On the 15th of November, 1976, a US Navy research vessel found a new fish. In principle, I have no problem with that. Oceans are big, fish are small, new stuff is going to turn up now and again. But what they found fifty years ago was a fish so stupid-looking that it bends philosophies of existence toward irrelevance. I think therefore I am? Not if I’m thinking about a megamouth shark I’m not.
I mean, look at this dickhead…
You see that in 2026 and your brain immediately starts sending, “dunno mate, probably AI?” messages to your conscience. The head, for a start, is fucking massive. The fins are too small to be of any use other than decoration. It looks like a halloween mask stapled to a mackerel. And yet, apparently, according to science, megamouth sharks almost identical to this spud were swimming around during the cretaceous period.
I’m sorry. No.
100m years and no thought of evening up the old head-body ratio. You exist as a species for two percent of the earth’s existence and no situation arose where being slightly less of a Renault Clio attached to a skipping rope would provide an evolutionary advantage? You can’t go through history looking like both the before and after photographs in an advert for a gym. You can’t skip leg day for ever.
Here’s another one…
Fake. As. Shit.
Not buying it.
It has a fucking nose.
Fish don’t have noses, mate. What are they going to smell? They sea?
Even the shark in the first photo, which is supposed to be the same thing as this one, doesn’t have a nose.
***
We have already established that being born in 1976, I don’t really remember it. I confess, in looking for an event of the year that has affected my life I was reduced to looking on the Wikipedia page for 1976. There were a couple of important Mars missions that year. I like space. Why not write about that. Wish I had. But then I saw this guy. This obviously not real fish. And I asked myself, “Is 1976 even a thing?” I just wanted to write a little fun bit about martians or something, but I found a photo of a fish and now I have to make a decision. Now I have to let go of reality. Will megamouth sharks be the first AI generated thing I believe are real or are megamouth sharks the first actual thing I assume is AI and refuse to accept as real?
Look, I’m no fool. I’ve seen those David Attenborough documentaries where he goes in a little submarine. I know the ocean has been pumping out preposterous creatures for billions of years. Clear fish, inside out fish, triangular fish, lightbulbs with mouths. I know you can put the word ‘sea’ before almost any word and name something that already exists. Sea slug, seahorse, sea pig, sea cucumber. But, come on.
So are they real? I can’t tell you. All the photos are silly. I found a video of one but it looked like a cartoon. Conveniently, there have been less than three hundred sightings in the last fifty years. More convincingly, scientists tagged one a few years ago and learnt that megamouth sharks are slow swimmers. About 2km an hour. That tracks. Pushing that head through the ocean must be like pushing a wheelbarrow up a hill. And there doesn’t seem to be any political agenda behind convincing us they exist. Nobody is selling merch. Maybe they are real.
Maybe, and I’m just guessing now, it has been a long time since I dropped out of a Genetics degree, but what about this…
We all know that that about 370 million years ago some fish, very slowly, left the oceans and evolved, very slowly, into the many species of vertebrate that live on land. What if, and again, I’m no expert, but what if, some of them, let’s say, shortly after evolving a nose, smelled something they didn’t like and headed back for the sea? What if they evolved back into fish but, without the advantage of hindsight, made a bit of a mess of it. You can’t uncook an egg.
Believing the megamouth shark is real but that it came into existence via a method that is clearly nonsense seems like the perfect compromise. I’m sticking with it. Importantly, no other set of circumstances explains the nose. Not adequately. Not to me. What you believe is up to you. No judgement here. Why not tell me in the comments what perfectly genuine animals you don’t believe in.
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