Alexander Wooley is the director of partnerships and communications at AidData, and a former British Royal Navy officer. Our imaginations, in recent years, have been trained on the stars above us.

This Indo-Pacific stunner dons a kaleidoscope shell of greens, blues, reds, and oranges, with purple eyes that swivel independently. At 3-18 cm long, it packs a punch like a .22 bullet using club-like ...

Parasitic sea lamprey has a suction-cup mouth filled with circular rows of teeth. It's like something right out of a Stephen King novel — or maybe just the next chapter of 2020, the one that follows ...