WTF Nature 2: Meet Mr Blobby

Look, we all know that looks aren’t supposed to be important. It’s inside what counts, right? Try telling that to the ugliest animal in the world (and no, I am not talking about Piers Morgan). Actually, I doubt they care too much that they are considered “aesthetically challenged”. That’s one of the best things about animals – they don’t care too much about looks, or many other human conceits.    

                                    

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This is Mr Blobby, the somewhat unimaginatively named poster boy of the blobfish world. He became an internet sensation back in 2013 when the quest to find the fugliest creature to grace the planet, and as you can see here, he was up against some pretty stiff competition. I mean, just look at the star-nosed mole:

                                    

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The contest wasn’t supposed to be a point-and-laugh exercise – it was run by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society in an attempt to raise the profile of animals that aren’t cute and cuddly. It is a serious point – there are many naturalists who are exasperated by our obsessions with creatures like pandas. The problem with this is that panda get far too much attention and funds to preserve them compared with other animals that are just as worthy, but have far smaller public profiles. 

                                    

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Our obsession with looks means that noble creatures like the proboscis monkey don’t get a look in (although to be fair, as well as the peculiar nose, they have severe flatulence problems), because we apply our ridiculous aesthetic standards on beings that have no time for such trivialities.   

And it seems as if the blobfish isn’t even getting a fair hearing. You see, they are deep sea creatures, molded by the process of evolution to live in a hugely pressurised environment. They barely have a skeleton or muscle, but they are perfectly designed to live where they live. 

And under the pressure of 2-4000 feet of water, they are blobby at all. They only look like Ziggy on a bad day when someone removes them from the seabed and brings them up to the surface. In fact, in their natural environment, they look something like this:     

                                   

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But that’s just not funny, is it?