Its name alone tells you that the blobfish isn’t going to win any beauty contests. In fact, a few years ago it won an ugly contest -- it was declared the ugliest animal on the planet. That’s a bit misleading, though: No one is going to look their best if they’ve just been hauled up from far below the ocean waves.
The blobfish is found off the coast of Australia and the island of Tasmania, at depths of about 2,000 to 4,000 feet. In this natural habitat, it looks a bit like a cartoon character. It has a wide, round head, and a tapered body that can reach about a foot in length.
One is purple, one is pink, and one is blue, and it took 40 scientists from 17 countries to find them, more than 4 miles below the ocean’s surface. They are three new species of snailfish discovered in one of the deepest places on earth, the bottom of the Atacama Trench off the coast of Peru and Chile.
