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Real Pink Fish That Looks Like a Cartoon Animal

The world'southward most misunderstood fish reposes in pickled splendor on a shelf of the basement archives at the Australian Museum's Ichthyology Collection, in Sydney. The smeary mankind of Mr. Blobby—as the photogenic blobfish is affectionately known—is no longer Bubblicious-pink. The famous downturned grin is gone, the tiny currant eyes have receded in deep alcoves, and the nose—which one time evoked Ziggy of comic strip fame—is shaped less like a turnip than a fallen soufflé.

Dredged upwards off the coast of New Zealand during a 2003 inquiry voyage, the specimen has spent the last decade suspended in a 70 percent ethyl-alcohol solution. "The fixation procedure tightened Mr. Blobby'south peel and collapsed his—or her—snout," laments Mark McGrouther, the museum'southward fish manager. "He—or she—now looks like an 85-yr-old Mr. Blobby." Indeed, these days the Blobster suggests nothing so much as a freshly Botoxed baked spud. Has at that place always been crueler proof that booze changes the way you wait?

Of the hundreds of abyssal critters hauled in on the New Zealand trek, the Psychrolutes microporos was the breakout star. A photograph snapped aboard ship lit up on social media and transformed this squidgy bottom feeder into an aquatic Grumpy Cat, with devoted followers on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr.

Seen by few but known by many, Mr. Blobby has been accounted huggable enough for plush toys and has inspired an body of water of featherbrained poems, apps, emoji, smartphone games with tag lines like "Build Up Your Hero and EVOLVE! What Strange and Wonderful Things Will He Get?", memes ("Become Home Evolution: You lot're Drunk") and even a song by children's book author Michael Hearst:

Blobfish, blobfish, Jell-O of the sea—

Floats upon the bottom, lazy every bit can exist...

Michael Hearst - Blobfish | Listen for complimentary at bop.fm

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Two years ago the blobfish was voted the earth's nigh hideous species in an online poll conducted by the British-based Ugly Animal Preservation Guild. In its quest to raise awareness of Mother Nature's endangered but "aesthetically challenged children," the UAPS chose 11 nominees and enlisted an equal number of comedians to film short videos on their behalf. Paul Foot, the comic who championed the blobfish's candidacy, maintained, "The pitiful face up of the blobfish belies a kind and very wise little encephalon in there."

So Mr. Blobby is a bit of a cocky-promoter. OK, a world-class self-promoter. In an "interview" on a museum-themed website, the blobfish boasts about predicting the winners of the FIFA World Cup and the Australian Master Chef competition, and reporting live from the red rug of the Eureka Prizes—the state'southward most prestigious science awards event. In a very existent sense, the Brute From Deep-Down Under has demonstrated how museums tin publicize their concrete objects in a digital world.

Aussies encompass their blobs. This is the state that'south home to the so-called pitch drop viscosity experiment, the longest-running—and nearly wearisome—lab test of all fourth dimension. In 1927, a University of Queensland physics professor placed a blob of congealed tar pitch in a funnel to meet how fast it would flow. Fourscore-eight years subsequently, nine drops accept fallen. To date, more than 31,000 "watchers" have logged into the live webcam that monitors the drips. Despite very lilliputian happening, the feed is still more compelling than most shows on Australian Idiot box.

That is, unless the testify features Mr. Blobby. A contempo episode of "The Octonauts"—a kids' drawing program about the underwater adventures of Captain Barnacles and crew—involved Bob Blobfish and his brothers, Bob and Bob. The painfully however Blobfish Bros don't and so much bob in the ocean every bit hover over its floor.

As often happens with celebrities, the story of the Beast From 650 Fathoms has taken on a life of its own. If tittle-tattle is to be believed, Mr. Blobby was separated at nativity from either Kilroy, Mr. Magoo, the pudding-faced comedian Louis CK or Donatella Versace, the fashion designer with lips so plump she can whisper in her own ear.

The most persistent gossip is that blobfish suffer a pregnant threat and possible annihilation. "I'yard not quite sure why that is," Foot said in his entrada pitch. "Could be because mankind is destroying its habitat, or maybe bad people have been stabbing the blobfish, or information technology could just exist that the blobfish has been a scrap careless."

In Northern Ireland, the BelfastTelegraph ran a story about the plight of endangered blobfish, which it claimed often die as bycatch in fishing trawlers. In England, aGuardian editorial carped about "anthropomorphic lookism" and its distorted priorities: "The blobfish has something better than the regular features and soft contours of conventional dazzler: with its droopy mouth and gelled cheeks, it has an appealing vulnerability. Unfortunately, non plenty to tug at the heartstrings of deep-sea trawlermen fishing off the Australian coast, for whom it's simply collateral impairment."

As it turns out, the truth lies elsewhere—in this case, the dark depths at 3,900 feet below the surface of the Tasman Bounding main.

"Hardly has a muscle, but doesn't seem to listen.

It eats what floats into its mouth— crustaceans and some alkali."

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Mr. Blobby was discovered during a joint Australian-New Zealand exploration of submarine habitats around Norfolk and Lord Howe islands. A team consisting of two dozen scientists spent four weeks on the RVTangaroa sampling the fauna along the islands' ii long underwater mountain ranges.

The transport towed trawling gear along the body of water floor, netting more than than 100 new species of fish and invertebrates. Amongst the catch were corals, sea cucumbers, gulper eels, fangtooths, coffinfish, prickly dogfish, viperfish, slickheads, giant body of water spiders and the fossilized tooth of an extinct megalodon—a shark many times the size of the keen white. There were spookfish (part squid, function fountain pen), whose snouts were equipped with electric receptors to discover subconscious prey; sponges equally tall as ten feet; and humpback anglerfish—as well known as black devils—that use leaner to emit calorie-free through the long stalks sprouting from their heads.

One 24-hour interval while surveying theTangaroa'south recently departed, trek lensman and marine ecologist Kerryn Parkinson came upon what Marker McGrouther describes as a "very soft, very goopy fish, nigh the length of a comic book. While the transport swayed, the jiggly mass slid to and fro, fifty-fifty in death." Drooping from its lower lip—like the unlit cigarette that forever dangled from Humphrey Bogart's—was a parasitic copepod. A blob within a hulk.

The yellowish blob on Blobby'due south mouth is a parasitic copepod, a blazon of crustacean. Kerryn Parkinson / NORFANZ / Caters News / ZUMA Press

Parkinson took a moving picture. "He looked so human!" she recalls. "He had that certain charisma that demands attending."

The name Mr. Blobby derived not from the menacing slimeball in the 1958 horror film, just, according to some, the bulbous, pink and yellow polka-dotted bumbler—Britain'southward answer to Barney—who once topped theIndependent's list of ten virtually irritating telly characters. "Personally, I doubt that explanation," protests McGrouther. "I think it'south chosen Blobby because, out of the water, information technology'southward a limp, flabby thing that tin can't support its own weight. And so it splodges."

Blobfish vest to the fathead sculpin family, the piscine equivalent of the Addams Family unit. (Creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky.) This "altogether ooky" animal is found in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans at depths between 330 and 9,200 anxiety. Dissimilar well-nigh fish, they have no swim bladder to help maintain buoyancy. "If Mr. Blobby had an air sac, he would collapse under the extreme pressure," McGrouther says. "Instead, he uses water as a structural support." The blobfish's blancmange of a body is less dense than water, allowing it to drift passively above the seabed. Having realized long agone that activity does them no adept, they tend to remain almost, if not entirely, still.

Like other lie-and-expect predators, blobfish stick around until anything remotely edible floats into their open jaws, so suck it in. Though nutrient may be deficient in the deep and trawlers sometimes cast broad nets, McGrouther thinks it's a stretch to say blobfish take been pushed to the brink: "The Tasman Bounding main is very big and deep-sea trawlers very few." In an emphatic back-up, he will add this: "Mr. Blobby is certainly dead."

McGrouther reckons Mr. Blobby succumbed while surfacing, a victim of the dramatic change in water temperature. "His mashed facial features may have resulted from existence stuck at the back of the internet, squeezed between all sorts of other marine life. Past the fourth dimension he was dumped on the deck of theTangaroa and exposed to the air, his peel had relaxed. He would accept looked a skilful bargain less blobby on the seafloor."

Though the precise life expectancy of blobfish is unknown, deepwater fish generally tend to live longer than their shallow-water counterparts. Some stay live for more than 100 years because of their lack of predators, and slow rate of growth and reproduction. How exercise blobfish mate? "Nobody knows," McGrouther says. "I'd judge they lock in a clinging, rather bridal embrace."

Is a blobfish edible? "I've never spoken to anyone who's tried to eat one. I suppose Mr. Blobby would taste like chicken. On the other hand, chicken may taste like Mr. Blobby."

Because that McGrouther decided non to dissect the Australian Museum's virtually celebrated specimen, how can he be sure it isn't Ms. Blobby? "It's possible," he says. "I could properly sex and ID him, but I like the fact that he's the one-and-only Mr. Blobby."

McGrouther tends to his collection of specimens at the Australian Museum. Cameron Richardson / Newspix

Mr. B got entangled in social media the aforementioned fashion he got snagged in a inquiry net: by blow. In 2010, the blobfish was showcased on "The Gruen Transfer," a popular Australian Tv set show virtually the advertising industry. In a segment that judged the best creative handling for difficult-sells, two agencies were challenged to fashion campaigns effectually "saving the blobfish." Which is how the extinction rumor got started.

A Sydney business firm gave Mr. Blobby a Photoshop makeover. Its opponent, from Brisbane, dispatched a chubby middle-aged human being to the streets. Nude except for swim trunks and a strap-on olfactory organ only Pinocchio might covet, he blobbed through metropolis squares, restaurants and bus stops brandishing two signs. One read: "How Would You Like It If I Trawled Your Bottom?"; the other promised, "fifty,000 Signatures and I Get Dorsum to Where I Belong."

Within a week, Mr. Blobby had 500 Facebook followers.

The blobfish'due south cyber-profile got an even bigger boost in 2013 when information technology won the ugliest animal competition and became the preservation society'south official mascot. Amid the other contestants were a jumping slug, the world's only parrot that tin't fly (the kakapo), a salamander that never grows up (the axolotl) and the Andean "scrotum" h2o frog. Residents of Lima make a frappe of this alleged aphrodisiac by skinning it and running it through a blender. Alas, few members of the UAPS electorate would vote for, much less touch, pubic lice, whose existence reportedly has been put at risk by bikini waxing.

McGrouther thinks the honor is undeserved. "That was a sacrilege, really unfair," he says. "I used to accept an ugly dog named Florence, a mongrelly-looking thing. She was blind and had lost most of her hair and her mind, though never her appetite. Mr. Blobby is far more than attractive than Florence."

Then attractive that a few years back the museum exhibited the blobfish in its own brandish case. Schoolchildren were encouraged to leave mash notes. The well-nigh memorable: "You remind me of my teacher."

McGrouther says Mr. Blobby is part of the museum'southward permanent drove. "He's non terribly at risk here," the curator says. "We haven't had bomb threats and no terrorist has demanded that we manus over Mr. Blobby. He'due south quite comfortable in his little watery grave."

...And yeah it has a saddened look; mayhap information technology's feeling down—

For, thanks to angling trawlers

Soon this fish won't exist effectually.

The Ugly Animal Preservation Society asks why handsome, zoo brandish-worthy animals get the lion'south share of publicity, research, protective legislation, and public and private fiscal back up. "People have always shouted 'Relieve the Whale,'" says biologist Simon Watt, the organization's president, "merely until now no one has stood upward for gob-faced squid or the hundreds of species that become extinct every day."

Watt says humans tend to exist partial to mammals and "egotistic" in their attachment to nature. "We simply care about animals that remind us of ourselves, or those we consider adorable," says Watt, writer of The Ugly Animals: We Tin can't All Exist Pandas . "We prefer big eyes, bushy tails and animals that take, at the very least, recognizable faces."

He argues that though tigers and snow leopards hog all the attention in the fight to preserve species, the ugly ducklings—tiresome, unloved, neglected—play an equally important role in the ecological spider web. Consider the naked mole rat, which is most equally repulsive as the blobfish. "Science has shown that the rats are pain resistant and unable to get cancer," Watt says. "Every bit a result of this detect, cancer research for humans has edged forward, and the mole rat no longer looks quite and so ugly."

Told (gently) that that blobfish isn't endangered after all, Watt lets out an aural sigh. "I'm pleased but sad," says the evolutionary biologist. "Pleased because anything not endangered makes me happy, but sad because maybe the award should have gone to an animal like the Tonkin snub-nosed monkey, which is in dire straits and could use the press. But if the blobfish's victory has made people aware that extinction is a wider problem, that'south all for the good."

To the baby boomers, a generation once young and idealistic and which felt largely unappreciated, the babe harp seal and its huge pleading eyes symbolized a certain level of ecological awareness. With the crumbling of those innocents, the blobfish—inert, indolent, in a country of perpetual maritime melancholy—may be the new face of our relationship with nature, the planet, the future.

Mr. Blobby is a fish for a globe gone soft in the head.

The Ugly Animals: We Can't All Exist Pandas