Find Fifteen Frolicking Fatuous Fish Quiz

Answer:

The Fish

1. Slippery Dick

This brightly colored wrasse gets its Nixonian name from its ability to easily slip out of a fisherman's hands or a predator's jaws. The fish does this by having a body entirely coated in a thick layer of slippery, gross mucus. If things get too dangerous on the reef, it will dive headfirst into the sand and sleep buried alive until the threat passes.

2. Sarcastic Fringehead

This is a personal favorite. This incredibly aggressive fish defends its ocean territory using a terrifyingly large mouth that unfolds like a colorful umbrella. When two males fight over a hiding spot, they press their giant open mouths together like an angry kissing contest to see whose is bigger. They spend most of their days hiding inside old snail shells, clamshells, or even discarded soda cans waiting to snap at anything that swims by.

3. Humuhumunukunukuapua'a

Hawaii's official state fish has a name that is longer than its actual body, which translates to "triggerfish with a snout like a pig." To protect itself from bigger predators at night, it wedges its body tightly into reef crevices and locks a sharp dorsal spine into place so it cannot be pulled out. It can also shoot a powerful jet of water from its mouth to flip over sea urchins and uncover hidden crabs in the sand.

4. Slimehead

This seriously sounds like an old Garbage Pail Kids character. It actually gets its unappealing name from a network of massive, fluid-filled mucus channels running all over its skull. Because they live in cold, dark water up to a mile deep, these fish grow at a remarkably slow rate and can live to be over 150 years old. Grocery stores eventually rebranded the creature as "Orange Roughy" because nobody wanted to buy a fish with the word slime in its name.

5. Blobfish

In its deep-sea habitat thousands of feet down, this animal looks like a normal fish because the crushing water pressure naturally holds its body together. However, when it is brought to the surface, its jelly-like flesh collapses into a saggy, miserable-looking pink puddle because it lacks a skeleton. Since it has almost no muscles, it survives simply by floating around and swallowing whatever edible debris happens to drift into its mouth. Seriously, go and have a look at the difference in the fish from its natural habitat, and on the ocean surface.

6. Gar

This ancient, prehistoric fish looks like a cross between a normal fish and a scaly alligator thanks to its long, tooth-filled snout. Its heavy body is protected by hard, diamond-shaped scales that are so tough native people historically used them as jewelry and arrowheads. Amazingly, it possesses a special swim bladder that allows it to gulp air directly from the surface, helping it survive in stagnant swamps where other fish would suffocate. Had a buddy lose a toe to one of these things back in middle school.

7. Bigeye

True to its name, this nocturnal reef hunter is dominated by two massive, bulging eyes that help it see clearly in near-total darkness. The fish is equipped with a special reflective layer behind its retinas that bounces light around, making its eyes practically glow under a flashlight. It can instantly change its body color from a brilliant, warning red to a pale silver to confuse predators as it darts into the shadows.

8. Smooth Dreamer

Not Sade! This deep-sea anglerfish looks like something straight out of a nightmare with its pitch-black skin and needle-sharp teeth. It navigates the midnight zone using a glowing, bioluminescent lure attached to its face that acts as a flashlight to attract curious prey. In a weird twist of biology, the tiny males will bite into a massive female's body and permanently fuse to her skin, losing their organs until they are just a sperm-producing attachment.

9. Cod

While it looks like an ordinary food fish, this creature has a weird, single fleshy whisker called a barbel hanging directly from its chin like a goatee. This whisker is packed with sensitive taste buds that the fish drags along the muddy seafloor to smell and taste hidden food before digging it up. They are also incredibly noisy underwater, using their swim bladder muscles to make loud grunting and drumming sounds during mating season.

10. Tilapia

This super-adaptable fish is famous for a weird parenting style known as mouthbrooding. To keep their eggs safe from hungry predators, the mother will scoop all her eggs into her mouth and carry them around for weeks without eating a single bite of food. Even after the babies hatch, they will quickly swim right back inside their mother's open mouth whenever danger approaches the nest.

11. Grouper

These massive, heavy-bodied predators do not actually chew their food, but instead use their giant mouths to swallow prey completely whole. By rapidly snapping their gills open and shut, they create a powerful underwater vacuum that sucks unsuspecting fish and lobsters down their throats from several feet away. Weirdly, many grouper species are born female but can naturally transform into males later in life if the local population needs a leader.

12. Snapper

This sharp-toothed predator gets its aggressive name because it will viciously snap its jaws shut with explosive force when caught by fishermen. They are highly intelligent pack hunters that use their keen eyesight to ambush schools of smaller fish along deep ocean reefs. A strange danger of larger snappers is that their flesh can accumulate a natural tropical toxin called ciguatera, which can make humans violently ill if eaten. I got a touch of that from a barracuda once.

13. Candiru

This tiny, translucent catfish from the Amazon River is feared because of its parasitic habit of feeding exclusively on blood. It normally swims inside the gill chambers of larger fish, using sharp backward-pointing spines on its head to lock itself in place while it drinks. Local legends warn that the tiny fish can accidentally swim up the human urinary tract if a person urinates while swimming in the river, causing agonizing pain. Untrue, but still the stuff of nightmares.

14. Sockeye

This amazing salmon spends most of its life as a camouflaged silver fish in the ocean before undergoing a radical, monstrous transformation prior to spawning. As it swims upstream into fresh water, its body turns a brilliant blood-red, its head turns bright green, and the males grow a massive, hooked jaw filled with jagged teeth. After completing this exhausting journey to lay their eggs, every single sockeye naturally dies, providing vital nutrients to the surrounding forest.

15. Marlin

This massive ocean predator is built like an underwater fighter jet, capable of swimming at blistering speeds around fifty miles (eighty km) per hour. It uses its long, spear-like upper jaw not to poke prey, but to swim through schools of fish and violently slash them to stun or kill them. Weirdly, it possesses special heating organs right next to its eyes that warm its brain, keeping its vision sharp when diving into freezing, deep water.

The Not-the-Fish

1. Sea Pig

These bizarre, pink deep-sea creatures are actually a special type of sea cucumber that look like chubby little pigs walking on the ocean floor. They use water pressure to inflate their long, tube-like legs, which allows them to stroll across the soft mud thousands of feet below the surface. They gather in massive underwater herds of up to a hundred animals, using their mouth tentacles to sniff out and eat rotting carcasses that fall from above.

2. Orca

These highly intelligent apex predator mammals are incredibly creative hunters that work in families to perform weird tricks, like swimming together to create giant waves that wash helpless seals off floating ice sheets. Each distinct pod of orcas has its own unique vocal culture, meaning different groups speak completely different languages and cannot understand each other.

3. Crinoid

Also known as sea lilies, these ancient creatures look exactly like underwater plants but are actually living animals related to starfish. They anchor themselves to rocks or coral reefs and wave their feather-like, sticky arms through the water to trap microscopic passing food. If a hungry fish chomps off one of their beautiful, colorful arms, the crinoid can simply regrow the missing limb without any permanent damage.

4. Sea Cucumber

These sluggish, tube-shaped animals spend their days crawling slowly across the seafloor acting as the vacuum cleaners of the ocean. When a predator tries to eat them, they perform a truly disgusting defense trick by shooting their own sticky, toxic internal organs out of their backsides to tangle up the enemy. Fortunately, the sea cucumber can easily regrow its lost body parts within a few weeks, leaving the attacker confused and covered in slime. They are however, delicious.

5. Giant Isopod

This deep-sea scavenger looks exactly like a terrifying, two-foot-long version of the common backyard pillbug or roly-poly. Because food is incredibly scarce in the freezing, pitch-black depths of the ocean, their bodies have adapted to survive on a remarkably slow metabolism. This prehistoric-looking creature can feast on a large meal until it can barely move, and then comfortably go up to five whole years without eating another bite.