40+ Mother Nature Pics Proving the World Is Scary as Hell

Imagine walking in a forest or the woods, and you come across this scary sight. No one would blame you for thinking you came across a corpse in a shallow grave. You’re actually looking at a fungus called Dead Man’s Fingers.

Typically found in Europe and North America, this freaky-looking fungus is responsible for many calls to rangers and law enforcement from hikers who have stumbled across the Dead Man’s Fingers and thought it was something more sinister. Of all the things Mother Nature could have chosen to create, she made this, scaring unsuspecting hikers every year.

This photo required a second look to understand what was actually going on. This is not a flock of birds but hundreds of flies trapped in the web of a rather large spider.

Imagine opening your curtains in the morning and being greeted by this sight! In our opinion, a situation like this can only be dealt with by using a flamethrower, but closing the drapes is a cheaper and safer option.

Geese are generally beautiful creatures – until they open their beaks, that is. This goose opened its beak to reveal a rather scary-looking mouth, complete with what looked like razor-sharp teeth.

Thanks to Mother Nature, a whole lot of people will be changing their perceptions about these birds. And to be honest, we’re definitely in that group.

Ever been in an up close and personal encounter with a sea lion? We’re betting that this underwater photographer got a little more than he bargained for when he came face to face with this majestic sea lion.

While they aren’t exactly known for their sweet manner, sea lions are curious by nature. This chap was probably just checking out what was going on rather than looking for a tasty snack.

You get spiders, and then you get huntsman spiders. Cue high-pitched terror shrieks! This massive spider was photographed in a house in Australia.

While we know that huntsman spiders are harmless to humans and great for ridding your home of flies and other creepy crawlies, they’re not exactly a welcome sight when you walk into your living room in the morning. Mother Nature sure has a sense of humor because we can’t imagine any other reason for a spider to be THAT big. C’mon now!

You wake up in the middle of the night, bursting to use the toilet, you stumble to the bathroom, still in a sleepy haze, turn on the light, and see this not-so-little guy staring straight back at you.

Bet you didn’t know snakes can come up through the pipes into your toilet! Just when we were getting used to the fact that snakes are a wonderful creation by Mother Nature, she makes them evolve into toilet snakes! All we can say is, “No, thank you very much!”

Camping can be a great way to get outdoors and experience all that Mother Nature has to offer. But when you wake up on a beautiful morning, wondering why your tent is dark, and you see this… we’re sure it’s enough to put you off camping for life.

One or two spiders wouldn’t be too bad, but these campers were welcomed by ALL the spiders. It’s enough to make your skin crawl. Ugh!

Hearing strange noises at night is enough to scare anybody. But the person who took this photograph probably got the fright of his life when he came face to face with a large brown bear. While he was probably expecting to see a dog, cat, or raccoon, one can only imagine his reaction when he turned on the porch light and saw this guy.

Since we don’t know where the photo was taken, we can’t give you a heads up, but just be careful when checking out noise in your yard at night. You never know what you’ll find…

Ever seen a snail so big that it’s the size of a puppy or a small dog? The African snail is one of the largest snails in the world and is a popular pet for many people.

Why anyone would want a snail as a pet is baffling, but each to their own. Mother Nature sure does make some interesting creatures, and this is just another one that’ll leave you scratching your head in amazement.

This moray eel bit off more than he could chew when he decided to make a meal out of a puffer fish. Pufferfish are known for expanding in size to ward off predators. This one must have had a delayed reaction to being eaten by the eel as it inflated itself in the eel’s mouth, resulting in the death of both creatures.

This unusual sight was captured by scuba diver Tim Mayer on the Cook Islands and has become a popular photo that depicts Mother Nature’s battle of predator versus prey at its finest.

Ever seen a frog eat a giant spider? Well, now you have. This photograph depicts a frog with a rather large spider in his mouth.

If the legs are that long, we can only imagine how big the arachnid’s body must’ve been. Although, it does beg the question, do frogs actually eat spiders? Or is this just another one of Mother Nature’s pranks?

This series of photographs, taken in Florida, depicts a Heron making a meal of an alligator. This image shocked wildlife photographers and biologists alike, as there are very few documented cases of birds eating crocodiles or any other large reptiles.

Herons are typically fish eaters, so we can’t imagine what made this hungry Heron snatch up an alligator for dinner. It just shows that Mother Nature is the one calling the shots, and things that once may have seemed impossible are indeed possible.

We’ll be the first to admit that we’re not a fan of bats. And looking at this picture of a bat flying through the air, while carrying its young, doesn’t leave us feeling warm and fuzzy.

With scary-looking claws and big, bulging eyes, this bat looks more like a monster from a child’s nightmares than a sweet creature. It leads us to ask just what Mother Nature was thinking when she created bats.

Ticks are one of the worst parasites and can cause a host of health issues for animals and humans alike. But what would happen if a tick was bitten by another tick?

This photo of a tick feeding off another tick will leave you wondering if this is Mother Nature’s way of giving the tick a taste of its own medicine or if this is a regular occurrence. Whatever the case may be, this is a weird one that just can’t be explained.

This gamer got more than he bargained for when he picked up his Playstation controller to find a centipede wrapped around one of the buttons. What does one do in this situation?

Try to remove it and risk getting bitten, or just set the controller outside and hope that the centipede finds its way off on its own? While playing video games with a friend or two can be fun, we somehow doubt that this is the opponent the player was hoping for.

Think twice before you give your girlfriend, mother, or anyone else a bunch of Snap Dragons to show your affection. Once they die, these flowers resemble little skulls, which could send the wrong message.

Only Mother Nature could make something so beautiful look completely different when it dies. Well played, Mother Nature, well played.

Did you know that sunflowers turn and grow towards light? Now that you do, this photograph of a field of sunflowers turning away from the storm, as if to hide from it, makes a little more sense than it did before.

With a rather scary-looking storm approaching, we don’t blame these beauties for wanting to hide away from the darkness – because we would too.

Bats are happy to find any warm spot to take a nap, so it’s not surprising that this little guy felt warm and safe in a pair of headphones.

We can only imagine the shock of the headphones owner when he picked up his headphones to listen to some music or play a game. But what we want to know is if he left the little guy to finish his nap before he took back his headphones.

It seems that headphones or headsets are a popular place for all of Mother Nature’s creatures to hide away. This time, an unsuspecting person found a rather nasty-looking spider seeking refuge in his headset and decided to snap a pic to share with the rest of the world.

We don’t know about you, but we’d throw those out rather than risk using them again! Who knows what else happened in those headphones…

Don’t let its freaky appearance put you off. This Hickory Horned Devil is the largest caterpillar in the world and, despite its appearance, it’s completely harmless and grows into one of the most beautiful moths you’ll ever see.

This is just another surprise from Mother Nature and shows us that we should never judge something for how it looks. Thank you, Mother Nature, for the life lesson.

Water snakes are absolutely terrifying, so we don’t even want to know how this person reacted when this slithery nope-rope decided to join him for a row on the lake.

While we would be off that kayak faster than you can say “snake,” the photographer had other ideas in mind and whipped out his camera instead. It seems that nowhere is safe from snakes, so kayaking is just another activity many will cross off their to-do lists once they see this photo.

Sheesh, talk about bringing your own weapon to a fight. These scary-looking claws belong to none other than a kangaroo! You can erase those images from your mind of sweet baby kangaroos hopping around and peering out of their mothers’ pouches, now that you know what kind of weapons they’re packing.

Mother Nature sure does scare us sometimes, and we don’t know if we can ever look at these Ozzie animals in the same way ever again.

We don’t know about you, but we’d rather go barefoot than wear this pair of shoes ever again. What you’re seeing in this shoe is a black widow spider, complete with its signature red hourglass belly.

Is it just us, or are you suddenly itching and imagining that spiders are crawling all over you, too?

We wouldn’t blame this car owner for possibly skipping work because of the spider hiding in the gap of his door handle. Probably another photo from Australia, this spider doesn’t look too friendly, and we wouldn’t dare go closer to try and identify what type of spider it is either.

Thanks for everything, Mother Nature, but can you ease up on the spiders hiding in strange places? It’s really giving us anxiety!

Snakes come in all different shapes and sizes. This Emerald Boa is just one of a variety of snakes that we wouldn’t want to come into contact with! Just take a look at those fangs!

We know that boas are generally constricting snakes, so these fangs are most likely used to grab hold of their prey before it constricts its body around the prey. We’ll go ahead and just add this one to the list of animals to avoid.

This eel was just silly when it mistook some sort of pipe for a tasty meal. As you can see in this photo, the eel is unable to move as the weight of whatever he ate is weighing him down.

Guess that serves him right for putting just about anything in his mouth. Looks like he paid the ultimate price for his greed. What a shame.

This snake is in for a treat, as he’s caught himself a tasty-looking catfish for his next meal. Catfish aren’t exactly the smallest fish, so one can only imagine how big the snake is to have caught one of these underwater giants!

Mother Nature surprises us way too often, and now we can’t even go fishing without some snake coming in and stealing all the good fish. Sigh.

When Mother Nature decides it’s winter, you best believe it’ll be cold as heck! In fact, it got so cold in Michigan in 2019 that Lake Michigan completely froze, and people were treated to this rare spectacle.

Have you ever had the privilege of seeing a frozen lake? Thanks to whoever took these photos, we can all enjoy these pictures of a true force of nature.

If you’ve ever wondered how kelp grew in the ocean, you no longer need to. Thanks to this talented photographer, we can now see how kelp grows and how it’s moved by the tides. While they look pretty scary in the crashing waves, they’re a vital part of the ecosystem and make a great hiding spot for fish.

Not only are they useful to the sea, but kelp can also be used to create many things humans use, including ice cream, sushi, and skin care products.

We, too, jumped out of our seats a little when we first saw this photo of a branch of seed pods. With their eerie centers, they look like eyeballs, leading us to wonder just why someone would be carrying around a bundle of eyeballs.

Mother Nature has a way of protecting her flora and fauna, and these seeds look the way they do to ward off birds and other creatures that might want to make a meal out of them.

Either this spider thinks he’s Spiderman or he’s been watching too much TV. Spiders possess a lot of skill in weaving their intricate webs, and we feel that this spider deserves a gold star and an A for its efforts on this eerie-looking web that resembles a skull.

We wonder what this spider hopes to catch and if he’ll indeed catch anything with his web serving as a warning on its own.

Before you scroll past thinking this is just another boring photo of a swamp or marshland, zoom in, we dare you. Do you see it? If you can’t, we’ll point it out to you. The brown you see in the photo is not land, but rather hundreds of thousands of spiders that have infested this area.

Just looking at it gives us the heebie-jeebies, but imagine coming face to face with this monstrosity in person! The photographer is very brave and deserves an award for taking this epic close-up.

I think this guy got a little more than he bargained for when he tried out his new VR headset only to find a real-life spider hiding inside the lens!

While we’re sure it would make for more realistic gameplay, it’s enough to make one’s skin crawl at the thought of that critter hiding so close to an open eye! Please keep your bugs to yourself, Mother Nature, because this spider situation is just getting out of hand now.

We were today years old when we discovered that these Angler fish are real and not just something you’d expect to see in a horror movie or fantasy film.

Captured in 2021, this photo of a washed-up Angler fish caused a lot of ruckus in the marine biology industry. Before this photo came out, many people thought these fish were only found in very deep ocean waters. To be honest, we’re too scared to research the cause behind the beaching of this eerie-looking fish.

Ah, Mother Nature and her jokes. With no reasonable explanation as to how this came about, this photo of an icicle, which appears to have a hand, has made its way around the internet. This image can now be viewed, in all its glory, in our list of scary Mother Nature pics.

This isn’t a rare occurrence, actually, and has been known to happen when the temperatures drops suddenly in parts of America. Have you ever seen one in real life?

This traveler met the strangest character in their hotel room while visiting Japan recently. Is it a Centipede? Is it a snake morphed with a spider?

We can say with certainty that we’ve never seen anything like this before and we wonder if it’s not some new type of insect. It does make one wonder, doesn’t it?

Most animals have brightly colored skin or shells to deter predators from making a tasty meal out of them. This large snail has a bright red coloring, which signals to predators that it’s poisonous and should be avoided at all costs.

Is it harmful to humans? Well, we aren’t really sure, but we do hope the person holding it in the photos at least washes their hands once they are done! Just in case…

Is this the mythical creature many claim to have seen in the Himalayas? Or is it a tree branch that’s collapsed and bowed from the weight of the snow? Don’t worry, we had to look twice too and can safely say this is just a snow-covered tree.

But imagine being the one coming across this in the snow. Do you run? Or do you stop to take a photo, as this person did? We fall into the first category, for sure. Run now, ask questions later.

Ever had an annoying guest drop in unannounced? This snake clearly has no manners as it rudely poked its head through a hole in this person’s ceiling.

Maybe it’s just having a look-see. Still, we wouldn’t trust it and we’d be packing our bags rather quickly if this was us. Bon, voyage!

This fossil bed has scientists baffled as they try to identify the fossilized creatures. Are they jellyfish? Aliens? Who knows.

Mother Nature has a unique way of creating beauty, and this is just another in a long list of unexplained and unidentified animals that leaves many scratching their heads.

The Creatonotos Gangis Moth is undoubtedly one of the scariest-looking moths ever to exist, but they’re pretty harmless.

The long dangly bits are their reproductive organs, and this moth is just spreading its pheromones to attract a mate. We’re scared of moths, so you wouldn’t find us within ten feet of this creature on any given day.

This giant Devil Flower Mantis looks more like a creepy alien from the predator movies than a harmless little mantis. But if you look closely, it’s actually magnificent!

This is, hands down, one of the most unique-looking creatures on this list. The Devil Flower Mantis is one of Mother Nature’s true glories and she was definitely showing off when she created this beauty. But, no matter how beautiful or harmless it may be, we still wouldn’t want to hold one.

We wouldn’t want to meet the snake that came out of this shed skin! Just look at the length of the skin! We can only imagine how big that snake is. On second thought, we don’t want to imagine!

But where is it hiding? And how did it get into this man’s attic in the first place? That’s a question that only Mother Nature can answer and it’s not an answer we think we want to know.

We’re lost for words at the sight of this spider stealing someone’s piece of bacon. Who would’ve thought that spiders enjoyed pork as much as we do?

Maybe the spider was hurt that he didn’t get invited for breakfast, so he helped himself. What would you do in this situation? Offer him an egg to go with his bacon or run out of the house screaming?

No, not those kinds of crabs. Actual crabs! This family of coconut crabs smelt a delicious smell and decided to join in on this camping group’s barbecue.

While they’re generally afraid of humans and prefer to keep their distance, the smell of burgers and hot dogs was too much for these hungry crabs. As a result, they wandered into this campsite.

This fish is called a Giant Oarfish, Earthquake Fish, and Doomsday Fish, and it’s basically the cockroach of the sea! Earthquake fish can survive natural disasters, shark attacks, and pretty much whatever else the water may throw at them.

According to rumors, these fish come up to the water’s surface right before an earthquake or tsunami. However, many scientists refute this claim. For those of us who believe the legends, if we see one of these floating around – we’ll run!