9/5/2023 0 Comments Blobfish aliveIt may be easy on a scientific level, calculating the length of your nose or the arch of your brow. “There’s probably more variation in our faces than anywhere else, and it’s relatively easy to measure.” “You don't have to convince people about variation when you talk about faces,” she tells me, pointing to her own finely defined features under neat blonde curls, in comparison to my snub nose and chubby cheeks. And for someone like her who’s studying how our genes build our bodies, the face is a good place to start. Each one of them has two eyes, a nose and a mouth, roughly in the places we’d expect to see them. As far as Wysocka’s concerned, they share a much more interesting and instantly recognisable feature: a face. These are all animals that scientists would class as vertebrates, meaning they all have a backbone. On her computer screen, Wysocka pulls up a picture of the fish, sitting alongside photos of a human, a chimp, a gecko and more. Alas, this story never made it into the book, but I’m sharing it with you now, because I think it’s fascinating. I first encountered the blobfish a few years ago when I went to visit Joanna Wysocka, Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology at Stanford University in California, while I was researching my first book, Herding Hemingway’s Cats, my quest to understand how our genes work. More formally known as Psychrolutes marcidus, its cartoonish big nose, flaccid skin and almost human-looking sad face have seen the blobfish named the World’s Ugliest Animal, more than a little unfairly. –Rt 1 Box 116A, Belington, WV 26256.When it comes to good looks in the natural world, the blobfish isn’t exactly at the top of the list. The creation of the blobfish just refreshes our understanding of the power and majesty of God. But, then again, what would we expect, as the Lord said to Jeremiah, “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for me?” Jer. So, in the creation of the blobfish, God shows another method to allow living things to survive in some of the most unlivable places on the earth. So, we are not really very familiar with their daily routines, and, if we understood their lifestyles better, I am sure we would be even more impressed. The only time these fish have been seen very much is when they are found in the nets from fishing trawlers, and then they are dead. So, not only ugly, but lazy as well! Well, we cannot blame the blobfish, as its niche in God’s creation is at this time not well understood. This fish is not a real strong swimmer and appears just to float, thanks to the jelly-like material, just above the bottom of the ocean and waits for its food to come to it. This “jelly-like” material causes the blobfish to have a fat round head and bulbous nose, hence part of its “ugliest fish” description. An air bladder at these high pressures would not operate very well, so this material was an ingenious design to compensate for the problem. The jelly-like material allows this fish to be able to float just above the sea floor without expending much energy as it waits for food. It has no air bladder which, in many fish, is used to assist in floating in the water. The blobfish is composed of a large amount of a “jelly-like” substance that is lighter in water. All of the fishes that live in these deep ocean waters must have some mechanism to be able to withstand these high pressures. Here the water pressure is up to 80 times higher than that of sea level. The blobfish lives off the coast of Australia and Tasmania in deep water up to 2400 feet deep. The blobfish teaches us this if no other animal does but, this unusual structure that gives it its shape is very necessary for survival in the environment where it lives. However, in God’s creation, beauty is not necessarily a requirement for being alive. This fish is not very large – usually around 12 inches long – and has a face that, as the old saying goes, “only a mother could love.” It was called by the NOAA website Weird Fins, as having one of the “funniest fish faces in the world.” Another website says that the blobfish looks like it was drawn for a cartoon and would be a cartoon character that represented the “grumpiest, ugliest fish on earth.” It is really not very pretty by any stretch of the imagination and appears to have a constant scowl on its face, but, when out of water, does look like just a big piece of fat. Let us look at some of the unique features that God created in this unusual looking specimen. This is particularly true of a deep water species of fish that has been named the blobfish. A blobfish, that is! As scientists of the world collect and observe animals from the creation by an all-powerful God, they, many times, are amazed by what they find.
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