Coconut crabs, also known as "robber crabs," steal whiskey, shoes and guns—and might have killed Amelia Earhart. Australian musk ducks can imitate a slamming door or cursing human. Joanna Bagniewska surveys one hundred strange animals, marveling at the manifold, often macabre inventiveness of nature—prickly stick insects, born in ant beds, who resemble ants for their first few days of life; Australian cuttlefish with a male pattern on one side and a female pattern on the other. Exhaustively researched, exuberantly written, this bestiary brims with curiosity.