You’ve heard jokes like these all your life: What do you get if you cross an octopus with a cow? An animal that can milk itself. I didn’t find such an animal, but the world has plenty of strange species that at first glance appear to be hybrids of unrelated species because they have attributes that surprise us. However, we are only surprised because our personal experiences don’t encompass all that nature offers. 1. Turtle + Hedgehog = Armadillo Rudyard Kipling wrote the story The Beginning of the Armadillos , in which the animal came from a tortoise and a hedgehog. They didn’t join to give birth to armadillos; instead, they taught each other their talents. The hedgehog helped the tortoise learn to curl into a ball, and the tortoise taught the hedgehog to swim, which toughened up his spines into armor. Before they knew it, both had turned into armadillos. Here in the real world, armadillos are related to both sloths and anteaters and are native to Latin ...