Every once in a while I come across an image so incredible I can’t stop thinking about it for the next few weeks. Below are some of my favorites, plus an explanation of each.

Apparently, sharks tend to gnaw on undersea internet cables to the extent that companies have started wrapping their cables in Kevlar to prevent shark-related outages. Nobody knows exactly why they do this, some have theorized that the sharks somehow sense electromagnetic waves or something, but my personal theory is that they just like biting things, and internet cables to a shark are perfectly bite-able. Also, it’s adorable.

Raccoons are fairly unique in that they try to “wash” their food in water before eating it. There’s a video that circulates sometimes of a group of raccoons who try this with a piece of cotton candy, dipping it in the water and looking away while it disintegrates in their hands, only to paw around for their food, lost to a mechanic they didn’t know existed. It’s a tragedy in every sense of the word. But what the video that gets shared tends to omit is the part where the raccoons learn. The picture above shows a raccoon who figures out that the cotton candy dissolves in water eating its well earned food. Really, it’s a story of optimism, when you think about it.

I don’t really have context for this one. It’s kind of sinister, now that I’m looking at it more closely. Maybe because the implication is that the elephant broke into the kitchen, I’m not sure, but it triggers my fight or flight. Either way, it’s a unique image.

I used to work in a dog grooming place, and every time I checked in a borzoi or similarly long-nosed breed I’d have to stop myself from thinking of this picture and bursting into laughter. No offense to borzoi owners, they’re great dogs, but the phrase “why the long face” always makes me lose it for some reason.

Sometimes I feel like this rat. I think it’s a rat, at least. It kind of looks like one of those sphinx cats caught at a bad angle, and I have a soft spot for them too. In any case, the rat pictured above is in its own lane—chilling, some might say—solely focused on eating the comparatively monumental bowl of popcorn below it. Spiritually, therefore, I resonate with this rat.

When I was looking for this picture in my gallery, I think I remembered it looking a lot friendlier than it actually does. Looking at it now, it’s similarly terrifying to the last one. Maybe elephants are just agents of chaos. Disturbing.