The Ugly Animal Preservation Society has crowned the blobfish as the World’s Ugliest Animal.
The organization ran a contest in which readers voted on their pick for the ugliest animal. Over 10,000 votes went to the deep sea dweller with the perpetual “glum” look on its face.
Despite the humorous nature of the contest, the society’s president Simon Watt imparted the serious nature behind the contest, “We only protect the animals that we relate to because they’re cute, like pandas. If extinction threats are as bad as they seem, then focusing just on very charismatic megafauna is completely missing the point. I have nothing against pandas, but they have their supporters. These species need help.”
The BBC describes the blobfish:
The bizarre creature lives off the coast of south-eastern Australia and Tasmania, at depths of between 600 and 1,200m, where atmospheric pressure is several dozen times higher than at sea level.
Its gelatinous body is just slightly more dense than water, and it spends its life “bobbing around” in the depths.
Sources
- Blobfish wins ugliest animal vote (Victoria Gill, BBC News: September 12, 2013)
- Blobfish is the ugliest animal alive, humans vote (Nidhi Subbaraman, NBC News: September 12, 2013)
