Creature Feature: Blobfish.

Oh, crap. That lutefisk stuff you were talking about earlier came to life and mutated, didn't it?

No, actually. This creature is completely natural. The only tampering humans did was to take it out of the water; when submersed, the blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus) looks relatively normal.


Keyword: relatively.

The blobfish is native only to the abyssal waters around Australia and Tasmania. It lives so far down in the ocean that it cannot afford the luxuries of scales and a swim bladder; instead, it glides through the water, using its gelatinous flesh to keep it from sinking to the ocean floor. It eats whatever floats into its mouth as it drifts along in the water (kinda like some fat people who eat anything that passes by).

This weird fish has all the reason in the world to be miserable: It is likely going extinct. Blobfish drift at the same depths as lobsters and crabs. Although the blobfish itself is not edible, bottom trawling can bring it to the surface alongside far tastier sea life. The area in which the blobfish is known to reside is only about the size of Paris; it would be very, very easy to accidentally over-fish it to extinction.

Normally, I'd be all for wiping out a species that cannot even swim. This poor fellow looks so sad that I cannot help but feel at least a little sorry for it. 


Next time you eat crab, this face will be there to haunt your soul.

(This needs to be a Pokemon before it goes extinct, Nintendo.)