Ghosts of the Desert

To me, nothing is more relaxing than spending time around animals. So sometimes we head to the LA Zoo in the afternoon when we need a break. I occasionally write for their magazine Zoo View so it's almost like working...

The last time we went the peninsular pronghorns were very energetic, play fighting and carousing.

I'm really proud of our zoo's involvement with the Peninsular Pronghorn Recovery Project in Mexico, so it's a treat to see these guys up close. Only about 250 members of this subspecies survive in the wild, down from the thousands that used to roam the deserts. That means the breeding herd at LAZ comprises a significant percentage of all individuals alive today. It's really a shame they're endangered, since they're quite unusual. Not only are they the fastest hoofed mammals on Earth, but pronghorns are also the only extant member of their entire family (Antilocapridae). They're weird too, falling somewhere between goats and deer, with odd branching horns instead of antlers, unlike any other creature alive today.

In their home range the peninsular subspecies is called los fantasmas del desierto, the ghosts of the desert, because of their cryptic coloration and great speed that allows them to disappear from view with almost supernatural quickness. Indeed, they can cruise at nearly 60 mph, tongues hanging out and mouths agape to admit copious amounts of air, for an hour at a time. That's one thing you won't see in a zoo though, since these pronghorns are far too relaxed to consider fleeing. Like me, after an afternoon spent watching them.

Yes, There Really is Such a Thing as a Blobfish

Photo from the London Telegraph

I have to admit, this is a new one to me. I would have never known about this creature if it hadn't been for the Swimmies of Doom, but after seeing the photo I had to find out more.

Turns out, this is indeed a real critter. A critter that the Telegraph called "the world's most miserable-looking fish". Other sites call it "the world's ugliest fish" and "the world's most unattractive fish". All of this seems a bit unfair, given that the blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus) lives at depths up to 800 m where the pressure is dozens of times that experienced in the sunlit world. Obviously, he's going to collapse into a blobby mess at sea level! After all, we don't look too good after being exposed to, oh, say, the vacuum of space.

Illustration from Wikipedia

But then again, this is a fish almost entirely made of a gelatinous fatty material. A couple of articles even refer to him as "the fat-head fish". His lifestyle is pretty blobby too: his squishy body is only slightly less dense than water so he is able to float serenely over the ocean floor waiting for food to pass in front of his mouth without expending any energy on swimming. He does, however, seem to "sit" on eggs. I tried to find out more about this adaptation, but came up empty. I suppose there aren't too many ichthyologists out there making the study of the blobfish their life's work. Sigh.

Sadly, this bizarre, inoffensive, and ironically inedible fish is being driven to the brink of extinction by deep sea trawlers. As technology allows for fishing at greater and greater depths more fish are being snagged as bycatch. As you can imagine, the blobfish isn't very good at getting out of the way of these huge nets, and so ends up being hauled to the surface where the pressure difference kills him. I don't know about you, but I feel that the world would be a poorer place without the blobfish in it!