![]() Courtesy Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown and CompanyĪs I got older, animals started to take a backseat. Growing up, Ndiaye spent hours watching The Most Extreme on Animal Planet, which whetted his appetite for NSFW nature. Once the females are ready to give birth, the babies chew through her and split her body in half. A male of this crustacean species kidnaps up to 25 females and then impregnates every single one. That would be like an average human giving birth to a baby that weighs more than 30 pounds.īut when it comes to horrible animal births, the sea louse would probably win. The chicken-sized bird has to lay eggs that are up to 20 percent of its own body weight. Hyenas aren’t the only animals nature decided to mess with when it comes to reproduction. Someone upstairs decided they had to give birth through it, and it’s as bad as you’re thinking: pushing a three-pound baby out of opening less than an inch in size. Apparently, female hyenas’ extra equipment is an enlarged clitoris. But that didn’t stop me from doing more research. “Not everyone is as into nature as you are.” They couldn’t help cracking a grin, but told me to relax with all the freaky animal facts. Then the teacher came over, beelining for me, and asked me what I had said. It was pretty much the perfect reaction-the kind of reaction I always hoped for when I dropped one of my animal facts. Courtesy Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company “Did you guys know that girl hyenas have fake penises?” Hyenas have a lot going for them, but how cubs are born isn’t one of them. That was when I knew it was my time to shine. One of my friends started talking about animals. So the next day at school, I was sitting at lunch. So I looked it up and … “fake”? I was like, “Huh, how does that work?” Then the program said this fake penis was on the females. Then this documentary mentioned something about a “pseudo penis.” I didn’t know what “pseudo” meant. They’re like cats that look like dogs, but they’re most closely related to mongooses. ![]() And one day, I caught this documentary about hyenas. I wasn’t really allowed to watch television on weekdays, but my parents made an exception for nature programs on Discovery Channel or Animal Planet because, you know, education. I was probably six or seven when I first watched it and started to get interested in hyenas. As told to Atlas Obscura Editorial Fellow Sarah Durn. Secret Obsessions is Atlas Obscura’s new column, in which we ask wondrous people to take us down a rabbit hole. ![]()
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