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The Sunfish, or Mola, is
the dumbest creature alive.
Not just from an intelligence
perspective – I mean, look at it!
It's a being of extremes and
comically bad at being an animal.
Its evolutionary strategy is to be
chunky boys, weaker than their predators,
staring into the ocean with empty dumb
eyes, eating the least nutritious food possible
but growing amazingly fast, getting
infested by parasites and dying horribly.
If you presented the sunfish in animal invention
class everybody would be really upset with you.
And yet somehow the Mola
doesn't just survives but thrives.
How?
Like actually how?
Are you ok Evolution?
The genus of Mola is a fish built wrong, a giant
head that evolution lost interest in half way through.
Its body is very flat and circular without a real
tail, instead it has a sort of rudder-like stump.
Two fins on the top and bottom give it
an ... uhm ... unorthodox swimming style.
They propel themselves forward by flapping their fins
in a goofy wobbling motion with as little grace as possible.
It’s less like swimming and
more like underwater flying –
although when they really try, Mola can
match strong swimmers like salmon or marlins.
Sunfish also don’t have a swim bladder, the
gas-filled organ most fish use for buoyancy.
Instead they have a jelly-like layer of
flesh that is 90% water to dive or surface,
which definitely doesn’t help with agility.
Most of the time Mola cruises around leisurely.
Their teeth are fused into a parrot-like beak that
sits in a tiny gaping pout that's open most of the time.
Together with two huge empty eyes, the sunfish
has a perpetual derpy face, always looking stunned.
Sunfish don’t have proper scales but some of
the thickest skin in the ocean after whales.
Up to 15 cm thick, it's rough and rubbery and often
covered in mucus, like armour made from car tyres.
Although most of what it is protecting
is not that great in the first place.
Sunfish can become as big
and massive as a large car
but its organs are collected together in the front of
their body, while most of their bulk is oddly textured,
flabby, gelatinous tissue – an animal
made from all the worst parts of a steak.
This very mid meat is supported by a sort of weird
skeleton without ribs or a tailbone and a lot of cartilage.
Their weird bodies are a mobile mini ecosystem,
infested and saturated with around 50 species of parasites
– probably more than any other fish.
Crustaceans, barnacles, various worms and
protozoans live on and in their skin, muscles, gills or organs.
They are such a paradise for parasites that even
their parasites have their own smaller parasites!
Some Mola are also followed by an entourage of other fish
that seek protection, food scraps or feed on their inhabitants.
This awkward situation may be the
root of their most bizarre behavior:
Mola frequently swim to the surface
to float on their side like a pancake.
They are sunbathing to warm
up again from deep cold dives
– which is where
they got their name from.
But they also do it to present their
body to seabirds like albatrosses.
The birds start picking the parasites from the Sunfish
body – while smaller fish that live near the surface
take care of the bottom half
– cleaning them in exchange for a snack.
While this is a great adaptation
to their parasite infection
it sadly often leads to dead
sunfish when they collide with boats.
Since they are still cold and slow from
the deep when they float on the surface,
they can't react to anything coming at them.
Once Mola reach a certain size
most predatory fish seem to avoid them,
probably wrongfully assuming their
size means that they could fight back
– and because their outsides are too tough.
But orcas, sharks and sea lions sometimes
attack and take a bite – usually only to say:
“No thank you, I prefer starving to death”.
Because for big predators sunfish are watery, not very
nutritious, cartilage filled, parasite-ridden jelly donuts.
They simply prefer to eat almost anything else.
Leaving Molas swimming around with big
chunks missing, looking even more ridiculous.
Sea lions have been observed to skip
the whole sunfish and only eat its organs,
play with its body like a frisbee and
then leave the rest for scavengers.
The sunfish might be sad about all of this
but we will never know because our
chunky boys are incredibly stupid.
Loveable Chunky Derpy Idiots
Sunfish have one of the lowest brain
to body ratios in the animal kingdom.
A car-sized mola has a walnut-sized
brain and only a tiny spine.
So its mind runs an early alpha version
of intelligence with updates disabled.
If you look a sunfish deep in the eyes,
you will mostly see your reflection.
Despite or maybe because of their
daftness they are pretty gentle fish
that show no aggression towards other
larger animals and are friendly to humans.
Sometimes they even approach divers or boats to
check out what they are and to stare at them derpily.
Even if sunfish could get angry, they kind of
lack the tools or temperament to hurt a human.
Adult sunfish are loners that spend most of their
lives drifting and wobbling through the ocean solo,
although sometimes they
come together to make babies.
Spotting two sunfish making
love is extremely difficult
because they rendezvous in the deep ocean.
But we know that their strategy is
for 99.999% of their offspring to die.
Female mola carry far more eggs
than any other vertebrate on Earth
– hundreds of millions of
eggs in a single mating party!
Sunfish eggs are tiny and float in the plankton,
where millions are eaten, starve or don't even hatch.
The larvae that do hatch are
adorable rice grain sized weirdos
covered in little star shaped spines with
the derpy facial expression of adult sunfish.
All kinds of predators gobble up
these tiny mola by the millions,
so to have any chance they
need to become large quickly.
Luckily sunfish have the most
rapid and extreme growth of any animal
– a larva can increase its weight
60 million times from hatching to adult.
This is the equivalent of a human baby
growing to the weight of an aircraft carrier.
If you grow fast you need
a lot of nutritious food,
and this is why Mola have chosen to
specialize on the dumbest meal available.
The Dumbest Predator vs The Dumbest Prey
The sunfish found a truly
remarkable ecological niche:
If your prey is so pathetic that some other predators
don’t want to bother with it, you have it all for yourself.
Mola are generalized predators
with a focus on small and soft stuff.
Their huge eyes can see incredibly
well, especially in dim water,
and they can sneak up on small prey
or sift through drifting zooplankton.
Mostly fish larvae, squids, shrimps, mollusks, starfish,
small crustaceans – really any soft critter they can get to.
But maybe their favorite meals are
from the jelly kind of sea life,
like jellyfish, ctenophores and salps –
which really is something since these are almost
entirely water and have almost no calories.
So to get any meaningful amount of nutrition
sunfish can mow through swarms of jellyfish,
sometimes devouring thousands in a single day.
Without a swim bladder, Mola can dive very deep and
surface quickly and freely, giving them a huge range,
able to travel dozens of kilometers a
day to graze on the seafloor or reefs,
hunt for jelly in the deep or consume
plankton and algae near the surface.
Mola are the cows of the ocean.
Huge and constantly floating around
slurping in high volumes of low nutrient food.
Since they don’t really chew with their beak,
sunfish have found another absurd way to eat:
Long, claw-like teeth in their throat.
Mola suck in their prey, pull it through their
throat teeth that prevent it from escaping
and maybe move it around and rip it
apart like a slow motion wood chipper.
Ok. As much as we are roasting the sunfish
– and don’t worry, it doesn’t understand
that we are making fun of it –
actually it is kind of genius.
Nature has a sense of humor and
has left niches in the ecosystem
that are best filled by being
passive and bad at everything.
Mola are derpy goofballs
that are bullied by everyone.
And while it is fun to call them dumb
actually they are a highly specialized
and resilient species, widely spread
throughout the oceans of the world.
A marvel of evolution. A truly genius creature.
And as the human gazes into the sunfish’s eyes
and wonders how evolution could
produce such an ingenious creature…
Sunny suddenly wonders about her own origins.
There is a deeper version of her story that nobody told her
– so let’s help her find out.
With the MyHeritage DNA test she can
take a deep dive into her own DNA,
discover her family history, and
explore her geographic origins.
And for only $29, she decides to go for it!
The DNA test is incredibly simple:
just a quick swab inside her check,
pop it back in the mail, and that's it!
After a few weeks, she gets her results back.
Like taking a journey back through the millennia,
she can now explore her ancestors’
fingerprints etched into her DNA.
With Ancient Origins, a new feature by MyHeritage
DNA, Sunny traced her story back 10,000 years
— to find out she’s
descended from Norse Vikings!
And there is more: she also discovers thousands
of distant relatives all over the world!
All these people share a small part of her DNA …
makes you wonder if they like
Sunfish as much as she does.
This was more than just a DNA test -
it was like a global family reunion!
If you are curious about what
your DNA might reveal about you,
order your MyHeritage DNA kit today:
for just $29. Click the link, or scan the QR code.
Your DNA connects you to every
other human on this planet,
and learning about your origins can yield some
truly amazing insights into how you … became you!
Want the dumbest animal alive on your wall?
Our official Sunfish poster is now available
on our shop – but only while supplies last.
This poster also kicks off a brand-new
series of dedicated video posters.
While you’re browsing the shop, check
out our other sciencey products.
Every purchase directly funds new videos.
Thanks for helping this dumb
fish make smart science happen!
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