Following in the precedence of that zany ol’ Henry David Thoreau, who among us hasn’t wanted to shed the cumbersome weight of today’s sprawling megalopolitan trappings and embark upon a voyage of spiritual discovery?

Returning to our roots in nature as it were?

Well, you just might want to rethink that instinctual adventure. The great outdoors is no less cruel and no more liberating than your nine to five. Sure, some of these animals might seem like they are evolutionary titans, what with their defense mechanisms and their hardened exoskeletons and their razor-sharp teeth. Dig a little deeper. If you think crying into your pillow at night about working eight hours behind a desk all day means God hates you, try taking a look at the lives of these ostensibly awesome creatures:

Praying Mantis

That’s right, the Praying Mantis; among the most lethal, hard-assed insects to have ever been formed by God’s repudiating hand. These wondrous insectile butchers are sleek, elegant, purdy and presumably pious religious folk (They pray a lot, LOL).

Don’t let their appearance and churchly demeanor fool you however; they’re the type of predators that would slash and grab you with strong, spiked forelegs if you ever got too close – committing unseen horrors to your body and any of their other mortified prey. (Which consist of other insects, frogs, lizards, snakes, rodents, homeless people). Any insect that feasts on the sundered flesh of the living instead of nibbling upon dirt and fecal matter has earned my respect.

Where Things Go Horribly Wrong:

Alright, praying mantises are bad-asses. This is evident. They butcher animals twice their size, kick ass for the Lord, and the entire time resemble alien rape machines with their bulbous, remorseless eyes.

“We thought this article was about creatures whose lives irrefutably sucked?” I’m getting to that. I didn’t say all mantises had it made, did I? Because they don’t. Specifically the ones that had the displeasure of being born male.

Why Their Lives Suck Even More Than Yours:

Billy, our protagonist mantis finally gets laid after prevailing over a cock blocking process of epic proportions. This includes him pouncing upon and essentially raping the female while she’s busy preening or eating (eerily similar to my own tactics).

After all this, you’d think the Mrs. might light up a cigarette, maybe give Bill a pat on the thorax for a job well done, right? No such luck. After getting hers, the female brute will violently turn on the male. (The nerve of that a-----e, trying to further propagate the species.) For you, this would involve your wife, significant other, or female escort brushing you away, complaining that she has a headache.

For the male mantis it means having his goddamn head chomped clean off his shoulders. As a morose consolation prize for living the life of the ultimate masochist, a reflex mechanism in the mantis’ body ensures he’ll keep on pumping away, necro-boning the lucky lass while his severed head becomes a delectable little treat! (Men, always thinking with their other head, amirite ladies?)



“Oh real nice, Bill! You went and died again! For once, I just wish you’d want to cuddle after sex.”

Anglerfish

Anglerfish, perhaps best known for the fleshy growths protruding from their heads (illicium), that act as duplicitous lures with which to bait their prey. Or for those of us whose subscriptions to National Geographic ran out, the ugly bastard from this scene in Finding Nemo.

Where Things Go Horribly Wrong:

So Anglerfish have a cool built in “carrot on a stick” on their foreheads. That’s pretty cool. But they’re also a rare breed. So rare that it could conceivably take years for two anglerfish of the opposite sex swimming along to bump into each other, let alone get their fin-laden freak on. So nature, being the detestable whore that she is, decided that this wasn’t enough and to also play a “harmless” little prank on the male anglerfish when it comes to his sexual life.

Why Their Life Sucks More Than Yours:

Of course, by harmless I meant – they become the living, breathing embodiment of a “p---y whipped” joke. These guys make Doug Christie, a guy who flashes his wife “I heart yous,” erratic winks, and blown kisses on live national television in NBA basketball games look like John Wayne in True Grit.

Recall an instance when your wife, gal pal, or any woman in general called you a dick. Do you have it firmly etched into your mind? Good. Now imagine that her words took on a literal meaning of the most degrading, humiliating degree. You guessed it: Like some strange voodoo curse straight out of a Stephanie Meyer fanfic, you are doomed to live the rest of your life as an actual penis (and balls).

Or as Wikipedia puts it:

When he finds a female, he bites into her skin, and releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. The male then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of gonads, which releases sperm in response to hormones in the female’s bloodstream indicating egg release. This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready to spawn, she has a mate immediately available.”

The male bites into the female, and they fuse together; he gets all his essential vitamins and minerals, as well as a shared oxygen supply. This means he doesn’t need to do anything in life except become like a patient little caterpillar; except instead of emerging from the cocoon as a magnificent butterfly – he emerges from his hypothetical cocoon as a schlong.

This turns the female into what is essentially a sultry hermaphrodite, since she can reproduce at any time with the former fish turned empty shell of a dick perpetually dangling from her underbelly.



The couple that shops together…

Asian Giant Hornet

You’ve probably seen the Japanese Giant Hornet in the following video:

Coming back to you now after that brutal insectile snuff film, isn’t it? The Japanese Giant Hornet, AKA pitiless, winged automatons of death. At a scant 30 in number, these guys can maim and kill a nest full of 30,000 European honey bees in less than 3 hours. (A single hornet able to kill 40 bees per minute.)

Not content with eradicating every last one of the hardest working foragers of nature’s gold, the wasps then proceed to steal the helpless bee babies from the ravaged hive; presumably suffocating them, punching them in the face while they’re in their strollers, and slipping them down garbage chutes before finally eating them.

Where Things Go Horribly Wrong:

But the bees have their revenge. You see, the aforementioned description of what happened to the poor bees was an example of when honey bees from Europe were introduced to the Japanese environment. This was all in some horrible mad scientist-esque experiment to increase honey production by our overseas friends. (Or maybe it was for a Japanese game show.) Not accustomed to Hentai, Hello Kitty, or battling Mothra, these bees that were suddenly thrust into the cusp of an alien locale were predictably massacred, offering little resistance.

The native Japanese honeybees, however, were sick of getting their s--t pushed in. After years and years of oppression, they devised a way to fight back.

Why Their Lives Suck Worse Than Yours:

The native Asian bees, invigorated by a bee-like Genghis Kahn (or Shigeru Miyamoto) have devised a unique strategy in dealing with their godless foes. As the hornet enters the nest, a large mob of about five hundred honey bees surrounds it, completely covering it and preventing it from moving, and begin quickly vibrating their flight muscles. This has the effect of raising the temperature of the honey bee mass to 47 °C (117 °F). The honey bees can barely tolerate this temperature, but the hornet cannot survive more than 46 °C (115 °F), so it dies.

2) Fig Wasp

Fig wasps are born and raised inside a fruit that grows upon the fig trees of their namesake. Their life is closely related to this tree; they pollinate it, decorate the interior, and complete the “circle of life” so to speak. All is well in the gay, merry world that is nature.

Where Things Go Horribly Wrong:

Yes, there is a common theme prevalent in this article. It is the adversity that is faced by the brave males in this broad scope of animal species; our kindred brothers that share our very masculine quintessence. (Sorry ladies, you already have all the power in society as it is!) These male fig wasps need our support, for they live vacant lives destitute of any real meaning.

Why Their Lives Suck Worse Than Yours:

You know how some people don’t tend to enjoy being f----d like two dollar hookers and then never get spoken to or called again? Crybabies, right? Alright, how about being told that they have a vacuous personality and are essentially only good for getting laid from and that they should never ever open their mouths unless it’s to exhale during sex? How do I put this nicely? Male fig wasps are like the two former scenarios combined, except instead of being told they have no personality, they are kicked out of the bed the second they are done screwing and die in a horrible car fire on the taxi ride home. (Which they paid for!) So much for baby daddies in Fig Waspville, huh?

As the fig develops, the wasp eggs hatch and develop into larvae. After going through the pupal stage, the mature male’s first act is to mate with a female. The males of many species lack wings and are unable to survive outside the fig for a sustained period of time. After mating, a male wasp begins to dig out of the fig, creating a tunnel for the females to escape through.

Okay, so let’s recap. Upon reaching maturity, the first thing that the fig wasp has to do is put his newly developed fig meat to the test – by getting it on with a female fig wasp; an insatiable female fig wasp cougar, out to prove that she’s still got it; and can still get some of those nubile young figgy loins!

This is essentially the equivalent of a budding, coming of age teenager who masturbates furiously in his bathroom to Sear’s Catalogues; hoping one day to whet his proverbial whistle. The second he is able to sustain a “woody,” as the kids call it, a mature, horny female perches upon his rod like a howler monkey and goes to town. Thirty seconds later, the boy chews a hole through his bathroom door for the lady to escape through later, and dies of exhaustion, or maybe even cholera, like a kid from Oregon Trail. Curtains.

Absolutely deplorable that one’s life could consist only of having sex the absolute instant they’re able to, and then crumpling into a ball and dying. If you’re a female, please skip down to the next section of this article, entitled “Gorilla.” If you are a fellow man such as myself (though definitely not as virile) I think we can all agree on one thing: we all know what critter we want to be reincarnated as, don’t we boys? Awwww yeahh. Gettin’ some of that sweet tang the second we can get it up – till the day you die, baby! (Literally the very same day. Goddamit).

1) Gorilla

To put it in simple terms, gorillas are the paragon of the words tough, brutal, and pants shittingly scary. Remember that scene in Jason Takes Manhattan where Jason actually punches a guy’s head off? Gorillas could do that to you, only they’d likely slam you around a few times for good measure like Hulk did to Loki in Avengers first because… the hell are you gonna do?

Where Things Go Wrong:

When gorillas mate, they have absolutely no competition. That’s right – no one’s going to cuckold this snarling, simian giant. Gorilla females are the exact antithesis of Paris Hilton: they are faithful, non-promiscuous, affectionate mates. I know what you’re saying right now: “Damn Russ, this all sounds so amazing. Those gorillas sure have it made, don’t they?” Sorry folks, this means nature has developed one small side effect in accordance for the gorilla’s life of sexual harmony; like some Gorilla-Faustian satanic pact gone horribly awry.

Why Their Lives Suck Worse Than Yours:

The gorilla penis is a staggering 2 inches. Erect. I bet about 85% of you reading this right now are standing up from your computer chair with your hands on your hips, thinking to yourself “Oh yeah, I’m more hung than a gorilla baby!” If you did that, I want you to know that even a gorilla would get more gorilla and human p---y than you on his worst day, thumb-sized erection notwithstanding.



“You’re still gonna call me though, right?