The ‘freaky flat-faced fish’ discovered last year near Indonesia has been confirmed as a new species. In a newly published paper Theodore Pietsch, Rachel Arnold, and David Hall admit the fish is “bizarre” and name it Histiophryne psychedelica.

Pietsch told LiveScience that where the beastie had come from was still a mystery, although it may have been living in deeper waters and recently moved into shallower depths for an unknown reason.

“It seems that some of these animals do a bit of moving up and down into deeper water,” he says. “We know they come up in shallow water to spawn and reproduce, but that cycle should’ve been noticed in past years and it really wasn’t.”

Unlike other frogfish, H. psychedelica hops rather than swims. From the paper:

Members of the genus Antennarius [frogfish] typically move short distances by ‘walking’, with the aid of pectoral and pelvic fins, or longer distances by swimming continuously from one location to the next, using a combination of jet propulsion and fin movements …, without touching bottom until they reach their final destination. In H. psychedelica, however, jet propulsion in a sustained, long-distance swimming effort was never observed. On the contrary, both individuals moved consistently in a series of short ‘hops’, the paired pelvic fins making frequent contact with, and appearing to push off, the bottom at each bounce.

As the press release puts it, psychedelica is an apt name, “given the cockamamie way the fish swim, some with so little control they look intoxicated and should be cited for DUI”. The video of the fish ‘swimming’ is well worth a watch.

Image: ©David Hall/seaphotos.com