hodag.info » Fish

Salt and vinegar?

James — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:26:51 +0000

You know that feeling of deep-seated anxiety – the kind that keeps you awake at night thinking black thoughts about life and death and colours your days with crippling dread?

It’s called the snakefish.

The snakefish is something of a modern Medusa – some sort of hellish aberration that permanently scars all those that set eyes on it (hence the inclusion of a picture). It lives in your bath, basking in foamy Radox waiting to strike as you enter. That may or may not be true. It’s the doubt I can’t stand.

Fortunately, some clever boffins in the Orient have found a way to help rid us of this slippery demon. They just gobble them up for their tea.

What a looker…

James — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:07:46 +0000

If you were asked to name it, I doubt you come could up with anything more appropriate for this critter than Red-lipped Batfish, apart from Miserable Clown-faced Cornish Pasty Fish perhaps, but the lucky people whose job it is to name fish went with the former. Shame.

This fish spends its days swanning around on the ocean floor like a hideous toddler that’s been in its mum’s make-up drawer. They like the dark and the don’t have many friends, partly because they like to eat them.

Apparently the only suggestion anyone has had for those ridiculous clown lips is that the fish can recognise their own kind when it comes to mating. Lovely.

Hagfish you say? Can’t argue with that…

James — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:55:41 +0000

If you’re going to be as repulsive as a hagfish, then you’d better have four hearts and two brains to make up for it. That’s what this ugly little thing has to boast in exchange for an inside out face.

It’s also the only creature that has a skull, but no spine.

Ever the socialite, this fish also likes to secrete a slimy gloop when it feels threatened and can tie itself in knots as a neat party trick.

Some species of hagfish even sport a testicle and an ovary, which is fortunate because something tells me they have a little trouble pulling.

Seriously, that is the worst looking creature I’ve ever clapped eyes on

James — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:45:55 +0000

There are a lot of weird looking animals and the deep seas have got more than their fair share of them. Nevertheless, the beautifully-monikered blobfish must be a challenger for the title of “world’s ugliest bastard”.

How has the blobfish survived? If you looked like the blobfish, you wouldn’t mate. If that’s what its face looks like, imagine its genitals.

Nothing about this fish is glamorous. It is gelatinous and slightly less dense than water, which it helps it bob about without actually swimming properly. It doesn’t really have any muscle and just swallows anything edible which happens to drift by.

That’s not living.