AOTW#2 Mola mola

 I was trying to decide which animal I wanted to do for this week's AOTW, and I realized something that many people don't quite appreciate enough. There are some REALLY funny looking fish in the sea... There are many sea creatures that, were you to see them, you'd probably think, "That's one ugly fish.  Must be some sort of mutant." So, as a display of my respect and recognition of these weirdos of the sea, I want to spend the next 5 AOTW's telling you about these oddballs.

To start out this miniseries, take a look at this fish^^^^

Pretty odd looking, right? He looks to me like a pancake crossed with a shark crossed with a clam gone wrong, or some sort of alien race that has the power of levitation and floats around making odd noises... Okay, maybe I thought that one out too much... I tend to do that. Back to the fish. So what the heck is this creeper fish???  I use the word creeper to describe most things that seem odd to me. Sue me. Well, some people call it by its latin name, Mola mola. Funny name for a funny fish, eh? Its common name is more understandable, and a lot more boring- the Oceanic Sunfish. If you look at the tail of this odd creature, it sort of looks like the beams from a cartoon sun. The real reason for its common name is one of its interesting, nevertheless strange, habits. Mola mola often swim to the surface of the water to bask in the sun. Also, Germans (DEUTCHLAND!!!) call the mola mola Schwimmender kopf, which literally translates to "swimming head."   This moniker can be accredited to the sunfish's odd body-shape.

One very obvious anatomical characteristic of the Mola mola is the fact that it is completely missing its tail fin! That's right, its tail (caudal) fin is replaced by a strange "pseudo-tail," or clavus. This odd appendage is formed by the convergence of the dorsal (that tall fin on the mola's back) and the anal (the one on its underside) fins. This peculiar adaptation makes it so that they cannot move through the water like other fish. Most fish use their caudal (tail) fins to swim through the water, by moving them back and forth. The Mola mola does not have a caudal fin. And no, they do not just sink to the bottom of the ocean and just lie there. They have evolved their dorsal and anal fins to be longer and more flexible than most fish, and they use these modified fins to kind of flap through the water, like a sideways bird.

This is a fry (hatchling) Mola mola.

Besides its strange appearance, the Mola mola is a pretty normal fish in regards to habitat and and distribution. They are surprisingly spread across every single tropical sea on earth, and are very abundant. This is because they lay more eggs at one time than any other vertebrate to ever set foot, or fin, on this planet. Guess how many eggs that is! 100,000? nope. 500,000? warmer... 1,000,000? still not there yet. The mola mola can lay up to 300,000,000 eggs... at one time! Pretty phenominal, especially when you consider that all of the eggs that get fertilized and hatch, and survive at least a few months, will grow to be over 10 feet long! Thanks to their flat bodies, they will also be about as tall as they are long. That is one BIG swimming fish head pancake, if you ask me.