Hi! Welcome to my lair. My name is Cara Giaimo, and I’m the co-author of the new book Atlas Obscura: Wild Life.

I’ve been writing about the natural world for a long time — including at Atlas Obscura, where I’ve covered everything from real-life Loraxes to celebrity tortoise breakups. But the things I learned while putting this book together made my eyes pop out of my head like that mantis shrimp pictured above. I’ll be dipping into the newsletter every once in a while this summer to share some of the funniest, most captivating, and overall wildest beings that are waiting for you inside its pages.

This week, I’d like to introduce you to some of my favorite animals. I love all forms of life, but I find other animals really inspiring. When I’m feeling stuck, I think about how they express themselves just by being themselves — their total commitment to living, whether that looks like dyeing themselves with iron oxide to intimidate their rivals (as the lammergeier vulture does, between bouts of bone-eating) or chilling underground 364 days a year, singing lustily from beneath the soil, and then emerging for a single night only to mate (like the male Western Ghats purple frog — he is beautiful; please click here for the rare treat of seeing him).

Plus, we go way back — all animals, including humans, share a spongey ancestor who lived about 800 million years ago. Since then, all our lineages have come so far, growing and branching and changing and adapting until we ended up here, with a whole planet full of shocking and precious weirdos. There’s no better place to live, I feel.

Scroll down to meet a few more of them, or dive into the wild and wonderful world by preordering our new book below.