[narrator] Growing up in the wild can be pretty hardcore.

Imagine learning to leap, roar, swim, or fly for the very first time.

You've got to get it right, because the faster you are, the stronger you are or even the better you can camouflage yourself, the greater your chances of surviving and thriving in the wilderness.

When you grow up that is.

But with all this feral rivalry going on, you've got to wonder - who really is Mother Nature's biggest or smallest or most dangerous untamed youngling of them all?

The answers will astound you, and we are counting them down from 10 to 1.

They are cute.

They are wild.

They are the cover girls and boys of the animal kingdom and they know it.

They are baby animals.

Babies are a wonderful gift to the animal kingdom.

They are adorable.

They are hilarious.

And probably more importantly, they are the future.

But let's face it, some of them are a little bit weird.

Today, we will meet baby animals with unusual habits, unique bodies, and unbelievable back stories.

Prepare to meet and greet our Top 10 Weirdest Baby Animals.

Australia is home to the vast majority of our planet's marsupials.

You'd know the really famous ones like the kangaroo, the koala, and the possum.

But you may not be familiar with the trio of small marsupials you are about to meet.

They are a triad of odd, with names that are as unusual as their behaviour.

Number 10 on our Weirdest Animal Countdown are carnivorous marsupials the numbat, the dunnart, and the bandicoot.

To start us off, numbats are endangered small marsupials that spend their days foraging in dry eucalypt woodlands.

So, pretty much the only way to get a good close look at one of their babies, or joeys, is at a sanctuary.

This littley is being checked on by a keeper.

Compared to when it was a newborn, this baby numbat is huge!

Like other marsupials, numbat joeys are born underdeveloped, only about the size of a grain of rice.

It'll take a year or two for this youngster to be considered an adult.

These cuties are wriggly handfuls, so no big surprise that weighing a joey is a tricky job.

By the time it hits its first birthday, this ball of fur will weigh about half a kilo.

Then it will be ready to get serious about grown-up numbat life which involves looking for their one and only food.

Yup.

You heard that right - one... single... food.

Numbats like termites.

Numbats have pointy noses and very long sticky tongues, perfect for harvesting their favourite food.

And instead of teeth, they have blunt pegs to chew soft, wiggly insects.

But even with these weird-looking adaptations, having a full numbat tummy is tough.

Each one of these 30-centimetre long, half a kilo bodies need 20,000 termites a day.

In a world of climate change and habitat loss, keeping the delicate balance of termite to numbat is very challenging.

This is why there are currently fewer than 1,000 numbats living in the wild, and most are found in reserves and animal parks.

So these precious, striped and very odd marsupials can continue to exist into the future.

So, for a carnivore, numbats look fairly placid, right?

But when it comes to their equally rare cousin, the dunnart they're a lot feistier.

On the surface, this very small marsupial looks like a mouse.

There are 19 known species of dunnart, varying in size, but all weighing less than a chicken egg.

Going behind the scenes of a sanctuary gives us the chance to give you a sneaky peek inside a dunnart's pouch.

Looks like this petite mother has three pinkies in hers at the moment.

Inside this nesting box is a slightly older litter.

While dunnarts are fearsome by nature, there's one thing that will absolutely anger a mother dunnart and that is someone messing with her babies.

Having reared them in her pouch for about 60 days, this dunnart mum is not about to let anyone or anything near her joeys until they are ready to be vicious carnivores all on their own.

Like kangaroos and koalas, bandicoots are very sweet-looking Australian marsupials especially when they're teeny weeny and still in the pouch.

What a rare treat to get to see them in there, all snuggled up together.

In no time, these pinkies will be fully furred and ready to be big bandicoots.

Even though they are small, bandicoots have powerful front limbs.

And all they do, all night, is dig deep holes in the ground to find their favourite food - everything.

So basically, a bandicoot is a small, cute weapon of mass destruction.

Marsupials are a unique and special part of the Australian ecosystem.

But they aren't all adorable, soft fur and big eyes.

As we have learned today, some of them are tiny, insect-slurping, ferocious, hole-digging machines which is, quite frankly, a little bit weird.

Sometimes an animal can look like one thing, and be another.

The next creature on our list of Weird Baby Animals doesn't just do that it also smells like something you absolutely won't believe.

Meet number nine - the binturong.

Originating from the rainforests of South-East Asia, binturongs spend the daylight hours sleeping.

But when twilight comes, these dog-sized mammals become active and start looking for food.

Female binturongs are larger than the males these ladies topping out at around 36 kilograms.

And she needs to be bigger, because for the first weeks of motherhood, she goes about her day carrying her two tiny blind babies in her fur.

But binturong babies, or binlets, grow fast.

By around eight weeks of age, they will be about the size of a small cat and ready to start exploring the world.

A binturong is also known as a bearcat.

And while, on first look, that seems like a fairly accurate description, a binturong is not closely related to bears or cats.

It is actually a member of the Viverridae family that includes the civet and the fossa.

Binturongs are unique in a lot of ways.

Their tails, which are the same length as their bodies, are thick, muscular and basically work as another leg.

Binturong feet are flat out weird.

Their ankle bones can spin 180 degrees, which means a binturong can climb down a tree frontwards, without face planting at the bottom.

But it is their sense of smell that makes binturong truly whacky.

Male and female binturong generally live separately, so when breeding time comes, they need to find each other.

They do this by emitting a hormone.

And that hormone smells like buttered popcorn.

Yup.

Binturong choose a mate by how much they smell like snack food.

The rainforest habitat of the binturong is lush and the binturong plays a large part in maintaining this beautiful environment.

A male can have a personal territory of up to six square kilometres and as he explores, he leaves droppings containing the seeds of plants he has eaten.

And those digested seeds germinate and grow new plants.

That's some very useful poop.

But it's not all daytime naps and popcorn smells for the binturong.

Humans are the only threat to this tree-dwelling species.

And with increasing numbers of palm oil plantations eating up South-East Asian rainforests, the binturong has become an officially vulnerable species.

And while genetically monitored insurance populations of sanctuary-bred animals like these, exist in animal parks around the world, the future of this admittedly weird species is nowhere near secure which makes their babies especially precious.

Members of the lesser ape family are quite closely related to humans.

And in most of them, we can see behaviours that seem a lot like ours except maybe in our next Weird Baby Animal.

Meet number eight - the siamang.

Siamang originate from the rainforests of the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra.

They spend much of their time high in the trees.

These siamang are living the high life in a sanctuary.

Siamang babies are truly adorable, and their parents agree.

For the first two years of their lives, they are basically hugged 24-7.

For three to four months after birth, Mum takes on hugging duty, doubling as a feeding station.

From then, until they're two years of age, Dad takes over teaching his youngsters everything they need to know.

And the things a baby siamang needs to know are pretty unusual.

[siamang yelps] The first one is how to use their outside voice.

Siamang have a flexible throat pouch, which is also known as a gular sac.

And every morning they use that sac to hold a concert, which lets all the other siamang families know whose territory is whose.

Siamang calls regularly top 98 decibels, which is louder than a roaring lawnmower.

[siamang vocalising] The next weird thing a baby siamang needs to learn is how to get around.

And whether it's high in a tree or briefly visiting the ground, siamang movement is odd.

With arms 2.5 times the length of their bodies, siamang can travel 10 metres with each arm swing.

This process, called brachiation, is much like the way humans walk, just done with their arms, and about 30 metres up above the ground.

When they do come down to ground level, siamang walk on two legs.

But they find it hard to balance, so sometimes they hold their arms above their heads.

All this whacky siamang movement is aided by the structure of their hands and feet.

Siamang hands are very similar to human hands with four fingers and opposable thumbs.

But unlike us, siamang feet have an opposable toe as well so they basically have four highly functional hands.

Siamang are one of very few primates that mate for life.

In fact, a siamang group is generally made up of related family members, led by the breeding male and female.

But, not unlike human families, siamang will also welcome a non-threatening stranger to live with them and join their morning chorus.

[siamangs vocalising] Siamangs are highly territorial, and protect their territory fiercely with vocalisations and aggression, if required.

Unfortunately, the biggest threat to that territory is human activity.

We are responsible for the endangered status of these beautiful animals.

And as much as it's not fun to be yelled awake by a hairy lawn mower, humans and siamang definitely have a long way to go before we are living in harmony.

Hopefully, it'll be adorable bundles like this that help light the way to a brighter future for these amazing apes.

To meet our next Weird Baby Animal, we need to travel to the wilds of Mongolia.

This is a creature that survives in some of the harshest land on earth.

And it has a name that is almost as harsh to pronounce.

It's number seven on today's countdown - the Przewalski's horse.

The main reason these adorable Przewalski's foals have made it to our list of Weird Baby Animals is because of the remarkable story of their family.

These foals are the next generation of the closest thing to a truly wild horse.

While there are roaming horses in other parts of the world, they are considered feral species.

The Przewalski's horse has been wandering the Mongolian Steppe since pre-history.

In fact, it is believed that the direct ancestors of these foals shared territory with woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers.

The Mongolian people call these horses Tahki, which means spirit.

They consider them the holy animal of Mongolia.

In the 19th century, a Russian geographer travelling through remote Mongolia discovered and named these stocky, strong, wild equines.

From that day forward, they were known internationally as Przewalski's horses.

A Przewalski's foal weighs only 30 kilograms at birth.

It has a coat that is similar to a lamb's - woolly and warm, to survive the extremes of the Steppe.

Originating from a tough environment, Przewalski's horses are naturally inclined to grow up fast.

The foals learn to play very quickly, at around one month of age.

And by two months, they are fully weaned and independent.

And that's because the herd is always on the move in search of food and water.

The most remarkable part of the Przewalski's horse story began in the early 20th century.

The species was pronounced officially extinct with wild numbers almost in single figures.

Thankfully, an international coalition of zoos joined forces and collected 14 Przewalski's horses.

Those animals are the source of every single one of the 2,500 Przewalski's horses estimated to currently exist.

And regular releases from breeding groups around the world are building the number of wild Przewalski's horses every year.

Living in remote Mongolia is tough, with winds and snow sweeping through the Steppe.

Przewalski's horses have developed some unique adaptations to cope with the extremes of their natural environment a thick winter coat that effectively repels the cold wind and wet snow A mohawk-like mane that doesn't hold the rain and keeps their necks free of frostbite.

And if that wasn't enough, Przewalski's horses have learned to dig the ground with their hooves to source underground water in the summer.

While Przewalski's horses look pretty much like other horses, and their behaviour is similar too, their amazing story definitely means they have a place in our Weird Baby Countdown.

It shouldn't be weird that humans have worked hard to save a wild species, but in the case of the Przewalski's horse, weird is very, very good.

Strap on your snorkel and get ready for a little underwater adventure to meet our next contender.

A bizarre creature from a family that's survived and thrived on planet earth for millions of years without even having a brain!

Say hello to Number six - the moon jellyfish.

First tick on the weird list - a moon jellyfish is made up of 95% water.

The rest is basically jelly and nerve endings.

Found in all oceans on earth except the Arctic, they didn't become the world's most widespread jellyfish without having a few secret weapons of survival up their rather gelatinous sleeves.

Let's start with the first superpower they develop as babies - shapeshifting.

These twitchy blobs don't look much like jellyfish yet, and that's because they're not!

Similar to a butterfly, moon jellyfish go through the mysterious process of metamorphosis, shapeshifting from form to form, until they reach adulthood.

Tiny, defenceless and determined, these little planulae, or moon jellyfish larvae, are quite literally swimming for their lives.

They're on a mission to find the nearest rock or strand of seaweed a place to cling to and call home for their next phase of life.

What might look like a forgotten science experiment, is in fact a thriving moon jellyfish nursery, where our planulae have landed, and are now polyps.

And here's where the fight for survival gets a little bit sci-fi.

Moon jellyfish polyps possess the incredible power to multiply... making direct copies of themselves.

Moon jellyfish know that when it comes to survival of the species, there's strength in numbers.

Once they've matured after a couple of weeks, they're ready to deploy into the ocean for their first swim as moon jelly babies.

It can take a period of weeks or months for these other-worldly offspring, called ephyrae, to complete their transformation and earn their stripes as fully-fledged moon jellyfish.

In the absence of a brain, a network of nerves helps moon jellyfish to sense their environment, and with it they can smell, taste, sense light and dark, and keep themselves balanced in the water.

When it comes to catching a feed - no eyes?

No problem!

Not when you've got four long oral arms, pulling in an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet.

Plankton, fish eggs, even smaller jellyfish are all on the menu.

More than just fishing lines, their tentacles are armed with stinging cells to zap their prey and their predators.

An unsuspecting turtle or sea bird is likely to get a side of sting when they try to gobble up a jelly.

Moon jellies don't discern between friend and foe, stinging everything they come into contact with at all times.

So if you ever see one in the water, or washed up on the beach, best to enter stealth mode and keep your distance.

Sure, moon jellyfish might be peculiar creatures, but they can shapeshift, sense the world with their nerve net, plus serve up stings 24-7, and all without a brain!

Forget weird, more like wonderful.

Welcome to the Galapagos Islands in the eastern Pacific.

The name of these islands actually holds a clue as to what the next baby animal on our countdown is!

Galapago means tortoise in Spanish, the name given to these islands by the Spanish sailors who explored the region back in 1535, after seeing thousands of these guys.

Number five is the large and very odd giant tortoise.

As some of the longest-lived land creatures on the planet, with the oldest on record reaching 175 years of age, they're also one of the strangest.

But these gentle giants aren't bothered.

They take life very, very slowly at around a quarter of a kilometre per hour, in fact.

For massive animals, giant tortoises start life teeny tiny.

Breaking their way out of eggs the size of tennis balls, giant tortoise hatchlings have to fend for themselves from the very beginning.

Giant tortoise hatchlings in the wild are a rare and wonderful sight.

For babies, they are oddly low maintenance, eating only once every three days while they get the lay of the land.

Not only are the numbers of the 13 living species of giant tortoises decreasing in the wild, hatchlings will mysteriously disappear for the first five years of their lives.

Researchers don't yet know exactly where they go, but it's thought that they might hide under the cover of the forest to avoid being eaten by their only natural predator - the Galapagos hawk.

Grub's up!

Giant tortoises are primarily herbivores, but the way they eat is kind of unusual.

Using the bony edges of their mouths, they'll mash their meal into a digestible pulp as they don't actually have any teeth.

Amazingly, they can survive for up to a year without any food or water.

Their slow metabolism and water-storage capabilities make this incredible feat possible.

Doesn't look like these tortoises will be going without any time soon though.

The perks of living in an animal sanctuary, huh?

It takes a long time for a giant tortoise to be fully grown - a very slow 40 years - with the heftiest adults weighing more than 227 kilograms.

And all that weight balances on legs that are described by scientists as elephantine because they look like elephant's limbs.

But a giant tortoise's strong front legs turn inwards, which would look really weird on an elephant.

On average these large loaders will spend 16 hours resting every day, and they're also partial to a mud bath.

Check out that mud mask!

While it might seem luxurious, be assured giant tortoises don't do this to cleanse and revitalise their pores.

Mud baths help them to keep their cold-blooded bodies cool on warm, sunny days.

If they feel threatened, their giant shell makes the perfect safety bunker which might look a bit strange, but thanks to this impressive imitation of a giant rock, the giant tortoises have survived on planet earth for over 200 million years!

With an average life expectancy of more than 100 years, giant tortoises really do prove that slow and steady wins the race, just maybe not a game of tag.

We are over halfway through our Top 10 Weirdest Baby Animal list, and we're not going to lie.

Number four is weird.

It's the tapir.

Tapirs are a wetland and rainforest animal, with four species found separately in South and Central America and South-East Asia.

They love fruit, leaves and grass and water.

And it's here where the first weird factor comes in.

Tapirs have a prehensile nose kind of like an elephant trunk, kind of like an anteater's snout.

But in tapir world, this nose is everything - a snorkel for swimming and hiding underwater a handy leaf grabber and a flexible sweeper for collecting food.

Baby tapirs are the best kind of weird - adorable-weird.

While their mothers can weigh over 300 kilograms, baby tapirs are only 7 to 10 kilos at birth.

These babies are tiny and delightfully adorable from the moment they are born.

Able to stand in their first hour of life, baby tapirs are on the fast track to adulthood.

In fact, those stripey markings you see on a baby tapir, designed to camouflage them in the dappled rainforest light, are completely gone in six months.

But that doesn't mean a baby tapir pushes Mum away.

This baby will keep nursing from its mother for as long as she provides milk, or until her next calf arrives.

Tapirs are herbivores.

But remember that an adult female that is larger than her male counterpart will grow to a huge size.

So, how does she grow that big on a vegetarian diet?

She eats a lot, that's how... up to 35 kilograms of leaves, grass, fruit and even aquatic plants per day.

All that food has to come out the other end at some point.

And that's where tapirs become really useful.

As a large animal, with a huge appetite, the tapir basically replaces everything it eats by dispersing seeds right back into the rainforest floor.

Tapirs are termed as what is known as an umbrella species.

As one of the largest land mammals in their habitats, their survival also secures the survival of all the smaller mammals, amphibians, birds, reptiles, even insects that live around them.

Who's a good tapir?

But let's get back to the weirdness.

Even a tapir's feet are a bit odd.

If you look closely, you will see that a tapir has four toes on their front legs and three toes on the back.

What's up with that?

Well, a tapir loves to end the day with a swim.

Firstly, it cools them down on a hot afternoon, and secondly, a swim washes off the skin parasites that like to party on a tapir's body.

And what's on the edge of water?

Mud.

Tapir's unique two-phase toe situation means they can grip in the mud and not slip over.

All in all, between the snorkel nose, the whacky toes, and stripy baby fur, we think you will probably agree that tapirs deserve their place as number four on our list of Weird Baby Animals.

As our countdown continues, we've met mammals with snorkels, marsupials with attitude, and tree dwellers that smell like snacks.

So, you won't be surprised when you meet the first of our top three Weirdo Babies.

Number three - the stick insect.

These members of the Phasmid family aren't just weird, they are an actual miracle creature.

There are over 3,000 species of stick insects found on earth.

They live on every continent except Antarctica.

And each and every species looks different.

Like most insects, stick insects go through a few different life stages.

Their lifecycle is known as incomplete metamorphosis, because it isn't quite the same as what insects, like butterflies, go through.

They start life as eggs - dropped, buried, or carefully deposited in a tree hollow - covered in a capsule that makes them safe.

When they hatch, the babies are called nymphs.

The nymphs look like miniature versions of the grown-ups.

To get to adulthood, the nymphs shed their skin or moult about six to nine times.

And that's where these insects get really interesting.

Each species takes the form of the plant they feed on.

If their tree has brown branches, then the stick insect is brown.

If it's green - well, you get the idea.

As a young stick insect grows, it simply sheds its skin and emerges with a new, slightly larger one.

But, here's the miracle part of stick insect life.

Female stick insects do not need to mate with a male to produce offspring.

In a process called parthenogenesis, a female can simply lay eggs and they will develop into female stick insects.

If she does choose to mate, then the offspring have a 50-50 chance of being male or female.

Given they are so common, it's a bit hard to think of insects being vulnerable.

But, unfortunately, human activity has meant many species of insects are dropping in numbers dramatically.

This is true for most species of stick insect.

Between habitat destruction for development and farming, and widespread use of pesticides, almost all species of stick insect are in decline.

And come on, look at that face!

It's weird, but would you feel good about harming it?

Here are some quick stick insect facts.

The smallest stick insect measures two centimetres long... while the biggest one in the world is 56 centimetres long.

And maybe most amazing of all, if a bird isn't fooled by a stick insect's amazing powers of camouflage, and it manages to pull off a leg, the clever stick insect can simply grow another leg to take its place.

These guys may be weird, but respect, stick insect.

Respect.

Below the surface of the ocean off the southern coast of Australia, lurks one weird creature.

And if you don't look closely enough, you'd think it was a plant.

Number two on today's countdown is the magical, mysterious seadragon.

These slow-moving, colourful fish come from the same family as seahorses and pipefish.

And you could be forgiven for mistaking them for members of the seaweed family as well.

Each of the three seadragon species varies in colour, size and structure, but they all share one thing.

A seadragon's camouflage skills are so good, that neither prey nor predators see them as fish.

And you wouldn't know it, but among all those floaty seaweed-y appendages, a seadragon is hiding a couple of nasty spines, just in case it does need to defend itself.

Seadragons might look unusual, but that's nothing compared to the way they reproduce.

The female lays up to 250 eggs on the underside of the male's tail.

There, the eggs are nourished by special nutrient sacs the male has developed specifically for breeding.

After six to eight weeks, the eggs hatch.

Tiny - at around 20 millimetres - the hatchlings are completely and utterly alone and defenceless.

And because life in the ocean is what it is, only 1 in 20 of these babies will survive.

Most will become lunch for passing fish, crustaceans and anemones.

Seadragons are stealth feeders.

Because of their unique bodies, they displace very little water.

So prey don't know they're coming.

Using their pipe-like snout, they simply approach floating crustaceans and plankton and vacuum them into their mouths.

Try that with your next PB and J.

Actually don't.

It would be very dangerous, and you are not a seadragon.

There is only one real threat to seadragon survival, and that's human activity.

Between contamination of their habitat by chemicals from coastal development and humans hunting them for collections, seadragons are facing real threats.

Currently they are listed as near-threatened which is a devastating situation that we can easily reverse by cleaning up our act and leaving these creatures where they belong - in the ocean.

In a clean and protected environment, a healthy adult seadragon will live for up to seven years.

And in that time, because of their amazing camouflage and generally breezy approach to life, seadragons are remarkably unbothered by other sea creatures that see them as a nice bit of colourful seaweed floating around.

Sounds like a perfectly weird life.

In a world full of wonderfully weird animals, there is one that stands out from the crowd.

It's one of our close relatives, and maybe we could all learn a thing or two from them about living a colourful life.

Meet the baby animal that sits at the top of the weird pile - the mandrill.

Native to Equatorial Africa, this large Old World monkey has no problem flying its flag proudly.

Mandrills are the largest living monkey species, topping out at over one metre tall and weighing in at a maximum of around 33 kilograms.

But it takes a few years for them to become this majestic.

Baby mandrills are born after a six-month pregnancy, and they are teeny tiny.

Weighing an average of only half a kilo, these babies are small, sweet balls of dark fur with pink faces, white arms and legs and a tiny cap of black hair on the tops of their heads.

These babies may lack the coloured faces of the adults, but they make up for it in pure squish.

Mandrill mothers take their parenting job very seriously, even when their babies are determined to test their patience.

Babies will stay with their mother long after they have started to grow their adult coats.

In fact, they will stay around until she breeds again.

Once they hit the point of maturity, the males will venture off to find their own fun, but the grown daughters generally stay with their mothers for life.

With their furry head crests and magnificent manes and beards, these are impressive animals.

But it's a mandrill's face that really makes it stand out purple and blue nose ridges red lips and nose five centimetre canines that look scary but are actually only shown to say, "Hey, how you doing?"

Actually, it's not just their faces that stand out.

There are also those butts.

And mandrills are proud to show off their bottoms.

The dominant male of a mandrill group is the brightest male - brightest face colours, and brightest behind as well.

This is the male that will be chosen as the father to be by any breeding female.

Amazingly, when an older male starts to lose its dominance, it will also lose the brilliant colouration in its face.

Mandrills are omnivores but given the choice, they would rather feast on fruit and plants.

And while this mum is doing the boring big mandrill job of foraging for food her infant is doing what all babies do best - play!

Not weird at all.