Blobfish: almost all photos of it are fake (9 photos)

Everyone lies. Even memes lie, and after the advent of hyper-realistic AI images, you can't trust anyone at all. You know that joke about the blobfish, all jelly-like and dripping with snot? It was voted the winner of the "Ugliest Animals" list back in 2013? Well, that's a hoax! A bunch of viral photos of blobfish are just fakes.





You've seen the first photo with a 99% probability. But the second one with a 1% probability.

The blobfish isn't a strange aspic, but a victim of our superficial view of the deep-sea world. In fact, these blobs belong to the Scorpaeniformes, a large order of bottom-dwelling fishes renowned for their leisurely pace, sharp spines, and large, fluffy, fan-shaped fins. Beautiful and distinctive.



This is what Scorpaeniformes look like closer to the surface. Far from ugly, right?

In life, the blobfish looks nothing like the memes about it. It looks like a typical representative of its order. The spiky body, nearly 60 centimeters long, begins with a large head and wide mouth, ending in a wide, flat tail fin. Large fins also line the sides and back. No shapeless jelly—just a regular fish. Its coloring is perhaps unspectacular, but that's hardly surprising, as the blobfish lives in the oceans near Australia and Tasmania, only at depths of 600 to 1,200 meters below the surface. And that's the key to all memes.





And here's the blobfish itself. Its appearance is far from meme-worthy, even dull.

At such depths, the pressure is hundreds of times higher than on land, and the added bonus is the complete absence of light and a consistently low water temperature of 2-6°C. For a human without adaptation and special equipment, this is fatal. But evolution has long and carefully prepared the droplet for life in such extreme conditions and has significantly modified its anatomy.



If someone knocks from the bottom, you know who it will be.

The essence of preparing for deep-sea life lies in one simple rule: maximum economy, minimum movement. At a depth of 1,200 meters, the food chain becomes a thin thread: while at the surface there's a ton of plankton, a plethora of fish for every taste, and crustaceans and mollusks roaming about, below the surface there's almost nothing left of this feast of life. All the local creatures make do with the crumbs of food that fall, and they eat each other. But prey is so scarce there that searching is pointless. It's easier to do nothing and simply wait for food to float by. That's how the blobfish lives, simply drifting in the pitch darkness and hoping for food.



Yes, blobfish, each of us feels the same way at the end of the year.

The blobfish has a skeleton, but it's very lightweight and poorly mineralized, meaning its bones are thin and soft—the pressure doesn't allow for any other structure. Plus, it doesn't have strong swimming muscles, because it doesn't need to swim. Therefore, the blobfish's interior is largely composed of loose connective tissue, which provides it with neutral buoyancy. And here it's worth reminding again: in its deep-sea habitat, this anatomy is normal! There, it doesn't look like a shapeless thing, but like a completely ordinary fish.



I may not be a handsome man, but I'm certainly not the ugly thing you imagine!

It turns into a snotty aspic after rising to the surface. No, the animal itself isn't a commercial species; there's nothing edible in it. It's sometimes caught as bycatch alongside more nutritious sea bass. After the sudden change in pressure from 1,200 meters to 0, the blob's body turns into something horrific, and it's more sad than funny.



One of the few real photos of fish recovered from the depths.



And this is a fake.



And this is actually from the movie "Men in Black 3"!

It's also sad that most knowledge is based on descriptions of dead specimens, so there are surprisingly few facts about the blobfish's life cycle. Studying the underwater world at depths of over a kilometer is extremely difficult and expensive. We know so little about this fish that most photos of it are fake! And you wouldn't even realize it at first glance! There are tons of pictures of the blobfish floating around the internet, but only a few are real. Most are simply rubber toys created in the image of the legendary meme!