Strange new fish: H. psychedelica

This trippy fish that has been confirmed as a new species and named, appropriately enough, Histiophryne psychedelica. Scuba divers discovered it off Indonesia and University of Washington researcher Ted Pietsch tested its DNA. From the Associated Press:

Like other frogfish – a subset of anglerfish – H. psychedelica has leglike fins on both sides of its body.

But it has several traits not previously known among frogfish, wrote Pietsch, of the University of Washington.

Each time the fish strike the seabed, for instance, they push off with their fins and expel water from tiny gill openings to jet themselves forward. That and an off-centered tail cause them to bounce around in a bizarre, chaotic manner.

The fish, which has a gelatinous, fist-size body covered with thick folds of skin that protect it from sharp-edged corals, also has a flat face with eyes directed forward, like humans, and a huge, yawning mouth.

"PSYCHEDELIC" FISH PICTURE: New Species Bounces on Reef

• [Anonymous]

  Video of it:

  http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=47496

• [Rathia]

  ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOFISH

• [nerak]

  the “”PSYCHEDELIC” FISH PICTURE: New Species Bounces on Reef” link directs right back to boingboing.net :(

• [Anonymous]

  you’re telling us about a new fish that bounces along in a chaotic fashion but you dont give a vid?!?

  see it in action:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn6CWuk3Q3s

• [TroofSeeker]

  Obviously another fake from the people that brought us the 100-foot snake. No creature could possibly exist if I didn’t know it exists.

  I’m sorry. That was sarcastic. I feel terrible now.

• [designian]

  That’s an o.k. fish. But how about a fish with barrel eyes and a transparent head – so you can see it’s brains? N.B. scroll down to video
  http://www.mbari.org/news/news_releases/2009/barreleye/barreleye.html

• [Jason Rizos]

  My dog does the same head-tilt thing when you take a picture of him.

• [madzack]

  i wonder how much acid god was on when he made this one. also its good to see that he is still out there dropping little gems like this.

• [Anonymous]

  prolly not a ‘new’ fish. glad to have a glimpse of the remaining 10% of the oceanic bio-diversity. again, do we need to plow the ocean floors for seaweed to feed cows?

• [mycroftb]

  Here’s *a* link, found by googling:

  http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/02/27/bouncing-psychedelic-fish-is-declared-a-new-species/

  There are about 2660 results for “histiophryne psychedelica”, though interestingly enough Google suggests: “Did you mean: histophryne psychedelica”, which has 0 hits. Nice suggestion there, Google.

• [GregLondon]

  and its cousin the hypnofrog

• [David Pescovitz]

  Fixed it. Thanks!

• [Felton]

  H. Psych: “D’y'ever think maybe our whole world is just a speck of dirt under the fin of some giant fi…whoa! Look at that light.”

• [eustace]

  Safe to say this comes as an eye-opening surprise to everyone here but Takuan, who probably eats these for lunch…

• [TroofSeeker]

  Anon asked me: “…again, do we need to plow the ocean floors for seaweed to feed cows?”

  If we could grow and harvest delicious and nutricious food from sub-sea farms, would you be opposed to it? There’s a lot of acreage down there…