In a 2013 online poll, it was voted the world’s ugliest animal.
Although the Ugly Animal Renewal Society wanted a new pet, they decided to put it to a public vote. The Blobfish was roundly named the world’s ugliest animal with 795 votes out of 3,000, beating out the proboscis monkey, the aquatic scrotum frog, and pubic lice for the “honor” of the highest spot. However, the famous “nasty stereotype” is quite misleading.
The Blobfish looks like a completely normal fish in its normal environment.
In deep water, it looks like an average bony fish. This pressured environment gives its gelatinous body mass a structural shape. The image below was provided to Reality Animal by the Newcastle University research team and was taken at 1562m north of New Zealand on an expedition with the help of Dr Alan Jamieson, a senior lecturer and marine ecology expert, specializing in deep and harsh environments.
While blobfish are dragged to the surface out of their natural environment in bottom trawls, they appear bulbous and gelatinous with no water pressure to hold their shape.
Dr Thom Linley from the Newcastle University research team spoke to Reality Animal about the “ugly blobfish” myth
I think it’s important to look at deep-sea fish in the right context. They are not monsters or alien beings, they are simply animals formed through very special conditions.
A lot of our criticisms of deep-sea fish arise from how we first identified them – by dragging harsh nets through many meters of water. We learned a lot from these specimens, but they also inspired our opinion of deep-sea animals. If I were in space, thrown out of an airlock (a fish at 2000m experiences 200 times this pressure change), dragged across the surface of the moon for miles (like in fish in nets), after which saved at extraordinarily high gravity in alcohol, I might additionally seem instead hideous!
The blobfish was first observed in 2003 and was immediately given its name.
Yes, its real name is “Blobfish” – it’s no longer a nickname. Scientists and crew dubbed the primary real blobfish that they had ever seen “Mr. Blobby” following its capture during the NORFANZ expedition in the northwest of New Zealand, off Norfolk Ridge.
Blobfish can endure pressures up to 120 times higher than those they would encounter on land, where they thrive.
At this depth, by comparison, human organs would be crushed under the weight of the pressure.
The blobfish has no real skeleton and few muscles. The flesh of the blobfish is generally a gelatinous mass with very nice, smooth spines, allowing the fish to live under a lot of pressure and move over the seafloor at extreme depths, without expending much energy.
They are related to the Blob Sculpin species (Psychrolutes phrictus).
Filming blobfish with a camera has proven difficult and, although still rare, the associated blob sculpin fish has more recently been filmed on the seafloor.
This offers researchers clues as to how the blobfish lives on the seafloor.
Blobfish do not have a swim bladder.
Unlike most fish, deep-sea fish do not have air-filled cavities, which act as buoyancy and help with movement. They would disintegrate under great pressure at the depths they live in. They rely on their gelatinous flesh to provide the necessary guidance.
Blobfish do not expend much energy moving. They do not actively hunt, due to their lack of muscle tissue. Their gelatinous mass gives them a density less than water at such deep pressures.
Blobfish have no teeth.
Blobs do not bite, have no teeth, and only a few humans will come into contact with them. They glide above the ocean floor floating on microscopic bacteria and sea creatures that appear.
Their best predators are thought to be humans, with accidental catches in deep-sea trawls.
The rapid change in stress is fatal to the Blobfish, which is designed for the high-stress deep-sea environment. It dies out of water instantly.
This fish is not considered a delicacy.
They never make it to the dinner table, unlike many fish. This is specifically because they are very rare, and there are much easier fish to catch.
No one has ever documented a living Blobfish. Due to their intense environment, people have no longer been able to document them well in the wild. Only more than one rare underwater photograph has been captured. Almost everything we know is based on lifeless blobfish found in trawl nets.