Wednesday, April 28, 2021

By Any Other Name

 
Even the scientists didn't know what they were looking at when they netted the little critter off the coast of Vancouver Island. It looked like a dang tadpole in the salt sea, only less attractive. Finally one took the pencil out from behind his pocket protector and mined for earwax, squinted, reached all the way into the recesses of his considerable education and said "Aw, I know what that is. That, there, is a bony-eared assfish."
 
As soon as he said it, of course, everyone realized it had to be a bony-eared assfish. The thing about a bony-eared assfish is it makes you wonder what other kinds of assfish there are. Are there semi-flammulated assfish? Gibbous-bellied assfish? Stippled or morose assfish? I looked it up.
Well, what the hell. The only assfish is the bony-eared one. That doesn't really seem fair. Just the one assfish. Seems like calling it an assfish is bad enough and the bony-eared part is just piling on. Not that it's that great-looking a fish. It's bony and flabby, all at once. Wouldn't it have been more polite to lump it in with the other bottom-fish?
 
Nobody actually knows how the bony-eared assfish got its name. Yes, it has an anus. But no cleavage, per se.
 
There is some speculation that it has to do with the Greek name for the species, bestowed upon it in 1887 by German ichthyologist Albert Günther. He didn't take the oppportunity to name it after himself, and who can blame him? Anyway the Greek name means something like "bristly cod," which is sensible. But in Greek the word sounds like the word for "donkey." Or ass. And since everyone who was anyone in the late nineteenth century could get a chuckle out of a good Greek pun, Assfish it was.
 
We're not that familiar with the bony-eared assfish because, one, it is distinctly uncharismatic, and two, it's at the dang bottom of the ocean, and we're not. Like a number of other critters in the vicinity, it travels up to the surface at night for snacks. And back again before daylight. It has the distinction of having the smallest brain-to-body-weight of all the vertebrates, and it's not like it weighs much. The best it can do is get half a notion. Like, I've got half a notion to go up to the surface when it gets dark. And half a notion is all it takes.
 
You've got to give it credit, though. The biggest migration, by numbers of individuals, in the world is the migration of critters from the bottom of the sea to the top and back again, conducted nightly. And how does the little bony-eared assfish the hell know it's nighttime? There's no light down there. How much darker can it get? But in its tiny little brain it knows. The bony-eared assfish knows.
 
So, respect due.
 
But the poor bony-eared assfish is no beauty. At its best, at the bottom of the ocean, it is a sort of bristle-headed flaky thing with a skinny tail. At least there it is relatively sleek, but when it rises, and the pressure decreases on it, its cells swell up until it is a goobery mass of sad jelly, still with the skinny tail. And then it sinks back down to its previous ugly-but-not-gelatinous fish state.

Operating a brain takes a lot of energy and if you don't need your brain for any more than popping up to the surface and back again you can let it devolve over time. As it happens, we know our own human brains have gotten smaller in the last 10,000 years. And things are happening in a hurry, now. Speculation is that since we're now storing information outside of ourselves, in books, online, etc., we can get by with smaller brains. I know mine can't manage an article over 2,000 words anymore and I'm lost if I have to remember a password. TL,DR. Precious few of us know enough Greek anymore to be able to properly disparage a tiny assfish.

But assfish don't care. Assfish keep making more assfish.

The lack of good lighting probably helps.

Note to Uncle Walt: So long, and thanks for all the assfish.

32 comments:

  1. At first I thought, "Wow, this is a REALLY long post about such an obscure fish." Then as I read, I realized that the post was posted twice in tandem. It took a paragraph for me to realize it, but it's probably due to my decreasing brain size.

    The picture of the Assfish looks exactly like a plastic bag of raw shrimp that I took out of my freezer this morning. I didn't know what THAT was when I first saw it, either.

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    1. Whoa, now there's a whole new mistake. Thanks. I filleted it and now it's the right size.

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  2. Even the scientists didn't know what they were looking at

    Probably because nobody wanted to look at it for very long. Gaack.

    That doesn't really seem fair. Just the one assfish.

    They're probably allowing for the possibility that other assfish will be discovered in the future. Those nets are always bringing up unidentified new blobs of yuck from the deeps.

    Its conservation status is listed as "Least Concern" but we don't know if that means there are a lot of them or nobody gives a shit.

    It probably means that since they never come anywhere near us, there's no need to be concerned with figuring out how to actively get rid of them.

    Speculation is that since we're now storing information outside of ourselves, in books, online, etc., we can get by with smaller brains.

    The problem is that some people's brains have now become so small that they've stopped reading books and started just believing whatever the sub-assfish-brained goobers on Reddit or Facebook tell them. Something like this is probably what happened to the dinosaurs.

    Thanks for informing us about yet another of the hideous wonders of nature.

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    1. Thanks for staying true to Infidel form and despising nature! (I mean this most lovingly. I like being able to count on something.)

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    2. The ocean is a completely alien environment filled with horrible-looking things that spend all their time trying to eat each other. I don't particularly object to their existence, I'm just glad that they aren't anywhere near me.

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    3. Thank you for the phrase "sub-assfish-brained goobers"! I intend to use it for as long as I can remember it, which, as has already been established, is a rapidly shrinking interval.

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  3. I thought I was having a deja vu moment or was it vuja de (I've never been here before)? Anyway, I am happy for the assfish living in a mirror-less, dark world. Otherwise it would never reproduce and what would be the point?

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    1. I also have lived happily in a mirror-less world, and the only reason I know what I look like is zoom. It's alarming.

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  4. I am using 'bony-eared assfish' as my go to insult. Thanks, Murr.

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    1. It should probably be the name of a rock band.

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    2. You might be thinking of The Bony-Assed Phish Faces.

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    3. I can see you're playing nicely without my intervention.

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  5. Did you mean "Gibbous-belied assfish" or did you mean Gibbous-bellied assfish? Not that it really matters.

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    1. Gibbons-belied assfish. The lesser ape species don't believe it exists.

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    2. Pfft.... They probably watch Fox news.

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    3. Cripes. What is wrong with me this week? I fixed it.

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  6. Discoverers of new species can’t name them after themselves. There’s rules to taxonomy and that’s one of them. Some egomaniac discoverers get around that rule by having someone else do the description and the naming. But actually in science, the greater glory goes to the describes, so not having it named after you is a minor price to pay.

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  7. I think (s)he looks strangely human, nice smile, but covered with mucus. Or something.

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  8. Granted, it isn't a pretty fish, but like my mum used to say, "we all look the same in the dark" and it certainly is dark way down there at the bottom of the ocean.

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  9. Having just lost someone near and dear myself, condolences on the loss of your Uncle Walt.

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    1. I'm sorry for you! I didn't lose anyone. My friend Walt sent me the assfish article and he's alive and well.

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  10. I just enjoyed the hell out of reading this! LOL from my marginally-reduced brain.

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  11. Perhaps we should elevate their status from "least concerned" to "somewhat concerned". I mean, I'm still missing Hootie and the Blowfish, and that's been about 20 years at this point.

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    1. Hootie's still around though in country music circles!

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  12. On my screen it looks as though it has a blonde, Marylyn Monroe hair do. That might suit it for travelling to the surface for a candle-lit dinner.

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