Weirdly Cute

oh my goodness

As 2010 draws to a close, the internet is about to get deluged with every kind of Top Ten year-in-review list imaginable, ranking everything from albums to celebrity couples to best-of lists, which would be easier to read if they were only aggregated into some kind of ranked list format. But over here at Gus HQ, there is only one list we care about: National Geographic's Ten Weirdest New Animals of 2010.

The clear winner: the purple octopus, pictured here. Runners-up included an armored, wood-eating catfish and a females-only lizard species which reproduces by cloning. But come on, look at that little guy. Why did those other animals even bother entering the contest in the first place?