If you clicked on this article, you must be interested in the macabre side of the cute and cuddly. This is like, totally in line with your interests! With your coincidental animal obsession in mind, you get a bonus animal fact for no extra charge: A group of crows is called a… wait, you probably already know that one. But did you know a group of ravens is called an unkindness?

Bees

To kick off this buzzz-feed worthy article, let’s talk about bees. Most people don’t know much about the little tykes other than their need to bee saved. Nuts and seeds are the prime suspects of pollination exploitation, with large-scale farming schemes using poor and even deadly beekeeping conditions. When you take into account household names and fan favorite crops like apples, avocados, and almonds, it becomes blatantly obvious that even the A-listers are complicit in this sinister black and yellow market. I mean, seriously, who could bee so heartless? They’re literally just little guys living in little workshops all day, sustaining themselves on royal jelly and bee bread (yes, those are real terms). But keep on your toes, soldier, and don’t bee fooled by their cutesy exterior or sob story. While bees aren’t as overtly evil as their fortress-dwelling cousins, the wasps, beehives aren’t the wholesome factories that Big Beeswax would lead you to believe. Rather, these are gladiatorial arenas where violence is the answer. Ever wonder how a queen bee is instated? Well, you should know that it’s decidedly undemocratic. A virgin queen will seek out rival queens in an effort to kill them until they are dead, showing no mercy to even unemerged rivals. That’s like if we elected our president with a no-holds-barred battle royale, where the candidates are permitted to murder unborn babies that may prove to be a future problem. My advice for dealing with these ruthless, bloodthirsty bee-sts? Cut out the middleman of exploitative farming practices and start eating bees yourself.

Flies

Avert your compound eyes ladybugs and gentlemen, because we’re in fly territory now. That’s right, we’re about to get into some pretty nasty stuff that may or may not involve a severed sow’s head. Are you ready? Fair warning, this part is NOT for the faint of heart. If you’re not ready, I won’t blame you for skipping. Alright, here goes nothing… Flies take off backwards. Ew, what the heck? I did warn you it was going to be gross. Anyways, now that we’re past the worst fact, let’s talk about the botfly. Botflies lay their eggs in other parasites, such as mosquitoes, so that when that parasite feeds, their eggs will transfer to the host. Once the vector parasite dispatches the eggs, the warmth of your skin causes the larvae inside the eggs to emerge. The botfly larvae will then burrow head-first under your skin in order to mature, subsisting on your flesh and breathing through your pores. As they grow, they will start to push outwards and form bulbous and itchy tumor-like growths, at which point you’ll start to feel movement under the skin. Once through using your skin to develop, the botflies will exit the way they came in, reopening the burrowing holes in the process. Luckily, their numbers are becoming more and more scarce due to removal efforts from the North Carolina government. Look up “botfly removal” for more information. 

Fish

There is so much wrong with the ocean that it feels right to have an entire section solely dedicated to nautical nightmares. If you think that the ocean is too beautiful to be disturbing, first off, watch Jaws, and second off, Jaws is too mainstream for what we’re talking about. Here’s a statistical fact: we’ve explored half of space but just a measly quarter of the ocean, which goes to show just how little we know about what dwells beyond the sunny shores and idyllic islands. Okay, I think I’m ready to talk about the image in the room now. That monstrosity is a Barrel-Eye Fish, and hence the name, its eyes are the two glowing things inside the translucent bit of the head, and not the deceptively eye-looking things on the face. I wouldn’t be surprised if the designers of the clone Xenomorph from Alien: Romulus took a few notes from its internal eyes, maybe after experiencing intense nightmares of ugly aquatic beasts for months. It’s okay to put traumatic experiences into art, so feel free to draw skull-helmet freaks of your own after reading this article. Speaking of aliens, let’s talk about the Blobfish, and not about its looks. Jeez, how rude can you get? I’m really talking about how we retrieved a specimen through deep-sea fishing, pulled it up to the surface, causing its body to depressurize and rapidly compress. Or, for lack of a better term, turn “blobby”. It’s like if you were abducted by aliens, and upon seeing your bloated, frozen body, they started saying awww.

Obviously, the animal kingdom is an immoral place, as all kingdoms are. Unlike the botfly, this article hardly even scratches the surface. Come to think of it, I didn’t even include any mammals, and I doubled up on insects. If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d write 7 more and turn this into a true top ten, but that’s not going to happen, so… I’m really sorry. I’m well aware that this article is like, totally in line with your interests, but three entries is the best I can do. Look, as consolation, I’ll even give you a quick and final bonus fact to make up for my bad writing: Chimps are the worst.