People care more about saving big-eyed mammals than melted-looking fish. What’s this fascination with ugly animals really about, anyway? The ugly-animal contest champions the world’s less biophilic endangered creatures with the premise that “the panda gets too much attention.” The contest is sponsored by a comedy team, but their joke is funny because it’s true. In the end, the question of whether the blobfish is cute or not just begs another question. Blobby photo, can easily be mistaken for more samples of real blobfish, giving the impression that all blobfish look like Mr. Photos of the replicas, which are quite true to the famous Mr. An artist sculpted a model from plasticine, then used a mold of the sculpture to create silicone replicas of Mr. © SEA SERPENTĪnother thing to be aware of: A number of the blobfish photos on the Internet are not of real fish. Subscribe An underwater rover captured a photo of the plump blobfish. occidentalis, and it too is a plump but pretty cute little guy: There are few photos of living blobfish of any species, but an underwater rover captured one of P. His research paper in the Japanese Journal of Ichthyology describes the fish as having a limp body with soft bones and thin, loose skin. Fricke first described the blobfish Psychrolutes occidentalis from Western Australia in 1990. “Species of Psychrolutes have very weak, barely ossified bones, so they look bloblike even in life,” says ichthyologist Ronald Fricke of the Staatliches Museum in Stuttgart. Alan Riverstone McCulloch/Wikimedia Commons Blobby’s melted appearance: Drawings of blobfish show them as much more fishlike. But up at the surface the fish seem jellylike and basically collapse, distorting their features.Īlive and at proper pressure, P. That makes sense for an animal that lives in the crushing pressures of the deep sea, allowing the fish to compress without cracking their bones. Blobfish don’t have swim bladders but do have very soft bones. Fish with gas-filled swim bladders undergo rapid expansion of the bladder that could push their internal organs out through their mouths. Most blobfish are found quite deep, 300 meters or more, meaning that they can be subject to severe decompression when researchers haul them to the surface. Blobby’s remains, the fish was trawled during the NORFANZ expedition at a depth of more than a kilometer. The 11 known species of Psychrolutes are found blobbing along temperate seafloors worldwide.Īccording to the Australian Museum in Sydney, which houses Mr. Blobby is from the genus Psychrolutes in the family Psychrolutidae, known as blobfishes or fathead sculpins, and is possibly a smooth-head blobfish, Psycholutes marcidus. Just enjoy it for what it is - a wickedly funny tale for children who can handle the fact that cute things and sometimes Ugly things are occasionally tasty morsels for other cute things.Mr. Even if Ugly Fish had been sweet as pie to his finned fellows, he still would have come to a sad and crunchy end. I guess some people see this book as having an anti-bullying message, but it doesn't really. Hey, it's a dog-eat-dog fish-eat-fish world. When another fish is introduced, well, Ugly Fish isn't about to share his aquatic abode. He is big fish (and only fish) in his tank, and he is fine with that. "Remember," she cautioned, " if one fish can fit inside another's mouth. The store clerk was quite helpful as she advised my boys on how to carefully choose their new pets. What a deal, right? Of course it meant a trip to the pet store where the kids and I blew fifty dollars on fish and fish-related accessories. About ten years ago, I happened on a complete aquarium kit at a yard sale for only eight bucks.
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