Why Is the Blobfish Blobby?

The blobfish has been voted the World's Ugliest Animal based on above-water photos, but its gelatinous features make it perfectly adapted for life deep in the ocean. Learn how in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren vog O bomb here, it's probably for the best.
The smooth headed blobfish a scientific classification Psychroluti's microporous, doesn't
speak English and lives about three thousand, three hundred feet
that's a thousand meters under the ocean. Because it was

(00:22):
voted the world's ugliest animal by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society,
it was in fondness, but it still might have stung.
The blobfish's disgruntled visage became an overnight international sensation in
two thousand three when the North Fans Research Expedition pulled
up a large pink blobfish off the northwest coast of
New Zealand with a broad, smooth forehead, floppy snout in wide,

(00:45):
downturned mouth. It resembled the cartoon character Ziggy after a
month long bender or Teddy from Bob's Burgers. After the
same pick your cultural reference to make matters not better.
It had a parasitic cope pod hanging out of its mouth.
The crew called it Mr Blobby Stepped, a now famous photo.
Some would go so far to call it a mugshot
of this bulbous fish out of water. Part of the

(01:07):
blobfish is charm if you want to call it. That
lies in the Uncanny valley. Its face looks sort of human,
but not quite. But here's the thing, we were never
meant to see the blobfish like this. We spoke with
Gareth Fraser, a professor in the Department of Biology at
the University of Florida who studies the evolutionary development of
marine fishes. He said, blobfish are pretty normal looking underwater.

(01:31):
They only really become a blob when they transition from
the pressure at depth to the surface. In my opinion,
they were awarded the ugliest animal status unjustly. So why
is the blobfish so blobby? It's actually a very clever adaptation.
At the extreme depths of the blobfish calls home, they
go about their business experiencing about dred and twenty times

(01:51):
the pressure we do on dry land. Because of this,
they don't need very much bone or muscle to give
their bodies form. They just let the pressure of the
bottom of the ocean do all that work for them.
But up here in the air, there's nothing to keep
a blobfish's body from melting into a formless globular puddle.
Terra firma is definitely not where the blobfish shines. But

(02:12):
under the sea, the blobfish's jello like flesh is highly useful.
Lots of other fish can keep themselves at their preferred
depth thanks to handy little gas filled sacks called swim bladders,
but in the high pressures of the deep sea, a
swim bladder would just burst. The blobfish found a work around.
Their flesh has a buoyant, jellylike consistency that keeps them
cruising around at the depth at which they're most comfortable.

(02:35):
Although very little is known about the blobfish's life history,
another blobbish aspect of this animal is that it doesn't
seem to move around very much or have very many friends. Remember,
they have very little muscles, so it's not like they're
the most ferocious predators of the deep sea. Nobody has
ever seen a blobfish eat, but scientists think that they
most likely enjoy a diet of whatever just floats into

(02:56):
their mouths. In addition, every blobfish ever spotted by researchers
has been alone. They don't seem to school up, and
scientists are not sure how they reproduce, or how often
they encounter others of their kind. The scarcity of blobfish
in their known habitat has some scientists concerned. Although it's
possible they're being caught up in trawling nets at that depth,

(03:16):
it's not likely those nuts are big, but not that big.
But poses a bigger threat to the blob fish in
the long term is rising ocean temperatures. Blobfish seem to
need to live in very deep cold water, which will
be harder to find as ocean temperatures rise. By the way,
not everyone finds the blobfish is uncanny, seemingly frowning, head ugly.
Several stuffed animal manufacturers make arguably adorable blobfish toys, and

(03:41):
the house stuff Works editorial Stuff wants you to know
that you could buy enough of them to fill your
bathtub for just six and fifty dollars. We bring you
the facts. Today's episode was written by Jesselin Shields and
produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For more in this

(04:01):
and lots of other uncanny topics, visit our home planet
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