The guy in the picture who was bitten by a seal and a large piece of meat is called a sunfish, which is really a fish as its name suggests, and it will not resist or run away when bitten, and it can be called one of the stupidest fish.
In that case, what is the ability of the sunfish to survive to this day?
Silas are large fish in the genus Mola that can grow up to 3.5 tons in weight and up to 5 meters long, about the size of a car.
But such a large size, but it is incompatible with other large sea creatures, not only is it not as fierce as other large fish, but it does not even have the most basic ability to resist.
In 2015, American wildlife photographer Herman captured the scene in the sea: a sunfish weighing about 2 tons was bitten off a large piece of meat by a much smaller seal.
To the photographer's shock, the sunfish not only did not resist fiercely, but did not even have basic escape movements, and seemed to be unconcerned about the seal's attack.
In fact, it is not that the sunfish is really stupid, but under the attack of seals, it really can't run away. You would never have imagined that such a large sunfish swims at a speed of only 1.4~2.5 kilometers per hour, which is like a static guy in comparison with the seal's swimming speed of 27 kilometers per hour.
You can tell that sunfish are not good swimmers just by looking at their appearance, and generally fish have tail fins that match their body size and swim by swinging their tail fins. The sunfish looks like a large "fish head", with a degraded tail fin of little use, slowly moving forward by swinging its dorsal and fins.
Some countries have given it some very appropriate names according to the shape and characteristics of the sunfish, such as the Latin name of the sunfish is "millstone", the German name is "swimming head", and the Polish directly calls it "only head".
The slow swimming speed determines that the diet of the sunfish can only be some animals that are also slow-moving, and the sunfish has a particularly small mouth and no teeth in the mouth, so they can only prey on some small fish, small shrimp and some crustaceans that live on the bottom of the sea.
The sunfish also has the name sunfish because it often floats from the bottom of the sea to the surface to bask in the sun. In addition to supplementing the heat of the body of sunfish, sun exposure can also kill more than 50 kinds of parasites on their bodies, and sun exposure is conducive to their intestinal peristalsis and helps digestion.
In short, sunfish are like stupid big people, they move slowly, they do not have any means of attack, and they often travel back and forth between the sea floor and the surface, giving predators the opportunity to prey on them.
So why is such a stupid sunfish not extinct to this day? In fact, they have their own way of survival.
First of all, adult sunfish are very large, which basically excludes the possibility of small fish preying on them, and predators who can prey on fish weighing more than 3 tons are not many in the ocean. Therefore, the first reason why sunfish survives to this day is that there are few natural enemies.
Secondly, sunfish are particularly capable of giving birth. If animals want their populations to survive, there are usually two strategies, one is to have a strong means of self-preservation, and the other is to have more pups. Rabbits with no defenses are rampant in Australia, relying on strong fertility.
How good are sunfish? An adult female sunfish can ovulate up to 300 million at a time, making it the most fertile animal in the world. However, the sunfish left its eggs alone, leaving the little sunfish to fend for itself.
As a result, the survival rate of juveniles in sunfish is very low, with less than one in a million fertilized eggs eventually reaching adulthood. Even so, about 300 sunfish survive to adulthood, and once they reach adulthood, few predators can prey.
Third, the meat quality of the sunfish is particularly unpalatable and not yet nutritious. Unlike the fish you might think, the sunfish meat tastes like the old skin of the heel, which is very unpalatable.
Moreover, the meat of the sunfish contains a lot of colloidal tissue and lacks protein and fat, making it not an excellent predator for meat eaters living in the ocean.
In fact, large carnivorous fish in the ocean, such as sharks and seals, will only prey on sunfish when they are very hungry and hungry.
Also, the skin of sunfish can be described as "thick skin", their skin is rough and feels like sandpaper. Moreover, the skin of the sunfish is very thick, the skin of the adult individual abdomen can be up to 7 cm thick, and the skin in other parts is also 4 cm thick!
Therefore, even if they swim slowly and do not resist predation, sunfish can still survive without extinction due to their strong reproductive ability and their characteristics that are not very popular with predators. Their survival strategy can be described in two words, that is, "useless".
But the number of sunfish has also declined sharply in recent years, as they are often caught ashore by fishermen. In South Africa alone, as many as 340,000 sunfish are caught by mistake each year, which may be related to their slow swimming speed.
Most fishermen who mistakenly catch sunfish will release it directly into the ocean, not because of the kindness of the fishermen, but because there is no market for sunfish, and this big guy is not the target of fishermen.
However, there is a country that still eats sunfish in different ways, and after they catch the sunfish, they will cut off the skin of the fish, leaving only the meat and intestines, but a huge sunfish, the edible part is less than one-tenth!
Do you know which country eats sunfish?
