Take a Look at 6 of Nature’s Rarest Events

Pay close attention to catch a glimpse — or smell — of these six bizarre natural wonders.

SNEAKY STENCH

Like the smell of rotting meat? Then you’ll love it when the giant corpse flower blooms.

Native to Asia, this stinky stem tricks flesh-eating insects into thinking a dead animal is nearby. But instead of dining on the flower, the bugs pollinate it instead, helping it reproduce. The plant even warms itself up so that its stench travels as far as possible.

Luckily for the rest of us, the corpse flower blooms only once every four to five years — and lasts for just a couple of days.

WALKING ROCKS

One day, these rocks and boulders are sitting still, just like a rock or boulder should. The next day, though, they seem to have moved several feet all on their own, leaving telltale tracks behind them. Some weighing hundreds of pounds might even travel as far as 1,500 feet over time.

Known as “sailing stones,” these bizarre travelers in Death Valley, California, have been studied since the early 1900s and were recorded for the first time in 2014 by researchers using time-lapse cameras. Lots of explanations for the phenomena have come and gone, but scientists say the most likely answer is simple: During freezing nighttime temperatures, a windowpane-thin layer of ice forms, and when that begins to melt in the daytime sun, the rocks glide on the ice and water, propelled by the wind.

SPINNING ‘CICLES

Like gears inside a freaky clock, the thin, circular slabs called ice circles slowly rotate in rivers, streams and creeks. Although seen mostly in North America and northern Europe, this weird wonder can form in any slow-moving body of water — appearing and disappearing within minutes.

Also called “ice disks” or “ice pans,” these circles form in mini-whirlpools (or eddies) of freezing lazy rivers when the water speed is just right: If the water moves too fast, the eddy will break up; too slow, and it’ll freeze over.

Most ice circles are small, but people have reported disks of up to almost 50 feet in diameter!

FIRE IN THE SKY

If you’ve ever suddenly seen a spectacular red- or orange-colored band stretched across thin, wispy clouds, then you’ve seen a fire rainbow. But the rare event has nothing to do with fire.

For one to form, conditions must be just right: The sun and those wispy clouds (called cirrus clouds) must be high in the sky, and the clouds must contain hexagonal (six-sided) ice crystals that are facing parallel to the ground. The crystals act as a prism when sunlight passes through, flashing an amazing patch of colors across the sky.

GLOW TIME

A grapefruit-size glowing orb hovers for a few seconds during a thunderstorm, then disappears. A UFO, perhaps? Nope. It’s called ball lightning.

Scientists don’t know much about this rare event. Some think lightning might be creating a ball of burning chemicals; others theorize that intense microwaves after a strike are somehow getting trapped in a plasma bubble. (Or maybe we’ll just go with UFO.)

SUN SNAKE

This rare natural event is brought to you by the Maya culture. Every year during the spring and fall equinoxes (when daytime and nighttime are about the same length), the rising sun creates the appearance of a giant snake slithering down the steps of the Pyramid of Kukulcan in Chichen Itza, Mexico.

The Maya built the nearly 100-foot-tall pyramid and temple around 900 A.D., carefully crafting the steps so that triangular shadows would move snake-like down the pyramid when the sun hit it just right. There are even two carved snake heads at the bottom to complete the illusion!

Photographs: Jonathan Fox; Getty Images; J. Cen Et Al.; Le Globe De Feu Dans La Salle/Courtesty of Wikipedia/Pd-US-Expired