The Sunfish

The sunfish is a bizarre, eccentric- looking fish. Characterized by a flat, lumpy body with two vertical fins and no tail, this marine creature baffles scientists seeing as there's no obvious evolutionary reason for its morphology. As someone who has not studied this creature and has only recently been introduced to it, I can only wonder and guess at why a fish would evolve to be so inefficient at swimming, ugly, and seemingly random. That being said, here are a few of my guesses.

Sunfish have a lumpy, flat body. Unlike other fish with this structure who lay on the sea floor, sunfish swim awkwardly upright. This could be because of its evolutionary ancestors. If the sunfish evolved from large, blobby, fat ancestors, then their stretched- out forms might be an unfortunate way of evolving to be more aerodynamic and streamlined, albeit unsuccessfully.

As far as the sunfish's odd "beak", this might be advantageous when slicing through the creature's main source of food, jellyfish. Finally, their enormous size could be the key that allows them to dive deep underwater, not unlike whales, and what protects them from smaller predators.

A brand new species of sunfish was recently discovered. New species of an existing family, class, order, or genus are discovered when a physical specimen is observed and studied that is distinctly different than existing species. In the case of this sunfish, these differences can be observed on a macroscopic scale (it's less lumpy) and genetically.

The sunfish is not a particularly endangered species. Humans do not catch it for food, it can lay 300,000,000 eggs at once, and it has few predators. However, accidental entrapment by commercial fisherman is a threat to some. In general, the sunfish is going to be just fine.