Originally published at: Creepy 'Demon Fish' Shocks Hikers in Remote Australia - Boing Boing
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FTFY
Edit: Let me amend that.
Australia - full of incredible & amazing creatures that want to eat your face.
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Everyone wants to go spearfishing until it gets all Call of Cthulhu on the beach.
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I prefer to think of nature as more amazing than creepy. Shocking, sure. It’s not something you’d expect to see. But, it’s pretty incredible to see something like that, expected or not.
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Think it’s a stargazer – if so it ain’t just ugly and toothy, it’s venomous and may be electric as well. “Stargazers are ambush predators which camouflage themselves; some can deliver both venom and electric shocks. Ichthyologist William Leo Smith called them ‘the meanest things in creation’.” – wikipedia. If I ever went to Australia I think I would just look out the plane window while we were fueling up, then we could leave.
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(it’s a photoshop, the finger / overall animal is real, coloring & teeth & mouth are fake)
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Still cute though…
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It has venomous spikes to poison you…and also gives electric shocks.
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I now have another fish other than the rockfish to be afraid of stepping on.
"Stonefish stings in Australia
The stonefish is the most venomous known fish in the world[16] and stings can cause death if not treated.[17] Most stonefish stings occur as a result of stepping on the creature which forces venom into the foot, while it is less common for the fish to sting when it is picked up."
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He puts the “ick” in “ichthyology”
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If that’s a female, then she has a teeny tiny pouch down there. A wee pocket!
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Bad news: there’s also such a thing as a “Northern Stargazer” and they’ve been seen in places like New York.
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Lots of the YT comments saying it’s actually a black jawfish - stargazer is kind of a flatfish with top mounted eyes, but the black jawfish has forward facing ones like the magnificently creepy specimen from the video:
Stargazer:
Black jawfish:
https://www.eol.org/pages/46580550
Also, best YT comment:
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Creepy fish shocks hikers in remote Australian region
Was someone using those random encounter tables again?
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So the ‘shock’ in this case was non-electric, I am disappoint,
