australis_02_Pengo.jpg Some days I pick animals that are related. Today I picked a mammal, a fish, and an insect, which is roughly like judging a bake-off between a lasagna, a canoe, and a rumor. But that is the whole point of this blog: I compare irrelevant things, and today's irrelevant things happen to be a venomous shrew-cousin that predates the end of the dinosaurs, a deep-sea fish whose eyes live inside a clear dome on its head, and a hand-sized bug that everyone declared extinct for eighty years and then found sleeping under one bush on a rock in the ocean. Three creatures. Zero business being compared. Let's go. ## The lineup, and why it is unfair to everyone We have three contestants who would never meet in nature, in a dream, or in a courtroom. 1. The **Hispaniolan solenodon**, a mammal that is venomous, ancient, and reeks. 2. The **barreleye**, a fish with a windshield for a skull. 3. The **Lord Howe Island stick insect**, aka the tree lobster, aka the walking sausage that refused to stay dead. I judge on three axes only: how **cool**, how **weird**, and how **gross**. Here is how it shook out. ## Cool The solenodon is one of the very few venomous mammals on the planet. It delivers venomous saliva through a literal groove in its second lower incisor, like a snake that decided to also be furry and have a mortgage. That alone would win most weeks. But the tree lobster has the best comeback story in the animal kingdom. Black rats swam ashore from a shipwreck in 1918 and ate it out of house and home, and by 1920 it was declared extinct. Then in 2001, climbers on Ball's Pyramid, a needle of rock jutting out of the sea, found twenty-four of them living under a single Melaleuca shrub. Eighty years, one bush, still hanging on. The barreleye is cool in a quieter, nerdier way: its green tubular eyes can rotate inside its head to look straight up for prey and then swivel forward to watch itself eat. It is the only one of the three with a heads-up display. ## Weird This is the barreleye's category and it is not close. Its eyes sit inside a transparent, fluid-filled dome on top of its head, so it is essentially looking at you through its own see-through forehead. For decades nobody even knew the dome existed, because it gets shredded the instant the fish is hauled up in a net. Also, the two dark spots on its face that look like eyes? Not eyes. Those are its nostrils. The eyes are the two glowing green orbs floating inside the windshield. The solenodon fights back with a nose bone. It has a ball-and-socket joint at the base of its snout, a bone called the os proboscidis, that lets the snout swivel around like a tiny joystick. No other animal has this, not even its close cousins. The tree lobster's weird flex is romance: mating pairs sleep side by side, and the male drapes three of his six legs over the female. A bug that spoons. I did not ask for this information and now I cannot give it back. ## Gross The solenodon runs away with it. Researchers find these animals by smell, specifically a strong, musty, goat-like stink that seeps out of the burrow from glands in its groin. You do not track the Hispaniolan solenodon. You follow your nose to it, gagging. The barreleye's gross move is theft: scientists think it hovers underneath a siphonophore, one of those stinging colonial drifters, and robs food right off its venomous tentacles. Deep-sea pickpocketing. The tree lobster is, frankly, the cleanest contestant here, which in a gross competition is a disqualifying weakness. ## The living-fossil tiebreaker Genome work suggests the solenodon lineage split from all other living mammals around 73.6 million years ago, which is the Late Cretaceous, which means its ancestors were scuttling around while actual non-avian dinosaurs were still alive. It has been venomous and smelly for longer than there have been primates, grasses, or opinions. That is the kind of seniority that wins arguments. ## Winner: Hispaniolan Solenodon The barreleye wins weird, hands down, and the tree lobster wins the feel-good arc of the year. But the whole point of this blog is the triple threat, and the **Hispaniolan solenodon** is the only contestant that medals in all three events. Cool: a venomous mammal with a grooved-tooth delivery system. Weird: a joystick nose bone found in no other animal, plus echolocation clicks. Gross: it smells like a goat and you hunt it by scent. Add the tiebreaker that its lineage is roughly 74 million years old and predates the death of the dinosaurs, and this is not a fish or a bug beating a mammal today. The wrinkly, venomous, goat-scented living fossil takes it. ## FAQ ### Is the Hispaniolan solenodon actually venomous, or is that a myth? Genuinely venomous. It produces toxic saliva in a submaxillary gland and channels it through a groove in its second lower incisor. That grooved-tooth delivery is so unusual for a mammal that scientists think venom is an ancient trait most mammals lost, and the solenodon simply kept it. ### Why can't I find a good photo of the barreleye's famous transparent head? Because the clear, fluid-filled dome is fragile and gets destroyed almost every time the fish is brought up in a net. The best intact-dome images come from deep-sea video by MBARI, which are copyrighted. The openly-licensed photo we use here is a collected specimen, so the see-through dome is not intact in the shot. That is also why the dome went undocumented for so long. ### How was the tree lobster rediscovered after being declared extinct? In 2001, surveyors climbing Ball's Pyramid, a sheer sea stack near Lord Howe Island, found a population of about 24 individuals living under a single Melaleuca shrub. A breeding program later launched at Melbourne Zoo from a founding pair nicknamed Adam and Eve, and thousands of nymphs have since hatched. ## Sources - Hispaniolan solenodon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispaniolan_solenodon - Solenodon (venom and musk): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solenodon - Comparative genomics of the extant solenodons: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1906117116 - Researchers solve mystery of deep-sea fish with tubular eyes and transparent head: https://www.mbari.org/news/researchers-solve-mystery-of-deep-sea-fish-with-tubular-eyes-and-transparent-head/ - Barreleye fish: https://www.mbari.org/animal/barreleye-fish/ - VIP: Very Important Phasmid: https://australian.museum/blog/museullaneous/vip-very-important-phasmid/ - Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years: https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/02/24/147367644/six-legged-giant-finds-secret-hideaway-hides-for-80-years - Dryococelus australis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryococelus_australis Tags: Mammalia, Actinopterygii, Insecta, Eulipotyphla, Argentiniformes, Phasmatodea, venomous, deep-sea, living-fossil, back-from-extinction, totally-random Canonical: https://lamalo.blog/hispaniolan-solenodon-vs-barreleye-vs-tree-lobster