Suddenly he was an internet sensation last month: the tripod fish. A video surfaced on YouTube with the title ‘Why it sucks to be born a tripod fish’ and then the deep-sea fish – also called the tripod fish – swam by in countless contributions on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
The fish owes its striking name to the three ‘legs’ at the bottom of its body, with which it stands on the seabed like a kind of stool. (The English name is, by the way tripod spiderfishand was the source of inspiration for the Dutch musician Spinvis.) There he waits for food to swim by and for a possible partner. Because the fish have a rather static existence, they do not pass each other very often, and they are often too weak for successful mating, but if they do succeed, it is a success: a tripod fish is man and woman in one. And in the worst case, the fish can also reproduce without a partner.
What makes the life of a tripod fish so difficult according to the video? Most of his young would be eaten and he would have little company in the deep sea, except from bloodthirsty parasites. Really sad? Well, more fish suffer from that. And hey, no animal life is all roses. The YouTube account contains dozens of videos with similar titles. Fill in the blank: why it sucks to be a clownfish/whale shark/red panda/giraffe/human. Because we all have bad days sometimes.
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