[imagesource:facebook/jeanleroux]

A creepy cute fish washed up on Melkbosstrand recently.

Images of the odd little fella were posted on social media, prompting folks to wonder if it was an alien from above or a monster from the deep.

Jean le Roux was walking in Melkbosstrand on Friday, March 24, when the fish small enough to fit into the palm of your hand, with red scales, and a terrifying jawline, stopped them in their tracks.

The oozy pink, toothy creature apparently looks quite different when it is alive in its natural habitat.

Getaway reports that it appears to be a red rocksucker, which is native to African waters, often seen in tidal pools between the Namibian coast and northern KwaZulu-Natal.

🐡The fearsome-looking rocksucker is here to remind us that even if mom looks #grumpy, she will still protect her young no matter what. (📷Thanks @seastung for the pics) https://t.co/D5iPt4Nukz #mothersday2020 #MothersDay pic.twitter.com/pEXhkf5NNA

— Two Oceans Aquarium (@2OceansAquarium) May 10, 2020

When rocksuckers wash up on the beach, the sun causes their skin to shrink and their lips to move back enough to expose their crazy-looking jawline.

Behold:

Cape Town ETC notes that their terrifying teeth are mostly used to snack on limpets, an aquatic snail that uses a muscular ‘foot’ to cling to rocks:

When a rocksucker finds a limpet about to move, it positions itself to face the mollusc before leaping forward and upward, diving onto the shell with mouth opened, and levering the limpet off the substrate before swallowing it immediately.

Sometimes the pink bois also enjoy spiny urchins. When they do, they poop out the hard urchin exoskeletons whole and encased in mucous capsules. Lekker.

In other news, you can’t always trust images doing the rounds on the internet of creatures from the deep being washed ashore.

The South African reported on a giant great white shark being washed up on a beach, which many thought could have been Durban:

Although news spread that the massive megalodon-looking shark had washed up on a Durban beach, it is actually said to have washed up at the Outer Banks beach, North Carolina:

According to CoastfishTV, a team of onlookers did their best to push it back into the ocean.

However, the real question is not where this shark washed up but rather whether the photos are real or fake, be it photoshop or artificial intelligence.

Being in the AI revolution makes it hard to tell these days.

Honestly, CoastfishTV just added more chaos to the confusion by referencing a 2018 article in which a completely different beached shark image is at the centre of a copyright infringement battle as if it was of the same shark from above:

Meanwhile, CNN reported on a great white shark named Breton sending a “ping” with its tracker (Breton is one of the dozens of sharks being tracked by OCEARCH) near the Pamlico Sound on North Carolina’s Outer Banks recently.

Breton might have inspired this fake news onslaught, but anyway, this is the point at which we do a French exit.

[source:getaway&capetownetc]