Is the Blobfish Unjustly Cast as the World's Ugliest Animal?

Blob fish, ugliest fish — The blobfish looks like a normal fish under water, only becoming a blob when it transitions from the pressure at depth to the surface. NOAA/Wikimedia Commons

Imagine someone voted you the ugliest person at work. You would be upset, right?

Well, it's a very good thing the blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus), a member of the illustrious fathead sculpin family of deep-sea trawlers, doesn't speak English and also lives very far away — 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) under the water off the coast of Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand — because in 2013, it was voted the World's Ugliest Animal by The Ugly Animal Preservation Society.

The blobfish's disgruntled visage became an overnight international sensation in 2003, long before the The Ugly Animal Preservation Society got ahold of it, when the NORFANZ deep sea expedition pulled up a large, pink blobfish off the northwest coast of New Zealand.

This deep-sea fish had a parasitic copepod hanging out of its mouth, and looked like the cartoon character Ziggy after a monthlong bender. The crew called it Mr. Blobby and snapped a famous image of this bulbous fish out of water.

Being Unfair to the Blobfish

Part of the blobfish's charm, if you want to call it that, lies in the uncanny valley — the fact that they almost resemble human beings, but something isn't right. But here's the thing: We were never meant to see the deep-sea blobfish like this.

"Blobfish are pretty 'normal'-looking underwater," said Gareth Fraser, whom we interviewed in 2019. Fraser is a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Florida who studies the evolutionary development of marine fishes.

"They only really become a blob when they transition from the pressure at depth to the surface. In my opinion they were awarded the ugliest animal status unjustly."

Why Is the Blobfish So Blobby?

In the dark depths the blobfish calls its natural environment, they go about their business experiencing extreme pressure — about 120 times the amount that we do on dry land. Near the sea floor, the blob sculpin resembles a pufferfish with feathery pectoral fins.

Because of this, they don't grow longer than around 12 inches (30.5 centimeters), have only enough muscle to allow them to swim in short bursts, and not much bone to give their bodies form.

The bones of this deep water fish are extremely thin and fragile compared to fishes that hang out near the surface because it takes a lot of energy to build strong bones.

Blobfish also have quite a bit of fat, and the jelly layer of flesh closest to their skin contains a ton of water. In fact, if you pick up a blobfish by the tail, most of their innards just slosh to the face like a water balloon.

So when it comes to physique, they just let the pressure near the ocean floor do all that work of maintaining a form. It's actually a very clever adaptation. But up here in the air, away from its natural habitat, there's nothing to keep a blobfish's body from melting into a formless pink or yellowish blob.

Blobfish Breeding Habits

Although blobfish breeding has only been observed rarely, researchers believe that the female deep sea fish arrange themselves in groups and lay up to 100,000 eggs together in rocky pits along the seabed.

This gives male blobfish ample opportunity to fertilize the eggs, and also makes it easier for the mothers to protect the large brood as it develops.

Swimming With No Swim Bladder

The aspic-like texture of blobfish flesh (try saying that five times fast) is unique in itself. Lots of fish stay afloat thanks to a handy little gas-filled sac called a swim bladder that allows them to adjust their buoyancy. But in the high pressures of deep water, a swim bladder would just burst.

The blobfish found a workaround to the swim bladder, though! Their flesh has evolved into a buoyant, gelatinous mass that is less dense than water and keeps them cruising around in the bottom of the ocean, the depth at which they're most comfortable.

Deep Sea Eating Habits

Although marine biologists know very little about the blobfish's life history, another blob-ish aspect of this deep sea fish is that it doesn't seem to move around very much. Remember, they are not very muscular, so it's not like they're the most ferocious predators of the depths.

Blobfish eat crustaceans (like hermit crabs) and pretty much whatever else floats into their mouths while they loom just over the sea bed. Scientists have also found brittle stars, sea pens, anemones, plastic bags, a bunch of rocks and even octopus beaks in their bellies.

Octopus species are extremely smart, and in order to catch one, a predator would have to have some sort of special talent. For a blobfish, this seems to be their large and powerful jaws, which are able to open extra wide and snap shut, swallowing large prey whole. Curious octopi, beware!

Blobfish Seem to Be Solitary Creatures

Blobfish appear to be skew toward the loner end of the social spectrum; every blobfish ever spotted by researchers has been all alone. Scientists know very little about how they reproduce or how often they encounter others of their kind.

The scarcity of blobfish in their known habitat has some scientists concerned. Although it's possible they're being caught up in trawling nets at that depth, it's not likely — those nets are vast, but not that big.

What poses a bigger threat to blobfish in the long term is rising ocean temperatures — blobfish seem to need to live in very deep, cold water or extreme latitudes.