The blue-ringed octopus' venom is 1,000 times more powerful than cyanide. This golf-ball sized powerhouse packs enough venom to kill 26 humans within minutes. It's no surprise that it's recognized as one of the most dangerous animals in the ocean.
The mosquito is the single deadliest, most dangerous animal in the world and also one of the smallest. Mosquitoes are estimated to cause between 750,000 and one million human deaths per year.
To date, there's only one species that has been called 'biologically immortal': the jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii. These small, transparent animals hang out in oceans around the world and can turn back time by reverting to an earlier stage of their life cycle.
2. Mosquito. Clocking in at just three millimeters at their smallest, the common mosquito, even tinier than the tsetse fly, ranks as the second most dangerous animal in the world.
The blobfish was named the "world's ugliest animal" in an online poll.
Not only are dolphins one of the most intelligent and happy creatures in the world, they are also among the friendliest towards humans.
The vaquita is the world's rarest sea mammal and one of the most endangered animals in the world. Their name means 'little cow' in Spanish, and they are a unique species of porpoise, with a small, chunky body and a round head.
Jellyfish There's a place where you can swim with jellyfish without fear of being stung. It's appropriately called Jellyfish Lake and it's located in the Rock Islands of Palau. Here, the jellyfish have lost their stingers somewhere over the last 12,000 years, making it perfectly safe to jump in for a dip.
Australia and Antarctica finally broke apart around 100 million years ago. Today, venomous snakes are found in all of these places – apart from Antarctica, where it is too cold for them to live. On the original combined land mass, it is thought that there was a population of ancestral snakes that was venomous.
Distribution. At least 32 species of sea snake have been recorded in northern Australian waters and some species are also found in the southern waters off Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia.
A piece of the Space Shuttle Challenger was recently found off the coast of Florida, NASA announced in a news release Thursday. The shuttle exploded 73 seconds after takeoff on Jan. 28, 1986.
Scientists today formally documented the world's newest, deepest fish, Pseudoliparis swirei, an odd little snailfish caught at 7,966 meters in the Mariana Trench—nearly twice as far below the sea's surface as Wyoming's Grand Teton towers above it.
What do we mean when we say that the North Pacific is “the world's richest waters”? It's a long story, in terms of time and distance! The North Pacific is the end of the great ocean conveyor belt, a large-scale ocean circulation.
Scientists in Argentina have found the remains of a giant carnivorous marine reptile, or plesiosaur, which lived 150 million years ago in Antarctica.
Hundreds of years ago, European sailors told of a sea monster called the kraken that could toss ships into the air with its many long arms. Today we know sea monsters aren't real--but a living sea animal, the giant squid, has 10 arms and can grow longer than a school bus.
Giant ichthyosaur gobbled its companions with killer teeth
Researchers have announced the discovery of the first sea monster (artist's impression above)—an 8.6-meter-long reptile with a massive skull (inset) and sharp teeth that lived 244 million years ago.
And once that paralysis hits your diaphragm and rib muscles, you only have a few minutes before you suffocate to death. No, the fastest-acting venom on Earth belongs to the Australian Box Jellyfish or sea wasp. It's not the most potent venom out there. But encounter one of these guys and you'll be dead in 15 minutes.
Killer Whale (Orcinus orca)
Apex predator – and one of the world's largest carnivores – orca are also known as killer whales, though they are actually the largest animal in the Delphinidae family of oceanic dolphins. At 8 meters long and 5,400 kg, an average-sized orca can eat up to 230 kg of food a day.
Vescovo's trip to the Challenger Deep, at the southern end of the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench, back in May, was said to be the deepest manned sea dive ever recorded, at 10,927 meters (35,853 feet).
While thousands of climbers have successfully scaled Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth, only two people have descended to the planet's deepest point, the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench.
Scientists believe several moons within our solar system have significant subsurface liquid water deposits. Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa are two examples. Both appear to have salty, liquid oceans covered with thick layers of ice at the surface.