What is the ugliest animal in the world? If you haven't seen the title of mine, you would never think it would be a fish. This kind of fish is called the blobfish.
The blobfish (scientific name: Psychrolutes marcidus, also known as the sad fish) is an animal of the order Scorpaeniformes, family Psychrolutidae, genus Psychrolutes. It is known as the "fish with the saddest expression in the world". This type of animal lives along the coasts of Australia and Tasmania. It has a tadpole-like body shape and a distorted ugly face; it has no swim bladder and breathes through gills; its body is gelatinous and has a density lower than that of seawater. The blobfish lives at the bottom of the sea at a depth of 600-1,200 meters.
Why does the blobfish have such a "sad" face? This is because the blobfish lives in the deep sea at a depth of 600-1,200 meters. The pressure of the seawater at this depth is 60-120 times that at sea level, and the flesh of the blobfish is actually some gelatinous substance with a density slightly lower than that of water. After a long evolution, its bones have become very thin and flexible, its muscle tissue is particularly supple, and its fibrous tissue is particularly fine, so as to maintain the pressure balance inside and outside the body. One thing is different from many fish. It does not have the organ of swim bladder in its body because the swim bladder filled with air is easily crushed in the deep sea.
Sudden pressure drop
When the blobfish is artificially pulled out of the deep sea, due to the sudden drop in pressure and without hard bones and muscles as support, its entire body will bulge and turn into a strange mass of flesh.
Therefore, the blobfish in the deep sea is different from what we see outside.
The left side is the appearance of the blobfish in the deep sea, covered with barbs and huge fins, which is what a deep-sea fish should look like. The right side is the appearance of the blobfish out of the sea.
In addition, the blobfish lives very lazily. Because of the lack of hard bones and strong muscles, it rarely swims and just floats quietly at the bottom of the sea.
But this laziness is not a big problem for its survival because it will wait for some edible substances, such as mollusks and arthropods, to float in front of its mouth, and then move its mouth slightly to swallow the food. So there is no such thing as swimming around to hunt for food because the blobfish is really in the late stage of laziness and even has no hard bones.
The special body structure of the blobfish also brings some problems that cannot be ignored: it cannot move up and down over a wide range in the ocean. Once it lands on the shore or reaches the shallow water area, under the effect of pressure, its body will expand from the inside and become like the appearance in the network. By the same token, if it is suddenly thrown into deeper water, it may also be crushed into fish fillets.
Therefore, the blobfish cannot leave its living area, and even if it leaves suddenly and is thrown back in, it won't work.
With the increasing intensity of deep-sea fishing, the number of blobfish is decreasing. The gel of this fish is toxic and cannot be kept as an ornamental fish. In fact, it has little fishing value. But people's sense of entertainment is endless. There are many spoof videos about the blobfish on the Internet. As the Ugly Fish Contest in the UK is known to more people, the blobfish has also come into the sight of more people. This has led to excessive fishing. If excessive fishing continues, maybe in the future, we will never see it again.