World's ugliest animals

This rat has little use for hair or for eyes. In fact, it helps the rodent adapt to its underground environment in insect-like colonies. The naked mole-rat is native to East Africa and can live for nearly 30 years. It's also found to have a remarkable resistance to cancer.

What is that? That's the first reaction this jelly-like mass that resembles a bald, grumpy, old man usually elicits. The gelatinous fish, aptly called the blobfish, lives at depths of up to 1,200 meters off the coasts of Australia and Tasmania. It feeds on oysters and crabs and often gets hauled up in trawler nets.

Imagine never growing up! That's exactly what the axolotl, a type of salamander found in Mexico, does. It uniquely spends its whole life underwater in its larval form without going through a metamorphosis. That has made the forever-young amphibian a popular animal kept in labs, schools and as pets. But, this creature with its odd lifestyle and looks, is critically endangered in the wild.

This frog, with its excessive skin folds, is found at the bottom of Lake Titicaca sandwiched between Peru and Bolivia. Sadly, this oddball amphibian suffers from over-popularity. It's offered on menus at restaurants around the lake. And, locals often skin the frog, cook it and run it through a blender to sell as an aphrodisiac.

A big, bulbous schnoz is the first thing that strikes you about the proboscis monkey. It provides a resonating echo chamber for the monkey's deafening mating calls. It's native to the south-east Asian island of Borneo. Indonesians nicknamed it "Dutchman" because they thought Dutch colonizers had similarly large noses.

It's not the most elegant of birds. In fact, it can't even fly. This strange ground-dwelling, nocturnal bird is native to New Zealand. It's the world's only flightless parrot as well as the heaviest, weighing two to four kilograms at maturity. It uses its wings for balance, support and to break its fall when leaping from trees. The kakapo is critically endangered.

This strange looking marine animal feeds off sea grass which is why the dugong is also known as the "sea cow." It's found in Australia's Northern coastal waters. It's believed that mermaid myths were born from pirates and sailors sighting dugongs. Due to its slow rate of reproduction, the dugong is especially vulnerable to extinction.