My Favourite Pictures Of Peepaw Primo

My favourite pictures of Peepaw Primo

Peepaw and the ghouls 🫶🏻

Mola mola. The mola we all knowla. The mola we all molove. What an incredible creature, Mola mola is! Such a strange shape, so many eggs, no swim bladder… and the size. Its most prized aspect! If you know one thing about Mola mola, it’s that it is the largest bony fish, right?

…Right?

Nuh-uh-uh, Mola mola. Don’t try and sneak away. It’s very noticeable. After all, you are one of the biggest bony fish!

Let me repeat that. One of the biggest bony fish.

Mola mola, the ocean sunfish, is NOT in fact the largest known bony fish! You’d think we were talking about Mola tecta, because this sunfish has hoodwinked us!

Behold MOLA ALEXANDRINI! Known, very appropriately, as the giant sunfish. This is the true heaviest bony fish! Not Mola mola, as has so been thought, and as I have even claimed in front of all of you. I was wrong! Mola alexandrini has been recorded weighing up to 6,049 pounds, with Mola mola trailing in the measly little 2,000s range. But if Mola alexandrini can be so much bigger, how was Mola mola seen as the champion for so long?

It was a misunderstanding. A misidentification! That huge specimen was caught all the way back in 1996, but thought to be Mola mola until it was reevaluated in 2017! Members of the Mola genus are just always accidentally tricking us humans. I’m sure they would say “sooorry” in a deep and booming, yet slow and gentle voice if they knew.

So how can you #KnowYourMolas? It is easy to confuse them- even scientists do it- but generally, be sure to notice the shapes of both the face and the clavus (the funny butt fin)! If the face is relatively smooth, and especially if the clavus has a scalloped shape, that’s Mola mola. If the face is bulgy and bumpy and the clavus is smooth and round, that’s Mola alexandrini! And if the face is smooth but the clavus is too, then you have been hoodwinked by Mola tecta!

So there you have it. The truth about the Mola mola! Not the biggest after all… but that does not matter to me. Mola mola will always be my favorite! That being said, please show Mola alexandrini some love too, as despite its size, it is still a lesser known Mola!

And who knows? Maybe even alexandrini will be dethroned! Maybe we will find a bigger alexandrini, or maybe a bigger mola! Maybe even a different species altogether is the true largest bony fish! There is no way to know what the future has in store… so many secrets in the ocean!

Refer here for more information on the updated identification!

Agdgsgsgsg I’m LIVING for this Reef2Reef thread. This guy was worried about his urchins getting sunburnt so he made them little hats

Papa Emeritus I’s last show. Linköping, December 15, 2012. By Robban Kanto