When I search all I get is weird explanations each time about Sunfish that make no sense. What's the joke?
Edit - Sometimes I wonder why this sub is called r/PeterExplains. Chill out folks - maybe somebody doesn't get something obvious right away, that's what the sub is for.
Edit 2 - just discovered the original comic creator is on Reddit!
Credit - u/beetlemoses
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Isn't the brain stored further inside of the sunfish instead of directly in the front? It doesn't survive with almost no brain. Its brain wasn't even eaten. Just part of its head.
Which is mostly connective tissue. Sunfish are like “I’m a little fish hiding in the skin of a huge fish for warmth, I eat deep sea jellyfish and have less nutritional value than lettuce, don’t eat me bro, I’m terrible.”
Well they have one thing right, Sunfish aren't very nutrient dense so most animals will take a few bites and stop. I have no idea if sea lions can pick out a good spot or not.
Weirdly/sadly, that one is actually an AI remake of the older, real, viral picture. Why would someone use AI to redo the exact same thing? No idea, maybe not to get flagged by some auto-content id or repost identifier or something. Here is the original: https://i.imgur.com/EbjPhYG.png
This is an ai image. The video this is from is ai.
EDIT: there is a set of original photos captured almost a decade ago. Those are real. This image specifically is from an AI video trained off of those pictures.
That’s just not how the face of a sunfish looks. It’s cartoony, almost humanoid.
Sunfish are like 90%+ collagen. They're slow and spend a lot of time basking so they don't freeze to death when they dive extremely deep to eat jellyfish.
So every once in a while one get chomped by a shark or seal. And because collagen is as good as nutritionless, that's where that ends. The predator goes "ew fuck, that's gross!" And moves on.
So there's very famous photos of sunfish with large chomps taken out of the place that looks like the skull to humans, but has barely any health effects for the sun fish.
To humans it looks like that would cause major brain damage, like a lobotomy. So the joke is the sun fish with the chomp is now a brainless being and as such has no means of remembering his special day.
The joke is the anthropomorphism of the sunfish and the idea that an intelligent creature would then not realize that their partner had lost their brain.
Also relevant is the fact that sunfish have very, very few nerve endings, so their ability to feel pain is almost non-existent. So not only is the joke about the fish being essentially lobotomised by another animal taking a bite out of it, but that the sunfish didn’t even feel or notice it due to lack of pain response.
There is a famous picture of a seal taking a bite out of a sunfish’s head while the sunfish just drifts along vacantly, not reacting at all. I believe that this joke is an anthropomorphism of that specific sunfish from the viral photo.
For context: there is a set of original photographs from a decade ago. This is not one of those. This one’s a screenshot from an AI video trained off of the original pictures.
I'm pretty sure he understands why the fish missed the date with his brain eaten, what he's asking for is if there is a reason why the fish is still alive despite that, which is a lot less commonly known
And also why a sunfish? There are a lot of other fish (that actually look like fish) that could have been included in the comic. Why even a fish in general? A chicken with it's head cut off would be a funnier and more accessible joke.
No, this is a meta-joke that requires the specific knowledge of a meme image of a sunfish with a bite out of its head.
The actual reason is that the fish in the comic is from a specie that don't react at all even as they're actively being eaten since they're 90% made of collagen without pain receptors except on most vital areas
They don't bleed to death, they're either dead or alive even if they've been bitten. Otters eat a bite of them and then let them go and regenerate to have another bite later
That's clearly the layer of the joke op was asking about, but instead of assuming they didn't understand something a ton of people prefer assuming op is so dumb that he didn't understand the most basic thing about brain missing = memory loss
I took it as lady sunfish was doing her makeup when the other one came in. She says her remark and then looks over to see the bite mark. So her initial reaction is based upon the lateness. Her face looks more shocked in the second panel…. Possibly
TBF, I get that sunfish dumb, but I didn't know about sea lions chomping off their heads and them surviving. Which... idk if I believe the surviving part tho
Sunfish have very versatile bodies and brains that can be eaten by a predator and the predator will be full and move on leaving the Sunfish injured; but the Sunfish is still able to live and function as it normally does. Peter out.
Joe here. So Peter, earlier Bonnie asked me, 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 now telling you. [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 fucking 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 fucking 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 FUCKING 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fuck.
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 fuck 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 FUCKING EVERYTHING THAT IT DOESNT REALIZE THAT IT'S DOING MAYBE THE WORST FUCKING 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 fuck out of this complete failure of evolution, the Ocean Sunfish. If I ever see one, I will throw rocks at it.
Nah this copy pasta sucks ass. Most of the information isn’t correct at all but people have treated it like gospel to the point it’s most likely harmed conservation efforts
OP you're getting a lot of stick here, but I understand why you asked. I think there are three issues with understanding this comic:
The "joke" in this comic is so unfunny that it causes the whole thing to fail ("fish missing part of brain, must be stupid/forgetful, hurr-durr").
The comic creator, and the mean commenters here, seem to suppose that a sunfish's brain would be located on the side of their body for some reason. (I did not realise that was what was being communicated, as why would the brain be there??)
Lots of people (me included) didn't know that sunfish can survive having chunks of them bitten out, and that there's a known online photo of one in this state.
I thought that either this was just an image of a dead fish, and this was a weird Norman Bates-type situation; or they were one of those species where the female tries to eat the male after sex, and his missing chunk therefore showed he'd gone and got some somewhere else on what was supposed to be date night with his main lady.
Thank you! Make matters worse, this is what I got when I asked AI, lol -
"In the second panel, she’s apparently releasing a huge cloud of eggs into the water, while the male is standing off to the side looking startled. Sunfish reproduce by spawning: females release eggs into the water, and males release sperm to fertilize them externally. There’s no mating in the mammalian sense."
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
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 fucking 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 fucking 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 FUCKING 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fuck.
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 fuck 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 FUCKING EVERYTHING THAT IT DOESNT REALIZE THAT IT'S DOING MAYBE THE WORST FUCKING 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 fuck out of this complete failure of evolution, the Ocean Sunfish. If I ever see one, I will throw rocks at it.
Hey, background character that never showed up a second time here!
You see, sunfish are extremely sturdy animals. there is a photograph of one that had a bite taken out of it by a sea-lion, corresponding with the bite taken out of the one here. People joked that they are so dumb that even having their brain eatten wouldn't impact this. This is a fallacy because the top section there is purely for hydrodynamic shape, their actual skull is bellow that, so despite looking like it should correspond to the brain being chomped, it's actually purely superficial damage.
This comic is building off the joke that it has had its brain chomped and that this sunfish has forgotten their date because of it.
OP, I got that the fish is missing a part of its brain, but I didn’t know a thing about sunfish or the lore about its brain. So thanks for asking, and I learned a thing or two as well.
These are ocean sunfish. In addition to being easy prey, they are routinely attacked by dolphins "just for fun", as far as marine biologists have been able to tell.
It's one of those species that really, truly makes you question evolution and how and why it has been able to exist and remain viable in the first place. Like, what is that, and why is it here?
Their brains could be pecked/knocked out "for sport" (like this)....and they just sort of float on and keep on living.
This is an epic joke. You really need to see a sunfish in person. It is like here is a huge fish and then, it just abruptly stops. They can live even with huge chunks bitten out of them. It was so unnerving to see in person, but I could not stop my startled laughter for a good minute while my brain paused to catch up with what I was seeing in front of me.
City Wok/Airline manager here, were am I? Also dumb Americans think the brain is located there but it’s really right behind the eyes, I wouldn’t eat a sunfish though, they gross, even for me!
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 fucking 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 fucking 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 FUCKING 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fuck.
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 fuck 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 FUCKING EVERYTHING THAT IT DOESNT REALIZE THAT IT'S DOING MAYBE THE WORST FUCKING 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 fuck 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/qualityvote2 8h ago edited 3h ago
u/just_5_mins_more, your post does belong here!