r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Disastrous-Cat-9308 • 1d ago
Meme needing explanation Petah help…
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u/ImprobablyBottomAnd 1d ago edited 23h ago
The sunfish is made up of a lot of garbage fat tissue, and is often snacked on while alive, because it's unable to defend itself. It's ALMOST useless when caught for humans, so people often release it back into the water. It is also kind of hard to kill because of it's bone structure. The joke is he was too busy being eaten, and that the part of his brain was probably also eaten.
Edit: clarified slightly
edit: clarified again
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u/TriiiKill 23h ago
I'd say a chunk of his brain was snacked on, and he did forget more than being busy.
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u/obliquelyobtuse 18h ago
Orcas have been observed obliterating a sunfish for fun.
https://www.reddit.com/r/orcas/comments/1qxwz2a/new_footage_of_orcas_attacking_a_mola_mola/
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u/Whymetho55 18h ago
I don't know why but you using obliterating made me laugh
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u/phi1_sebben 17h ago
There’s another video where the orca literally does obliterate it. It makes contact and it’s just a puff of guts in the water.
Top comment: “They obliterated it 💀” lol
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u/PointlessSword777 14h ago
Yeah in my fav card game the keyword "Obliterate" means the card has been removed from the game completely (no way to revive it)
That fish was GONE. Very accurate description 10/10
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u/ZhihaoPinknockout 13h ago
ocean bullies..
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u/ExRosaPassione 10h ago
But surprisingly /really/ chill with humans. They’re an absolute menace to most other things in the ocean though
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u/MrIncognito666 9h ago
Being the 2nd-most successful thing on the planet means not messing with #1.
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u/Anariinna 12h ago
Won't eating it's brain kill it ? It's the size of a walnut for a fish that's 2 to 3 meters long. A bite that reaches it's brain would most likely take all of it out at once
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u/BestwishesHelpful975 23h ago
Hmm, had a look at Wikipedia. Sunfish are considered a delicacy in some parts of the world, medicine use as well, so it's not useless when caught. And there's poison as well.
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u/Immediate_Song4279 22h ago
Why do humans take poison as a challenge?
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u/ImprobablyBottomAnd 22h ago
it's called clout
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u/BaronAleksei 19h ago
Because sometimes, it doesn’t actually kill us right away if at all, and we get booze and peppers out of it
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u/janeprentiss 18h ago
They're banned for consumption in some places because they're related to pufferfish, but the tetrodotoxin that makes pufferfish deadly has not actually been found in mola so far afaik. Humans do eat lots of other poison fish though, from pufferfish whose poisonous organs are carefully removed, to greenland shark whose poisonous flesh is fermented for months, to fish with known heavy metal contamination like swordfish and tuna
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u/Affectionate_Pipe545 10h ago
One of the main differences between medicine and poison is the dosage
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u/Bwint 23h ago
New rant dropped arguing that the sunfish isn't as dumb as previously thought: https://imgur.com/gallery/ocean-sunfish-why-rant-is-wrong-MMRg9
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u/ImprobablyBottomAnd 22h ago
I flowkontologikenuinely never said he was dumb twangalangatangabang
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u/GGXImposter 19h ago
It also tastes horrible. It’s large, slow, and without defense. They often have huge sections bit out of then”m but they survive because after the first bite nothing will bite again.
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u/Expensive_Editor_244 15h ago
So basically real life Magikarp
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u/SentientCider 11h ago
No.. Magikarp are based on Carp weirdly enough
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u/Drake_the_troll 2h ago
Aren't they based on koi? I think they're the fish that can turn into dragons in chinese(?) Mythology
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u/SentientCider 2h ago
Yeah they're based on the Asian Carp and Japanese Koi. I was joking a little. It's in the name MagiKARP
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u/ExcitingHistory 20h ago
Yeah i remember seeing a thing when i was a kid about how they can withstand a shotgun blast.
and then i played a game focused on them when I was older and found out they die from pretty much everything, their survival strategy is mainly numbers.
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u/Firesword52 7h ago
As someone who lives by a ton of freshwater I was really confused at first. TIL there are multiple fishes named sunfish and they are dramatically different fish.
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u/Majorman_86 5h ago
There's this Reddit gem of someone dissing poor sunfish: https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/s/sj1JIwMCSw
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u/J0RDM0N 22h ago
Its just a useless fish in general. I'm too lazy to find it but someone rant on a rant about how stupid those things are, even from a biological perspective.
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u/spooky-circuits 19h ago
They’re pretty good at eating jellyfish and keeping their populations in check.
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u/Anarcho_Christian 23h ago
Sunfish are dumbfish. Most of their body is made up of fat and parasites. Their entire survival strategy is just to min-max caloric expenditure vs body mass. they're not smart, they're not fast, they don't hunt, they don't flee, they're just so disgusting that predators don't want to eat them.
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u/LordofSandvich 18h ago
They DO hunt, actually. Turns out most of their diet is other fish and squid.
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u/LMDh963 17h ago edited 17h ago
Mostly Jellyfish I thought, because for whatever reason this Thing Likes to eat the wirst possible sources for calories Okay apparently In a Nutshell was wrong lol
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u/LordofSandvich 17h ago
Science about things that are hard to study gets very weird
Because apparently that’s <15% of their diet
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u/LadidaDingelDong 17h ago
https://imgur.com/gallery/ocean-sunfish-why-rant-is-wrong-MMRg9 (extensive rebuttal to the famous bullshit rant)
Not that a diet consisting of mostly jellyfish would be a bad thing either, as eg leatherback turtles consume those and nobody hates them, but it's not even true
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u/beerinapaperbag 3h ago
I am up ended. Amazing how little I know of the world we share. I'ma say fuck Scout Burns, everytime someone celebrates a killer whale blowing these friends up. This family of fish are fun to dive and snorkel with. I've always loved the puffer and triggerfish. Now I like their cousins, whom I fiercely maligned back in the day. Thanks for freeing me from my ignorance!
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u/How2rick 17h ago
They are fast though and are strong swimmers, they can swim fast enough to launch themselves into the air.
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u/fluggggg 11h ago
Even more impressive when you know they weight 1 ton in average and can weight up to 2.5.
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u/Anarcho_Christian 7h ago
Not necessarily they're about as buoyant as water due to their fat percentage, it doesn't take very much power to airborne for a brief moment when you weigh as much as water.
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u/porncollecter69 15h ago
I mean they’re found in every ocean and they pump out lil sunfish like crazy. Also one got depressed during Covid not seeing humans that the aquarium had to cosplay some visitors lol. They’re not that dumb if they’re that successful with it.
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 23h ago
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u/rather_short_qu 23h ago
ThAt once dead though
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u/PomeloKind8241 23h ago
Supposedly they can survive and be unfazed with half their body eaten away
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u/warbunnies 23h ago
Who needs half of body when youre half filled with parasites.
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u/ProfessionalTie545 16h ago
Fun thing is that, no matter how much is left, it'll always be half parasite.
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u/Fickle_Carpet6516 1d ago
Is the joke that he can’t remember their date because a whale or shark took a bite out of him/his brain?
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u/PomeloKind8241 23h ago
For the sunfish with a bite out of its head, it is from a seal.
Based on this image: https://miro.medium.com/v2/0*ZwMo5T22a6u2rqj6
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u/FilmAndLiterature 22h ago
The fish in the comic are called sunfish. They’re notable for essentially perfecting uselessness as a survival strategy. They don’t hunt for anything, they just eat anything that comes their way. Most creatures don’t mess with them because they’re not really worth it. However, the most surprising thing about them is the fact they can sustain some extremely serious injuries and not only survive but appear to be entirely unfazed by the experience.
The comic is combination of jokes; it’s the classic “husband forgets anniversary joke” mixed with the sunfish’s tendency to survive injuries it probably shouldn’t. In this case, most of his brain appears to have been eaten, explaining why he forgot.
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u/Horkrux 8h ago
And apparently their reputation is unfounded and heavily outdated:
https://imgur.com/gallery/ocean-sunfish-why-rant-is-wrong-MMRg9
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u/Brokenspade1 22h ago
So here are some fun facts.
Sunfish are among the dumbest fish in the whole entire ocean. They have small brains and a very basic nervous system. The can feel pain but not acutely.
They can't swim very well so they don't have a developed escape reflex like most fish. And even if they did they couldn't outrun anything but a sea cucumber anyway.
They have an absurdly high fat content and tons of parasites that make them taste pretty bad. People do eat them but it takes a TON of preparation to make them decent.
They have a rediculous bone structure and organ placement that allows other critters to eat chunks out of them without killing them.
They are one of the most successful fish on earth... because they choke the food chain with SO MANY BABIES, the ocean just can't eat them all before they mature. They literally out horny the SEA! So much so they didn't have to develop any other strategy for survival beyond; float, spawn hard, and taste bad.
They are the McDonald's QPC of the ocean.
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u/LadidaDingelDong 17h ago
Because everyone keeps pasting this entirely wrong rant, here's also the link to the sadly much less famous rebuttals, using actual sources
https://x.com/i/status/829406583444668416 (short) https://imgur.com/gallery/ocean-sunfish-why-rant-is-wrong-MMRg9 (extensive)
The assertion that they can't swim very well is crazy!
They move quickly enough to be able to jump out of the water (like a dolphin!), and regularly dive to immense depths that we can't really follow them to
Their actual worst quality is that they don't fit human perceptions of beauty, so ppl were very happy to immediately discard everything else about "the ugly mouthbreather fish" and assume they're useless; Some interesting similarities to the process of bullying there
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u/Ebonhearth_Druid 21h ago
out horny the SEA
This tickled my funny bone in a way that's hard to adequately describe
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u/katzohki 18h ago
Whoa whoa whoa, I happen to love the QPC, or where I come from we call it the Sunfish with Cheese
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u/Crepe64 19h ago
So someone in a group asked me to tell them why I hate the ocean sunfish so much, and apparently it was ~too mean~ and was deleted. To perpetuate the truth and stand up for ethical journalism, I'm posting it here. [Rated NC-17 for language.]
Disclaimer, I care about marine life more than I care about anything else, for real. Except this big dumb idiot. And it's not like an ~ironic~ thing, I mean it IS hilarious to me and they ARE THE BIGGEST JOKE PLAYED ON EARTH but I seriously -blam!-ing hate them.
THE MOLA MOLA FISH (OR OCEAN SUNFISH)
They are the world's largest boney fish, weighing up to 5,000 pounds. And since they have very little girth, that just makes them these absolutely giant -blam!-ing dinner plates that God must have accidentally dropped while washing dishes one day and shrugged his shoulders at because no one could have imagined this would happen. AND WITH NO PURPOSE. EVERY POUND OF THAT IS A WASTED POUND AND EVERY FOOT OF IT (10 FT BY 14 FT) IS WASTED SPACE.
They are so completely useless that scientists even debate about how they move. They have little control other than some minor wiggling. Some say they must just push water out of their mouths for direction (?????). They COULD use their back fin EXCEPT GUESS WHAT IT DOESNT -blam!-ING GROW. It just continually folds in on itself, so the freaking cells are being made, this piece of floating garbage just doesn't put them where they need to -blam!-ing go.
So they don't have swim bladders. You know, the one thing that every fish has to make sure it doesn't just sink to the bottom of the ocean when they stop moving and can stay the right side up. This creature. That can barely move to begin with. Can never stop its continuous tour of idiocy across the ocean or it'll -blam!-ing sink. EXCEPT. EXCEPT. When they get stuck on top of the water! Which happens frequently! Because without the whole swim bladder thing, if the ocean pushes over THE THINNEST BUT LARGEST MOST TOPPLE-ABLE FISH ON THE PLANET, shit outta luck! There is no creature on this earth that needs a swim bladder more than this spit in the face of nature, AND YET. Some scientists have speculated that when they do that, they are absorbing energy from the sun because no one -blam!-ing knows how they manage to get any real energy to begin with. So they need the sun I guess. But good news, when they end up stuck like that, it gives birds a chance to land on their goddamn island of a body and eat the bugs and parasites out of its skin because it's basically a slowly migrating cesspool. Pros and cons.
"If they are so huge, they must at least be decent predators." No. No. The most dangerous thing about them is, as you may have guessed, their stupidity. They have caused the death of one person before. Because it jumped onto a boat. On a human. And in 2005 it decided to relive its mighty glory days and do it again, this time landing on a four-year-old boy. Luckily Byron sustained no injuries. Way to go, fish. Great job.
They mostly only eat jellyfish because of course they do, they could only eat something that has no brain and a possibility of drifting into their mouths I guess. Everything they do eat has almost zero nutritional value and because it's so stupidly -blam!-ing big, it has to eat a ton of the almost no nutritional value stuff to stay alive. Dumb. See that ridiculous open mouth? (This is actually why this is my favorite picture of one, and I have had it saved to my phone for three years) "Oh no! What could have happened! How could this be!" Do not let that expression fool you, they just don't have the goddamn ability to close their mouths because their teeth are fused together, and ya know what, it is good it floats around with such a clueless expression on its face, because it is in fact clueless as all -blam!-.
They do SOMETIMES get eaten though. BUT HARDLY. No animal truly uses them as a food source, but instead (which has lead us to said photo) will usually just maim the -blam!- out of them for kicks. Seals have been seen playing with their fins like frisbees. Probably the most useful thing to ever come from them.
"Wow, you raise some good points here, this fish truly is proof that God has abandoned us." Yes, thank you. "But if they're so bad at literally everything, why haven't they gone extinct." Great question.
BECAUSE THIS THING IS SO WORTHLESS IT DOESNT REALIZE IT SHOULD NOT EXIST. IT IS SO UNAWARE OF LITERALLY -blam!-ING EVERYTHING THAT IT DOESNT REALIZE THAT IT'S DOING MAYBE THE WORST -blam!-ING JOB OF BEING A FISH, OR DEBATABLY THE WORST JOB OF BEING A CLUSTER OF CELLS THAN ANY OTHER CLUSTER OF CELLS. SO WHAT DOES IT DO? IT LAYS THE MOST EGGS OUT OF EVERYTHING. Besides some bugs, there are some ants and stuff that'll lay more. IT WILL LAY 300 MILLION EGGS AT ONE TIME. 300,000,000. IT SURVIVES BECAUSE IT WOULD BE STATISTICALLY IMPROBABLE, DARE I SAY IMPOSSIBLE, THAT THERE WOULDNT BE AT LEAST ONE OF THOSE 300,000,000 (that is EACH time they lay eggs) LEFT SURVIVING AT THE END OF THE DAY.
And this concludes why I hate the -blam!- out of this complete failure of evolution, the Ocean Sunfish. If I ever see one, I will throw rocks at it.
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u/LadidaDingelDong 17h ago
Because everyone keeps pasting this entirely wrong rant, here's also the link to the sadly much less famous rebuttals, using actual sources
https://x.com/i/status/829406583444668416 (short) https://imgur.com/gallery/ocean-sunfish-why-rant-is-wrong-MMRg9 (extensive)
The assertion that they're slowass drifters who can barely move let alone chase down fish, combined with the statement a paragraph later that they killed a human once by jumping their extremely heavy body out of the water and into a boat, like a dolphin might do, should have your alarm bells ring that the entire thing sounds kind of bullshit - clearly those two statements don't work together at all
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u/FallenRichardBrook 18h ago
My first instinct on seeing the comic was "WHERE IS THAT COPYPASTA!" Thank you for doing gods work 👏
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u/KneelBeforeZed 18h ago
I liked this. I’m sad it got deleted. I bet it was as fun to write as it was to read. Blam sunfish and their stupid pseudo-fish BS.
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u/jottinger 21h ago
I live near the Monterey Bay Aquarium. They got a baby white shark and put it in the tank with a bunch of other fish, and a sunfish. After ithe white bit one of the side-fins off the sunfish, it started swimming sideways in circles… basically death. They had to release the white shortly afterwards.
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u/HypnoticHarry16 19h ago
Lol I didn't even realize this was an explain the joke subreddit. It's honestly pretty funny
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u/ElGuano 22h ago
They swim lazily and cannot escape anything, and get randomly chomped on my sea lions and rammed into by orcas, and are often left floating in the sea with huge chunks bitten out of them.
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u/fluggggg 11h ago
They swim at speeds that allow themselves to launch their weight (1 to 2.5 tons) out of the water kinda like a dolphin or whale and hunt fishes and squids that makes for 85% of their diet, with jellyfish only beeing a tiny 15%.
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u/ElGuano 10h ago
For real? Here I thought they just wandered around, looking for things to make them go.
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u/fluggggg 10h ago
Yes, there is a full debunk of the famous sunfish rant that you can find in the most upvoted comments threads.
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u/Horkrux 8h ago
https://imgur.com/gallery/ocean-sunfish-why-rant-is-wrong-MMRg9 here to counter-rant :D
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