![]() ![]() “I’m not quite sure why that is,” Foot said in his campaign pitch. The most persistent gossip is that blobfish suffer a significant threat and possible annihilation. Magoo, the pudding-faced comedian Louis CK or Donatella Versace, the fashion designer with lips so plump she can whisper in her own ear. Blobby was separated at birth from either Kilroy, Mr. BuyĪs often happens with celebrities, the story of the Beast From 650 Fathoms has taken on a life of its own. ![]() This story is a selection from the November issue of Smithsonian magazine. Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12 The painfully still Blobfish Bros don’t so much bob in the ocean as hover over its floor. A recent episode of “The Octonauts”-a kids’ cartoon program about the underwater adventures of Captain Barnacles and crew-involved Bob Blobfish and his brothers, Bob and Bob. Despite very little happening, the feed is still more compelling than most shows on Australian TV. To date, more than 31,000 “watchers” have logged into the live webcam that monitors the drips. Eighty-eight years later, nine drops have fallen. In 1927, a University of Queensland physics professor placed a blob of congealed tar pitch in a funnel to see how fast it would flow. This is the country that’s home to the so-called pitch drop viscosity experiment, the longest-running-and most tedious-lab test of all time. In a very real sense, the Creature From Deep-Down Under has demonstrated how museums can publicize their physical objects in a digital world.Īussies embrace their blobs. ![]() In an “interview” on a museum-themed website, the blobfish boasts about predicting the winners of the FIFA World Cup and the Australian Master Chef competition, and reporting live from the red carpet of the Eureka Prizes-the country’s most prestigious science awards event. Paul Foot, the comic who championed the blobfish’s candidacy, maintained, “The sad face of the blobfish belies a kind and very wise little brain in there.” In its quest to raise awareness of Mother Nature’s endangered but “aesthetically challenged children,” the UAPS chose 11 nominees and enlisted an equal number of comedians to film short videos on their behalf. Two years ago the blobfish was voted the earth’s most hideous species in an online poll conducted by the British-based Ugly Animal Preservation Society. Michael Hearst - Blobfish | Listen for free at bop.fm Blobby has been deemed huggable enough for plush toys and has inspired an ocean of silly poems, apps, emoji, smartphone games with tag lines like “Build Up Your Hero and EVOLVE! What Strange and Wonderful Things Will He Become?”, memes (“Go Home Evolution: You’re Drunk”) and even a song by children’s book author Michael Hearst:įloats upon the bottom, lazy as can be. A photograph snapped aboard ship lit up on social media and transformed this squidgy bottom feeder into an aquatic Grumpy Cat, with devoted followers on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr. Of the hundreds of deep-sea critters hauled in on the New Zealand expedition, the Psychrolutes microporos was the breakout star. Has there ever been crueler proof that alcohol changes the way you look? Blobby.” Indeed, these days the Blobster suggests nothing so much as a freshly Botoxed baked potato. “He-or she-now looks like an 85-year-old Mr. Blobby’s skin and collapsed his-or her-snout,” laments Mark McGrouther, the museum’s fish manager. ![]() The famous downturned grin is gone, the tiny currant eyes have receded in deep alcoves, and the nose-which once evoked Ziggy of comic strip fame-is shaped less like a turnip than a fallen soufflé.ĭredged up off the coast of New Zealand during a 2003 research voyage, the specimen has spent the last decade suspended in a 70 percent ethyl-alcohol solution. Blobby-as the photogenic blobfish is affectionately known-is no longer Bubblicious-pink. The world’s most misunderstood fish reposes in pickled splendor on a shelf of the basement archives at the Australian Museum’s Ichthyology Collection, in Sydney. ![]()
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