Blobfish
Voted 'world's ugliest animal' — but only because we dragged it somewhere it doesn't belong
No photo available for Blobfish
The wacky thing
The blobfish's famous droopy, sagging face only happens at the surface. It lives 600–1,200 meters down, where the water pressure is up to 120 times that of sea level. Its gelatinous flesh, slightly less dense than water, is built to hang in place in that crushing pressure with almost no muscle or bone. Haul it up to the surface and the pressure drop lets its whole body collapse into the sad, melting expression that made it internet-famous.
Overview
The blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus) lives off the coasts of Australia and Tasmania, in the deep water off the continental shelf, where it mostly sits and waits for food to drift by — it has almost no muscle, so it doesn't swim so much as float. In its natural habitat, at depth, it looks like a fairly ordinary, if soft, fish. The viral 'ugliest animal' photos are all specimens brought up in fishing nets, decompressed and dying.
Found in
Deep waters off the coasts of Australia and Tasmania, typically 600–1,200 meters down.
Things worth knowing
- 1
Blobfish have no real skeleton or muscle to speak of — their low-density, gelatinous body just needs to be slightly lighter than water to hang above the sea floor without expending energy swimming.
- 2
They don't actively hunt. Blobfish mostly wait with their mouths open for edible matter — crustaceans, mollusks — to drift within reach.
- 3
The blobfish was 'elected' the mascot of the Ugly Animal Preservation Society in 2013, a campaign meant to draw conservation attention to unappealing-looking endangered species that don't get the funding cute animals do.
- 4
Blobfish are frequently caught as bycatch by deep-sea trawlers targeting crabs and lobster, and some populations are considered vulnerable as a result — the 'ugly' fish you've seen memed is likely already dead in the photo.
- 5
At depth and left undisturbed, blobfish look like a fairly unremarkable, if soft-bodied, pinkish fish — nothing like the sagging, frowning face in the viral photos.