Sami Bayly was in her third year of a Natural History Illustration degree at University of Newcastle.

She was tasked with drawing an animal portrait.

"I chose an Australian white ibis, also known as the bin chicken," she said.

"Everyone was kind of hating them, but also loving them. I thought it was quite topical."

She posted her drawing online and received a great reception from people saying how much they loved it.

"They were seeing bin chickens differently now that they could see them in a more beautiful way, I guess," she said.

It was this that started Sami's love of ugly animals.

She's created a book titled, The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Ugly Animals. Hatchette Children's Books has just published it.

It's a compendium of more than 60 ugly animals.

"Things that humans typically see as ugly have really funny, scratchy textures like wrinkles or bald heads," she said.

"I really started to enjoy painting those kind of textures.

"I started to realise there were so many animals out there that most of us don't even know about or think twice about."

Many of these animals are struggling for survival, but they don't get the air time or screen time.

Some are losing their homes to palm oil plantations in Indonesia or losing their lives to poachers.

"I really wanted to celebrate the beauty in ugliness and teach kids to look after nature regardless of their appearance."

Sami has two favourite creatures in the book. One is the Suriname toad. Found in central and south America, the toad has an unusual reproductive process.

Sami said this process was "hideous, disturbing and fantastic".

The male's movements embed eggs in the skin on the female's back, forming a honeycomb structure.

The embryos develop through to the tadpole stage, eventually emerging from the mother's back as fully developed toads.

"When the eggs are ready to hatch, they actually push through pores on the back and pop out like little blackheads," Sami said.

"They swim away and they're ready to start their life. It's so much more beneficial for those babies, rather than being little eggs laid by a little rock in the water. Fish can come by and eat them up.

"If they're on the safety of their mothers' backs, they have a much better chance of survival."

Her other favourite animal in the book is the marabou stork.

"It's in the original Lion King and the remake. It's this really large bird in Africa," she said.

"It's pretty much a bald bird with a couple of stray hairs on top of its head and a big strong, large beak. It's quite a scary, tall bird."

This stork has a big pink sack underneath its neck.

"They breathe in through their nostrils, fill that sack up with air, then they create this loud bellow to attract a mate," she said.

"Then they poo down their legs to cool down. It's very bizarre."