Fishing for drip fish ashore Image source: ETtoday
The British Ugly Animal Protection Society once launched a "World's Ugliest Animal" online selection on the Internet, and the animal with the most votes in the event was "Water Drop Fish"! Since then, the water drop fish has been called the ugliest animal in the world! Interestingly, it may be because the fish is so ugly that after the event, it actually became the official mascot of the British Ugly Animal Protection Society! Today Xiaobian will popularize the "water drop fish" for everyone.
Droplet fish mascot Image source: ETtoday
Dripping fish in the deep sea Image source: Bright News
The droplet fish (English name: Psychrolutes marcidus), also known as the sad fish or the soft cryptocephalus or the bighead, is a deep-sea fish, mainly distributed in the deep sea waters of 600 to 1,200 meters off the coast of Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand, with a body length of up to 30 cm. In the deep sea, the droplet fish has a large head, small eyes, a lot of beard, and many small spines on its body. The droplet fish itself does not have any natural structural support, because the water droplet fish lives on the seabed where the pressure is 60-120 times higher than the sea level, in order to withstand the environmental pressure of the deep sea is dozens of times larger than the sea level without being crushed, so the best pressure resistance equipment of the water drop fish is the soft and rotten gelatinous body that lacks bones, so that it can easily float on the seabed. Because the droplet fish itself is not very muscular and cannot actively prey other prey in the deep sea, the dripfish mainly survives by eating marine snow and small crustaceans that float to the mouth.
The live dripfish in the Japanese aquarium is called Bob
Before humans engaged in deep-sea fishing, in fact, did not know the existence of droplet fish; and with the advancement of technology, deep-sea fishing is becoming more and more frequent, because the droplet fish and lobsters, king crabs these deep-sea creatures live in the same ocean depth, so the droplet fish and other fish, crabs, lobsters are caught together, due to the increasingly frequent deep-sea fishing operations of human beings, droplet fish are suffering from the threat of extinction, really can be described as lying guns! Biologist Watt, president of the Ugly Animal Protection Society in the United Kingdom, has repeatedly called attention to the existential threats to those strange but very cute animals.
Freshly caught drip fish Image source: ifunn
The image of the droplet fish we see in the photo is puffy and soft because of the damage to the body tissue caused by the sharp change in water pressure after it is caught from the deep sea. In the deep sea, the shape of the drip fish is actually not much different from other bony fish we know.
Most of them don't survive when they are caught in the sea, and there is currently only one aquarium in Japan in the world that has a drip fish that lives outside the marine environment!
Speaking of this, some people may ask, can the drip fish be eaten? The answer is no eating! Because the drip fish has no muscles and the whole body is composed of gelatinous substances, researchers have found that this gelatinous substance is harmful to the body when eaten, so it is not recommended for humans to eat!
Image credit: ifunn
One day, will the world's ugliest fish be brought to the table by Chinese foodies?
If you put this guy on the table, do you think the drip fish is braised or steamed?
This article is the first children's science essay contest in Zhengzhou City
Author: Li Writing Team - Zhang Lei
Opinions are solely those of the author and do not represent the position of this number