Neither cute nor cuddly: These animal babies are wee monsters

Unlike the usual roundup of adorable critters, these little shape shifters, cannibals, and body snatchers will haunt your Halloween.

Human kids dress up as monsters for Halloween, but some animal babies are a lot like the real thing.

Of course, they’re just doing what comes naturally, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t creepy. So this week we asked, which animal babies are not the cute and cuddly type?

These tadpoles become what’s known as a carnivore morph, “a much bigger tadpole” with “much bigger mouthparts,” says Greg Pauly, curator of herpetology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

This carnivorous youngster eschews plants and sticks to fairy shrimp, its toad cousins, and sometimes its own species.

Mom grows an outer layer of fatty skin meant for the babies to peel off and eat with specialized teeth. It’s a bit

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