Fish equivalent of the ugliest dog contests.

Had to post. I was sure the thumb was photoshopped and instead its a real creature.

looks like a Halloween dog puppet

I wouldn't want to wake up next to that

Faces that only its mum could love....in the dark...with eyes closed....

AAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

Kill it with fire

One thing to remember about deep sea fish is that many images of them are misleading because they're taken of carcasses. No matter how they're brought to the surface, the rapid decrease in pressure and increase in temperature almost always kills these fish and also disfigures them with bloating and loss of pigmentation.

That pic of the telescope fish in the video thumbnail (the same one being compared to Animal) is of a long-dead one. You can see the damage and decay around the eyes and mouth, as well as the skin sloughing off. The video does include pictures of telescope fish that are more likely to be living (although not certain), which reveal that it actually looks far less ugly/creepy when it isn't a corpse. This is an illustration, but you can see it looks very different to the muppet-like state the creature is in in that one photo. Another thing to note is that deep sea fishes are often quite a bit smaller than you'd expect. The larger of the two telescopefish species only gets to 20cm (8in) in length



My favorite example of misleading deep sea fish images is the blobfish. I'm sure plenty of you have seen the distinctive pink squishy thing we know as the blobfish, but when it's living and in its native habitat, it just looks like a fairly typical demersal (bottom-dwelling) fish, similar in body shape to a lot of sculpins. The upper image is a living blobfish and the lower one is what happens when it undergoes severe tissue damage due to rapid decreases in pressure as it's brought to the surface.

I would compare it to many humans. Under pressure, we look one way, but when we get old enough to retire and the pressure is off, ouch.

I couldn't find any other real good video of the telescope fish... there is one that shows two at a distance, floating up and down. Can't make out their "faces"