My sides seriously hurt from laughing over a sunfish.
In the video below an awesome guy, who I’m just going to assume is from Boston (when you hear him you’ll understand), totally loses his sh*t when he sees a sunfish for the first time.
He catches sight of the thing and has NO clue what it is. And it BLOWS his mind.
Through a shower of creative expletives (careful if you have easily offended ears) unloaded on his friend Jay… and anyone else in earshot… you learn that he thinks it’s a baby whale at first. He then becomes concerned that it’s hurt, which is actually quite sweet.
Boston Guy, for the record, seems like an upstanding guy.
Now to be fair, many people have no idea what a sunfish is. And likely the majority of us that do still have never seen one in person. So Boston Guy’s confusion is entirely understandable. But it’s also hilarious, and more than a little bit adorable.
Sunfish are strange
For the curious, a quick tutorial on the sunfish…
Just as Boston Guy indicates sunfish are indeed huge.
Sunfish… which live in tropical and temperate waters unless they’re lost… are the heaviest bony fish in the world (he’s not fat, he’s big boned). Adults tip the scales at a humongous 545 to a staggering (holy sh*t!) 2,205 pounds.
And, well, let’s face it, these are one weird looking fish. The look like some Frankenstein experiment gone terribly wrong with a big fish head and frilly blubbery tail tacked on to a flattened out, too small, middle. Frankly, it looks as if the thing is missing parts.
The sunfish has a reputation for being a lazy dude too. He spends a good portion of his time just floating around drifting with the currents and hardly moving.
He doesn’t need to since being such a laid back dude he doesn’t have many natural enemies And he eats a ton, but it’s mostly un-nutritious jellyfish.
Sunfish are deeper than you think
But despite his name and the commonly held belief, it turns out these guys don’t spend all of their time floating on the surface soaking up the sun.
While they do like to take in the rays from time to time they actually are spending quite a lot of time 660 feet below the surface in the epipelagic and mesopelagic zones (terms I can rightfully use since I took a course in Marine Megafauna once through Duke University and I actually learned some stuff 🙂 ).
And according to scientists in the know, they can even travel an impressive 16 miles in a day.
So enough learnin’ let’s get to some laughing instead. Prepare to snort…
