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The Ugliest Fish in the World: 12 Fish Only a Mother Could Love
Saggy faces, fangs too big for their mouths and lips like bad make-up. Meet the ugliest fish in the world – and the clever reasons they look this way.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and these fish have very few beholders. Their faces sag, their teeth stick out and some of them look permanently furious. But every “ugly” feature has a job to do. Here are the ugliest fish in the world, and why they look the way they do.
Blobfish
The champion. In 2013, the blobfish was voted the world’s ugliest animal. But that droopy pink face is what a blobfish looks like after being dragged up from the deep and losing the water pressure that holds its body together. At home, about 2,000 ft (600 m) down, it looks like a normal, slightly grumpy fish.
Fangtooth fish
For its size, the fangtooth has the biggest teeth of any fish in the ocean. Its lower fangs are so long that it has sockets on either side of its brain to hold them when it closes its mouth.
Anglerfish
Needle teeth, a huge mouth and a glowing rod sticking out of its head. The female deep-sea anglerfish is the stuff of nightmares, and the tiny males fuse onto her body for life.
Goblin shark
Pink skin, a long flat snout and jaws that shoot forward out of its face to grab prey. The goblin shark is rarely seen, which most people consider a good thing.
Hagfish
No jaws, no scales and the ability to fill a bucket with slime in seconds. The hagfish is often called a slime eel, though it isn’t an eel at all.
Monkfish
Mostly mouth. The monkfish is a shallow-water relative of the anglerfish with a huge head, a gaping jaw full of teeth and a lure on its forehead. It’s ugly enough that it’s usually sold without its head, as a fish known in some places as “poor man’s lobster”.
Strange but trueThe vote that crowned the blobfish was run by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, a group that uses humour to raise money for less cuddly endangered species.
Stargazer
Its eyes sit on top of its head, its mouth points straight up, and it spends its days buried in sand with only its face showing. When a fish swims past, it lunges up and swallows it. Some stargazers can even give an electric shock.
Sarcastic fringehead
A small fish from the Pacific coast of North America with a giant secret: when two males argue over a home, they open their mouths into huge, colourful membranes and push them against each other, like two angry umbrellas.
Wolf eel
A wrinkled, old-man face with big teeth for crushing crabs and sea urchins. The wolf eel of the North Pacific isn’t an eel at all, it can grow to about 8 ft (2.4 m) and couples are thought to pair up for life.
Red-lipped batfish
Bright red lips, a frown and a horn on its nose. The red-lipped batfish of the Galápagos doesn’t swim much. It walks on its fins along the sea floor, looking deeply annoyed about it.
Ocean sunfish
A giant swimming head that someone forgot to finish. The ocean sunfish can weigh as much as a car and has a tiny, puckered mouth that it can’t close.
Pacific viperfish
Its fangs are so long that it can’t close its mouth around them. The viperfish is only about a foot long, but it looks like it escaped from a horror movie.
In the deep sea, nobody can see you. There’s no point looking pretty.
Why are deep-sea fish so ugly?
Many of the ugliest fish live in the deep sea, and that’s not a coincidence. In the dark, looks don’t matter. What matters is catching rare meals and saving energy, so deep-sea fish have huge mouths, giant teeth, soft, watery bodies and weak muscles. Brought up into bright light and low pressure, they look even worse than they do at home.
See more strange swimmers in The 20 Strangest Deep-Sea Creatures and our Ugliest Animals collection.
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