See the Bizarre-Looking Fluorescent Pink Creature That Is Thought to Have 'Been Isolated for Millions of Years

(NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service)

Park rangers in New South Wales, Australia, have been finding dozens of giant, fluorescent pink slugs on a mountaintop in the area.

"As bright pink as you can imagine, that's how pink they are," Michael Murphy, a ranger with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, said as he tried to adequately describe the bizarre-looking creatures. "On a good morning, you can walk around and see hundreds of them."

The pink slugs are around 8-inches long and have been sighted only on Mount Kaputar, a 5,000-foot peak in the Nandewar Range in norther New South Wales, the Yahoo! News blog "The Sideshow" points out.

The Sydney Morning Herald's Ben Cubby has more details:

They are a relic of the era when much of eastern Australia was damp rainforest, and probably would have long since vanished, if a volcano had not erupted at Mount Kaputar about 17 million years ago.

The result of that eruption is a high-altitude haven for invertebrates and plant species that have been isolated for millions of years, after Australia dried out and the rainforests receded.

Their heritage can be traced back to Gondwana - when Australia's landmass was connected to others in one vast continent - via relatives that survive in pockets of New Zealand, New Caledonia and South Africa.

On its Facebook page, the park service explained that a series of volcanoes, millions of years of erosion and other specific geological changes "have carved a dramatic landscape at Mount Kaputar" and very unique conditions prevented the pink slugs from going extinct.

Murphy, the previously mentioned park ranger, said there are also other strange types of wildlife found on the mountain, including a cannibal snail.

"We've actually got three species of cannibal snail on Mount Kaputar, and they're voracious little fellas…They hunt around on the forest floor to pick up the slime trail of another snail, then hunt it down and gobble it up," he said.