Skip to content

You Need to Know About This Ridiculous Fish

2019-07-05 · explainer · Hank · 3:57 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature (also: Personal life) · mode: Curiosity & trivia · tags: recurring series

Stressed before VidCon, Hank starts occasionally sharing bizarre animals with John, beginning with a water anole and his favorite, the mola mola: mocked online as worthless, the ocean sunfish is a successful giant that lays up to 300 million eggs and grows enormously, and Hank loves it.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — VidCon stress and weird animals as the remedy; a water anole seen on Twitter

  • ★★ VidCon is next week (week of 8 July 2019), so Hank is stressed and can't concentrate; being older, he knows the remedy: very weird animals. — 00:00:00 · VidCon
  • ★★ Hank says the internet is almost as good at sharing weird animals as at sharing celebrity drama and reality-destroying rage lies. (playful) — 00:00:13

00:00:29 — The water anole's breathing bubble; Hank will occasionally share a bizarre beast; the mola mola

  • ★★ A water anole Hank saw on Twitter looks silvery from a bubble on its hydrophobic skin; it exhales into and rebreathes the reoxygenated bubble, staying underwater over 15 minutes. — 00:00:29 · Twitter
  • ★★★ Hank will start occasionally sharing a bizarre beast with John to ease his own mind and maybe make everyone feel better about life on this planet. — 00:00:40
  • ★★ Hank starts with one of his favorites, the mola mola or ocean sunfish, which he loves. — 00:00:50

00:00:58 — Defending the ocean sunfish: success, diet, swimming, names, size, eggs, growth, love; sign-off

  • ★★★ Against a viral Tumblr rant calling the sunfish too worthless to know it shouldn't exist, Hank says that's not how it works: sunfish species are successful. — 00:00:58 · Tumblr
  • ★★ Hank says sunfish did fine until humans began accidentally catching them along with other fish and throwing indigestible things resembling their favorite food into the ocean. — 00:01:13
  • ★★ Sunfish eat jellyfish, also the favorite food of many sea turtles. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Hank wonders about convergent evolution: turned on its side a mola mola swims much like a sea turtle, as if its odd shape has a good reason. (speculative) — 00:01:32
  • ★ Hank admits sunfish look dumb: in Taiwan they are called the fish that looks like a toppled car. — 00:01:50
  • ★★ Sunfish are the biggest bony fishes, reaching up to about a thousand kilograms. — 00:02:00
  • ★★ Until recently their lack of swim bladders and weird fins led people to assume sunfish were drifting plankton, but they can actually swim pretty fast, at least when relatively young; older ones are pretty slow. — 00:02:08
  • ★ Hank says the only people ever hurt by sunfish were hurt when sunfish jumped out of the water. — 00:02:22
  • ★★ Because they are so big, adult female sunfish can lay up to 300 million eggs, more than the entire world population of adult sunfish. — 00:02:36
  • ★★ Sunfish are named for sunning themselves flat on the water, perhaps to warm up before diving back to cold depths, or so seagulls will peck worms off them. (hedged) — 00:02:50
  • ★★ The Monterey Bay Aquarium kept a sunfish for 15 months as it grew from 50 to almost 900 pounds, until it no longer fit in the tank and had to be airlifted by helicopter to freedom. — 00:03:09
  • ★★ From birth to adulthood, mola mola increase in mass by more than 60 million times. — 00:03:22
  • ★★ Sunfish aren't cute, with terrified eyes, open mouths and many parasites, but we have no idea what goes on in them, and Hank wants every mola mola to know he loves it. (playful) — 00:03:36

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description argues that silly-looking or not, evolution means things don't survive unless they are good at something. — video description
  • ★★ The description says Hank recently saw an ocean sunfish up close at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and fell in love. — video description
  • ★★ Despite very different lineages, sea turtles and mola mola share many traits: same-shaped flippers, beaks, size as protection, many babies in the hope a few survive, and basically the same body shape. — video description
  • ★★ Even though sea turtles evolved from land-dwelling reptiles, mola mola-like fish have been around for 100 million years and sea turtles for over 200 million. — video description
  • ★★ Hank guesses the two look alike because they share a low-quality, abundant, slow food source, so the mola mola evolved for efficiency, not speed: such flippers are slow but use little energy. (speculative) — video description
  • ★★ The sunfish's huge fecundity may suit its prey: jellies can boom one year and vanish the next, so a species gains from multiplying fast and maturing quickly to exploit prey explosions. (hedged) — video description
  • ★ Deboki Chakravarti provided research assistance for the video. — video description

Humor (significant)

  • Hank answers a viral Tumblr rant calling the sunfish too worthless to know it shouldn't exist — 00:00:58

    “Look, you! That's not how this works!”

  • After Taiwan's 'toppled car' name, Hank says the Polish name for the fish is basically just a head — 00:01:50

    “which Yeah, I see it.”

  • Hank drags out a female sunfish's egg count of up to 300 million — 00:02:36

    “For clarity, that is more than the entire world population of adult sunfish.”

  • Hank lists the sunfish's ugly traits, then addresses all of them directly — 00:03:36

    “I love you. You're doing great. Keep being lumpy and magnificent.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: ocean sunfish

Also: Projects: VidCon

Organizations: Monterey Bay Aquarium · Tumblr · Twitter

Concepts: bycatch · convergent evolution · jellyfish · sea turtle · water anole

Places: Taiwan

Only in the description or credits: Deboki · evolution

Later videos replying to this one