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<br>Imagine someone voted you the ugliest person at work. You would be upset, right? Well, it's a very good thing the blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus), a member of the illustrious fathead sculpin family of deep-sea trawlers, doesn't speak English and also lives very far away - 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) under the water off the coast of Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand [libido booster](http://p029.bluew.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=note&wr_id=223347) - because in 2013, it was voted the World's Ugliest Animal by The Ugly Animal Preservation Society. This deep-sea fish had a [parasitic copepod](https://de.bab.la/woerterbuch/englisch-deutsch/parasitic%20copepod) hanging out of its mouth, and looked like the cartoon character Ziggy after a monthlong bender. The crew called it Mr. Blobby and snapped a famous image of this bulbous fish out of water. Part of the blobfish's charm, if you want to call it that, lies in the uncanny valley - the fact that they almost resemble human beings, but something isn't right. But here's the thing: We were never meant to see the deep-sea blobfish like this. Gareth Fraser, whom we interviewed in 2019. Fraser is a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Florida who studies the evolutionary development of marine fishes.<br> |