I’m just going to come right out and say it. This week, I cheated. This Animal of the Week isn’t so much an animal as it is a forest. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a damn cool forest. I just thought I’d give you a heads up.
In the north-west of Poland, amongst a dense pine forest a small area is known as ‘Krzywy Las’. Although it sounds like an Icelandic volcano, this translates to ‘the crooked forest’. Here about 400 trees remarkably all have a 90 degree bend at the base of their trunks, then slowly curve back up, becoming vertical again. Due to the unique appearance of The Crooked Forest it is classed as one of Poland’s national monuments.
The trees were planted in the 1930’s and grew for seven to ten years before this bending occurred. However, this is all that is known about The Crooked Forest. Several theories exist attempting to explain the cause of this bizarre deformation. The most popular is that the trees were shaped this way by humans for use in boat or furniture building. Personally I prefer some of the other theories, such as the combination of snow and wind, WW2 tanks, angry birds aftermath or animal migration.