Since the Tully Monster is not a living creature, it is not technically "living" anyplace on the planet. However, the ruins of this peculiar prehistoric life form can only be found in one location, and no one is really sure what it was. The Tully Monster, also known as Tullimonstrum gregarium, was an aquatic creature, and fossils have allowed us to reconstruct its appearance. You'd think that would be sufficient evidence to conclude that it was a fish, crab, or other creature, but that is not the case. It had no backbone and a mushy body. Although there is some disagreement about that. It had a segmented, tapering body.

Its body culminated at one end in a tiny mouth with eight teeth that resembled more of a tentacle than anything else. The other had a finned tail. Additionally, it possessed two eye stalks that extended about a third of the way down its body from its tiny mouth.

Despite having a soft body, the seas it resided in were ideal for keeping the bodies in the mud and letting us see what they looked like. And only Mazon Creek, Illinois, contains those unique fossils. People don't currently have any proof that they lived somewhere else, if they did. But perhaps that's for the best given people are not even sure what kind of creature it might have been—let alone whether it had a spine or not.

Kingdom: Animalia
Subkingdom: Eumetazoa
Clade: ParaHoxozoa
Clade: Bilateria
Clade: incertae sedis
Genus: †Tullimonstrum

Consider yourself lucky if you live close to the Ozark Mountains and have never seen a salamander that is two feet longer. The Ozark Hellbender, a creature, is capable of attacking you. Despite their outrageous name, these huge salamanders, which only inhabit the clean streams and rivers of the Ozarks, are essentially harmless.

Due to flesh folds in their skin down their sides, salamanders can breathe underwater. They often hide under boulders to avoid currents that move quickly. Despite the fact that it is unknown what is causing their numbers to keep declining, they are likewise threatened. It is known that they have very specific requirements for water temperature and quality, therefore it is probable that factors like pollution or climate change are directly responsible for their declining populations.

Most people never have the opportunity to observe the salamanders because they are nocturnal and spend their days hiding behind rocks. They typically hunt crayfish or other prey animals when they do emerge at night.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Amphibia
Order: Urodela
Family: Cryptobranchidae
Genus: Cryptobranchus
Species: C. alleganiensis
Subspecies: C. a. bishopi

You'd think that an insect with a name like the Frightful Hairy Fly would have a dramatic backstory to match. Fortunately, it is unquestionably the case. The terrifying hairy fly can't fly, so that's a good place to start. It is, however, hairy. Additionally, it only inhabits one rocky crevice in Kenya's Ukazi Hills, where it appears to spend its days in bat feces. The species was first recognized in 1933 and then rediscovered in 1948. It wasn't until 2010 that the species was once more located and could be further investigated.

Despite being a fly, it more closely resembles a spider than a fly. It's also not clear if the insects merely feed on the bats' guano or whether they are parasites. They have never before been sighted outside of a fissure in a boulder in that one cave, and their mouth parts are not designed for predation.

Adult flies are thought to eat bat body fluids. The fly is roughly 1 cm long, has hairy legs, and looks more like a spider than a fly because of its non-functioning wings and small eyes. Only three specimen collections have taken place: in 1933, 1948, and 2010. It is possible that additional, undiscovered populations exist and that gene flow occurs between them and the known population in Ukasi Hill because tested individuals of the population exhibited higher levels of genetic variation than would be expected for such a small geographic region.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Diptera
Superfamily: Ephydroidea
Family: Mormotomyiidae
Genus: Mormotomyia
Species: M. hirsuta

The purple frog is not the typical frog that most of us are familiar with. Only the Indian Western Ghats mountain region is home to these unusual species. They resemble a frog that a little child would have sketched after seeing one once. In contrast to other more dorsoventrally flattened frogs, the body of Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis appears robust and bloated and is comparatively spherical.

They can resist strong currents by using their flattened bodies to cling to submerged rocks and boulders, which enables them to stay close to stream banks, where they usually live.They have oddly purple-gray, snub-nosed bodies that are unnaturally swollen. They split off from a small species that is only found in the Seychelles millions of years ago, and are most closely connected to it genetically. Over the past 100 million years, they each underwent distinct evolution.

The species wasn't formally described until 2003 since they burrow and are hardly seen. During the monsoon season, they only show themselves for two or three weeks each year. There are just 135 of the frogs known to exist in the wild, and only three of them were female.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Amphibia
Order: Anura
Family: Nasikabatrachidae
Genus: Nasikabatrachus
Species: N. sahyadrensis

One of the most prevalent bird species in the world is the sparrow. Currently, widespread on every continent, house sparrows are native to Europe and some regions of Africa and Asia. It makes no difference where they live—in forests, meadows, deserts, or cities. And that's only one type of sparrow.

Despite how robust and common these small birds are, not all of their relatives do. One location is home to the North American Eurasian Tree Sparrow, for example. St. Louis is where it is. They do have a slightly larger range than that, to be fair. They can also be found in southeast Iowa and sections of Illinois, yet not far from St. Louis.

They are descendants of the first 12 European tree sparrows who were released in Lafayette Park in 1870. European immigrants wanted their native species to be present in their new home. None of the other bird species established themselves, but the tree sparrow did, and it has since remained in the area.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Passeridae
Genus: Passer
Species: P. montanus

A fish breathing air is not uncommon, but it is also not always the case. Even less frequent is finding a species that lives in an underground lake, but Namibia's golden cave catfish can boast of that. They are not especially enormous fish because they only reach a length of six inches. Since vision is essentially worthless in an underground lake and they are highly threatened due to their limited population, their eyes are covered with skin.

They feed on debris and invertebrates that fall into the lake where they live because their tiny, skin-covered eyes are likely effectively blind. The population is thought to number between 200 and 400 people. Little is known about how it reproduces, and efforts to breed it in captivity have been unsuccessful. Chance occurrences and water extraction from the cave lake, which has caused a drop in water level, are threats to the population.

Since attempts to breed them outside of their cave have so far been ineffective, conservation efforts must currently rely on preservation. In their natural habitat, they feed on plants and whatever decaying objects they can discover.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Siluriformes
Family: Clariidae
Genus: Clarias
Species: C. cavernicola

Chances are, if you ever visit Palau for vacation, you'll stop at Jellyfish Lake. With good cause, this may be the most well-known tourist destination in the nation. It is an inland lake filled almost entirely with jellyfish. Because the jellyfish are not harmful to people, swimming and scuba diving are very popular.

The lake is the only place in the world where you may locate the golden jellyfish. Swimming was prohibited for a wall even though the species was declining; however, in 2019, swimming was allowed once more. The lake formerly contained 20 million jellyfish. It fell to little over 100,000 in 2018. Between 5 and 8 million people is considered a decent population, but that number hasn't been attained yet. It is thought that environmental variables like El Nino and sunscreen use by beachgoers both played a role in the population reduction of the jellyfish.

Because the route of the sun as it passes overhead each day influences the growth of the algae that the jellyfish consume, they move in order to promote the growth and consumption of their food supply.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Petalonamae
Class: Scyphozoa
Order: Rhizostomeae
Family: Mastigiidae
Genus: Mastigias
Species: M. papua
Subspecies: M. p. etpisoni

Any cartoon you've ever seen of the Old West likely has a Saguaro cactus in it. These are the archetypal cacti—tall, slender plants that occasionally resemble a stick person with his arms bent. Their likeness can be seen in photographs and even in video games like Cactuar from Final Fantasy. The Saguaro cactus has an incredibly small distribution, despite being a geographical and historical icon of the west and the Old West, respectively.

Saguaros typically live more over 150 years, which is a relatively lengthy lifespan. Some may never develop any arms, while others may develop their first side arm between the ages of 75 and 100. The development of arms boosts a plant's ability to reproduce since more apices result in more blooms and fruit. A saguaro can absorb and store a lot of rainwater, visually growing while it does so, and then gradually use the stored water as needed. Due to this characteristic, saguaro trees can endure dry spells. It is a keystone species that supports numerous other species by serving as their food source and habitat.

The Saguaro cactus can only be found in the Sonoran Desert. That includes southern Arizona, the adjacent regions of northwest Mexico, and the very southeast boundary of California. The cactus in that region typically only flourishes in Arizona. Even though there are 194 native cactus species in the American Southwest and 23 major deserts in the world, the Saguaro nevertheless serves as a universal symbol for all of them.

Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Order: Caryophyllales
Family: Cactaceae
Subfamily: Cactoideae
Tribe: Echinocereeae
Genus: Carnegiea, Britton & Rose
Species: C. gigantea

Death Valley is home to the Devil's Hole pupfish, which is likely the metalest thing you can say about any fish. They are also critically endangered since they can only be found in that one pool in Death Valley, an area not generally noted for its rich aquatic biodiversity.

In Death Valley National Park, there is a pool inside a cave. It measures roughly 10 feet broad by 70 feet long, and its deepest point is 500 feet below the surface. But the shallows are where the fish like to stay. Only 35 of the little fish were still alive in 2013, a shockingly low number. But thanks to conservation efforts, by 2022 that number had significantly increased, with 475 of the fish living both in the cave and in captivity. Because it is difficult to breed them in captivity, conservation efforts are both important and challenging.

They are remarkably inbred as a result of having the shortest geographic range of any vertebrate for their home. Because they enjoy playing, which is rare for fish, and because they have been compared to puppies, pupfish got their name. The Devil's Hole species are the smallest and least aggressive of the various species that can be found in other pools in Death Valley.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Cyprinodontiformes
Family: Cyprinodontidae
Genus: Cyprinodon
Species: C. diabolis

The beach vole is a little rodent that, if you saw one in the wild, you may mistake it for a mouse. Of course, since Muskeget Island off the coast of Massachusetts is the only site in the world where these voles exist, if you did encounter one in the wild, you would undoubtedly be there.

The island is about 2.6 square kilometers, or slightly more than one square mile, in size. The vole is probably a branch off of the meadow vole found on the mainland. It most likely arrived on the island some point in the last 3,000 years and evolved in a different way.

The small animals, which are only 7.5 inches long, graze on the grasses that flourish on their island home. There isn't much else there than poison ivy and beach grass, but if the weather were to deteriorate sufficiently, the entire community may suffer from being swept out.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Rodentia
Suborder: Myomorpha
Superfamily: Muroidea
Family: Cricetidae
Subfamily: Arvicolinae
Tribe: Arvicolini
Genus: Microtus
Species: M. breweri