One of the funniest animals to look at in my opinion is the blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus). It looks like a big two foot long lump of old grease that someone drew a face on. As fake as it looks, it really does exist. It lives off the coast of Australia on the very bottom of the ocean. They are very rare, and not many people have ever seen them. Just imagine if you were the first person to ever see one of these; freaky. The first recorded description is in 1978. The first recorded large reproducing group was only found in 2000.
The blobfish is made of a gelatin like substance that allows it to live in depths that have 80 times the pressure that is found at sea level. This is why it has no bones. Any animal with bones would explode. They don’t need muscles either because they don’t have control over their bodies. Most of their live is just by chance. They float in the water right above the sea floor waiting for something to come into their mouths. They can do this because their bodies are slightly less dense than the water. This allows them to hover in the water. The blobfish doesn’t do a whole lot so there isn’t a whole lot to say about them.
One female blobfish can produce up to 108,000 eggs at a time, but most scientists believe that the blobfish is becoming extinct. This is hard to determine because they are so rare and live in such a hard to get to place. The real number of fish left is hard to determine. The people who most often see blobfish are crab fisherman. They catch them while trying to pull up crabs and don’t throw them back quick enough. Blobfish dry out very quickly and most end up dying on the floor of the boat.
The blobfish doesn’t lead a very interesting life, but they can certainly make a person laugh at their seemingly disgruntled features.
http://www.itsnature.org/sea/fish/blob-fish/
http://kottke.org/09/09/blobfish
http://ezinearticles.com/?All-About-Blob-Fish&id=2812680
0 comments:
Post a Comment