So someone in a group asked me to tell them why I hate the ocean sunfish so much, and apparently it was ~too mean~ and was deleted. To perpetuate the truth and stand up for ethical journalism, I’m posting it here. [Rated NC-17 for language.]
Disclaimer, I care about marine life more than I care about anything else, for real. Except this big dumb idiot. And it’s not like an ~ironic~ thing, I mean it IS hilarious to me and they ARE THE BIGGEST JOKE PLAYED ON EARTH but I seriously fucking hate them.
THE MOLA MOLA FISH (OR OCEAN SUNFISH)
They are the world’s largest boney fish, weighing up to 5,000 pounds. And since they have very little girth, that just makes them these absolutely giant fucking dinner plates that God must have accidentally dropped while washing dishes one day and shrugged his shoulders at because no one could have imagined this would happen. AND WITH NO PURPOSE. EVERY POUND OF THAT IS A WASTED POUND AND EVERY FOOT OF IT (10 FT BY 14 FT) IS WASTED SPACE.
They are so completely useless that scientists even debate about how they move. They have little control other than some minor wiggling. Some say they must just push water out of their mouths for direction (?????). They COULD use their back fin EXCEPT GUESS WHAT IT DOESNT FUCKING GROW. It just continually folds in on itself, so the freaking cells are being made, this piece of floating garbage just doesn’t put them where they need to fucking go.
So they don’t have swim bladders. You know, the one thing that every fish has to make sure it doesn’t just sink to the bottom of the ocean when they stop moving and can stay the right side up. This creature. That can barely move to begin with. Can never stop its continuous tour of idiocy across the ocean or it’ll fucking sink. EXCEPT. EXCEPT. When they get stuck on top of the water! Which happens frequently! Because without the whole swim bladder thing, if the ocean pushes over THE THINNEST BUT LARGEST MOST TOPPLE-ABLE FISH ON THE PLANET, shit outta luck! There is no creature on this earth that needs a swim bladder more than this spit in the face of nature, AND YET. Some scientists have speculated that when they do that, they are absorbing energy from the sun because no one fucking knows how they manage to get any real energy to begin with. So they need the sun I guess. But good news, when they end up stuck like that, it gives birds a chance to land on their goddamn island of a body and eat the bugs and parasites out of its skin because it’s basically a slowly migrating cesspool. Pros and cons.
“If they are so huge, they must at least be decent predators.” No. No. The most dangerous thing about them is, as you may have guessed, their stupidity. They have caused the death of one person before. Because it jumped onto a boat. On a human. And in 2005 it decided to relive its mighty glory days and do it again, this time landing on a four-year-old boy. Luckily Byron sustained no injuries. Way to go, fish. Great job.
They mostly only eat jellyfish because of course they do, they could only eat something that has no brain and a possibility of drifting into their mouths I guess. Everything they do eat has almost zero nutritional value and because it’s so stupidly fucking big, it has to eat a ton of the almost no nutritional value stuff to stay alive. Dumb. See that ridiculous open mouth? (This is actually why this is my favorite picture of one, and I have had it saved to my phone for three years) “Oh no! What could have happened! How could this be!” Do not let that expression fool you, they just don’t have the goddamn ability to close their mouths because their teeth are fused together, and ya know what, it is good it floats around with such a clueless expression on its face, because it is in fact clueless as all fuck.
They do SOMETIMES get eaten though. BUT HARDLY. No animal truly uses them as a food source, but instead (which has lead us to said photo) will usually just maim the fuck out of them for kicks. Seals have been seen playing with their fins like frisbees. Probably the most useful thing to ever come from them.
“Wow, you raise some good points here, this fish truly is proof that God has abandoned us.” Yes, thank you. “But if they’re so bad at literally everything, why haven’t they gone extinct.” Great question.
BECAUSE THIS THING IS SO WORTHLESS IT DOESNT REALIZE IT SHOULD NOT EXIST. IT IS SO UNAWARE OF LITERALLY FUCKING EVERYTHING THAT IT DOESNT REALIZE THAT IT’S DOING MAYBE THE WORST FUCKING JOB OF BEING A FISH, OR DEBATABLY THE WORST JOB OF BEING A CLUSTER OF CELLS THAN ANY OTHER CLUSTER OF CELLS. SO WHAT DOES IT DO? IT LAYS THE MOST EGGS OUT OF EVERYTHING. Besides some bugs, there are some ants and stuff that’ll lay more. IT WILL LAY 300 MILLION EGGS AT ONE TIME. 300,000,000. IT SURVIVES BECAUSE IT WOULD BE STATISTICALLY IMPROBABLE, DARE I SAY IMPOSSIBLE, THAT THERE WOULDNT BE AT LEAST ONE OF THOSE 300,000,000 (that is EACH time they lay eggs) LEFT SURVIVING AT THE END OF THE DAY.
And this concludes why I hate the fuck out of this complete failure of evolution, the Ocean Sunfish. If I ever see one, I will throw rocks at it.
LIVE OCEAN SUNFISH UPDATE: FISH DISCOVERED TO BE MORE DUMB THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT
So
the top and bottom fins kind of wiggle all of the time and they are not
sure exactly why but think it’s stabilization. BUT they can jump by
turning on their side and using them as
wing type things. It is suspected they do this as a way of “scratching”
their parasite ridden bodies. So learning that I was like “huh okay they
have a skill.”
Then I discovered this: Since they
are so terrible at swimming, the current will carry them into deep cold
water. Then they die. So I have learned that they are so stupid they
just get slowly consumed by a freezing death. All while they have the
full ability for that to not happen. Because they’re fucking worthless
floating garbage
i read this out loud to my marine bio nerd friend and she agrees
my friend is a marine biologist and i remember her describing sunfish as “an evolutionary cul-de-sac”
THIS CROW UNDERSTANDS WATER DISPLACEMENT. WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE TO BE TOLD EVERY YEAR BY A TEACHER HOW WATER DISPLACEMENT WORKS. DO THEY THINK I’M LESS INTELLIGENT THAN A CROW? I’M DONE.
Crows discovered the principle of displacement in the third century BC, when the philosopher Awkimedes, upon noticing the level of his bird bath rose in proportion with the amount of his body that was submerged, reportedly exclaimed “EURECAW!” and flew through the streets of Athens shouting his discovery.
In 2009, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania stated that Australian wallabies had been found creating crop circles in fields of opium poppies, which are grown legally for medicinal use, after consuming some of the opiate-laden poppies and running in circles
In case anyone is wondering, here is what said crop circles look like.
Zoos help, support, and lead conservation efforts. In doing so they save species from extinction. #BringBackTheWild
To learn more about these species or how you can #JoinZoosAndSaveSpecies please go to this facebook page. Each photo has its own information link and how to help link! https://www.facebook.com/ZoosSavingSpecies/
In a news release earlier this month, the IUCN revealed that increasing anthropogenic pressures (such as fishing and boat strikes) have caused the rapid decline of whale shark populations and that they should now be considered as endangered.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is the world’s main authority on the conservation status of species. The IUCN Red List evaluates the extinction risk of thousands of species based on a precise set of criteria, and the resulting evaluation aims to convey the urgency of conservation of a species to the public and policy makers.
Previously, whale sharks were ‘vulnerable’ to extinction, but their status has now been updated to ‘endangered.’ Their numbers have more than halved over the last 75 years as these sharks continue to be fished and killed by ship propellers.
Dr. Simon Pierce and Dr. Brad Norman, two prominent whale shark scientists have spent decades studying the animals and have co-authored the assessment that led to IUCN’s update.
“In our recent assessment, it was established that numbers have decreased more than 50 per cent in three generations – which we estimate to be about 75 years,” Norman explained. “The numbers on a global scale are really concerning.”
The main stressor to these gentle giants is the intense fishing pressure in several countries, including China and Oman, especially for shark-fin soup. Some other nations such as India, the Philippines and Taiwan have started implementing conservation plans and have ended large-scale fishing of whale sharks. While these efforts are admirable, it is now really important to push for more regional protection in these countries and to push other countries to try to save this species.
Whale sharks have been hard to study and to keep track off as they are quite cryptic and disappear into the open ocean fairly quickly. However with the use of modern technology and tagging devices, it has become a lot easier to follow them, collect information on them, but also to realize what kind of threats they are facing.
The species is just one step away from being critically endangered, an IUCN listing that is very hard to come back from.
“We cannot sit back and fail to implement direct actions to minimize threats facing whale sharks at the global scale,” said Norman, “It is clear that this species is in trouble.”
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