# Red-Lipped Batfish vs Lowland Streaked Tenrec vs Wetapunga: A Fish in Lipstick That Can't Swim, a Mammal That Plays Itself Like a Violin, and a Bug as Heavy as a Sparrow

> Three classes, three island nations, zero good decisions. We judge a Galapagos fish, a Madagascan stridulating mammal, and the heaviest insect ever weighed.

By someone who loves to compare irrelevant things. Daily matchup.

## Contestants

### Red-lipped batfish (Ogcocephalus darwini)
Taxonomy: Actinopterygii > Lophiiformes > Ogcocephalidae > Ogcocephalus > 
The Galapagos fish that wears lipstick and commutes on foot.
- WEIRD - Lip game: Permanent bright red lipstick
- WEIRD - Swimming ability: Poor, prefers to walk
- COOL - Locomotion: Strolls the seafloor on its fins
- COOL - Hidden gear: Anglerfish-style lure on its snout
Photo: Rein Ketelaars, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons) - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red-lipped_Bat_fish.jpg

### Lowland streaked tenrec (Hemicentetes semispinosus)
Taxonomy: Mammalia > Afrosoricida > Tenrecidae > Hemicentetes > 
The only mammal that talks by playing its own back like a violin.
- COOL - Communication: Stridulates its own quills
- WEIRD - Pitch: Ultrasonic, too high for human ears
- GROSS - Defense: Stabs barbed quills into your nose
- COOL - Stridulating mammals: Just this one, worldwide
Photo: Thomas Fuhrmann, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons) - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lowland_Streaked_Tenrec_(Hemicentetes_semispinosus).jpg

### Wetapunga (Little Barrier Island giant weta) (Deinacrida heteracantha)
Taxonomy: Insecta > Orthoptera > Anostostomatidae > Deinacrida > 
A gentle leaf-eating brick that holds the heaviest-insect record.
- COOL - Record weight: 71 g, heaviest insect ever weighed
- WEIRD - Comparable to: A small chicken egg with legs
- COOL - Name meaning: 'Terrible grasshopper'
- WEIRD - Temperament: Gentle flightless herbivore
Photo: Auckland Museum, CC BY 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons) - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deinacrida_heteracantha_(Giant_weta;_W%C4%93t%C4%81_punga)_(48723527326).jpg

Welcome back to the only blog reckless enough to ask: if you lock a fish in lipstick, a mammal shaped like a violin, and an insect as heavy as a small bird in the same room, who walks out holding the trophy? Today's lineup spans three taxonomic classes, three island nations, and exactly zero good life decisions. We have a Galapagos fish that wears more makeup than I do and still flunked swimming class, a Madagascan mammal that communicates by scraping its own back, and a New Zealand bug that can tip a kitchen scale. As always, we judge on the only three metrics that matter: how cool, how weird, and how gross.

## Meet the lineup

Three animals that have never met, will never meet, and would have absolutely nothing to say to each other if they did. That is exactly the energy this blog runs on.

The **red-lipped batfish** lives around the Galapagos Islands and off Ecuador and Peru, at depths from about 3 to 76 meters. It grows up to 40 cm. It is a relative of the anglerfishes, and it shows.

The **lowland streaked tenrec** is a 200-gram, 12-to-16 cm bundle of black-and-yellow spines from the lowland rainforests of northern and eastern Madagascar. It looks like a hedgehog drew itself from memory using only a highlighter.

The **wetapunga**, or Little Barrier Island giant weta, is a flightless, ancient cricket relative from New Zealand. Its genus name, Deinacrida, translates from Greek as 'terrible grasshopper,' which is the kind of branding you cannot buy.

## The cool

The batfish makes a strong opening argument: it does not swim so much as *walk*. It uses its modified pectoral, pelvic, and anal fins as little limbs to amble across the seafloor in a slow, deliberate, almost amphibious shuffle. It also keeps an anglerfish-style lure called an illicium tucked on its snout, a modified fin ray with a tip used to attract prey. A fish that strolls and fishes with its own face. Respect.

The tenrec counters with the single most unhinged trick in mammaldom. It is the **only mammal known to use stridulation** to make sound, the same scrape-to-talk method crickets and some snakes use. It has a cluster of specialized quills in the middle of its back that it vibrates to chatter with its family. A mammal that talks by playing itself like a tiny violin.

The wetapunga's flex is simply mass. The heaviest weight reliably reported for any insect is **71 grams**, recorded in a gravid female wetapunga. That is heavier than a sparrow and roughly a small chicken egg with legs. It cannot fly. It does not need to. It is a brick that eats leaves.

## The weird

Everything about the batfish is weird, but the headline is the lips. They are a startling, lipstick-bright red, and one leading hypothesis is that the color helps the fish recognize its own species during spawning. So the makeup is functional. It is a dating profile worn on the mouth.

The tenrec's stridulation has a twist: a lot of it happens at **ultrasonic frequencies too high for human ears**. Scientists need a special ultrasound microphone just to hear it talking. There is an entire conversation happening on a Madagascan forest floor that your ears are simply not invited to.

The wetapunga's weirdness is its temperament. For an insect the size of a mouse with a name meaning 'terrible grasshopper,' it is a gentle, slow-moving herbivore that wants nothing more than to eat foliage and be left alone. The scariest-looking critter here has the personality of a beanbag chair.

## The gross

The batfish, frankly, is more cursed than gross. A 40 cm fish in red lipstick that walks because it is bad at swimming is unsettling in a way that does not involve fluids.

The tenrec brings the actual violence. When a predator such as a fossa or a Malagasy mongoose gets too close, it erects the barbed quills on its back and the crest around its head, points them forward, and **drives them into the attacker's nose or paws** with sharp jabs of its head and body. The quills can detach and lodge in. Imagine getting stabbed by a stapler that is also screaming at a pitch you cannot hear.

The wetapunga keeps its dignity here too. Its grossest feature is mostly that it is a very large insect, and for many people that is more than enough. No venom, no goo, just a lot of bug per bug.

## Scoring it out

Cool: the tenrec's self-played-violin act edges the walking face-fisher. Weird: a three-way tie that physically hurt to grade. Gross: the tenrec wins on sheer offensive capability, the wetapunga loses points for being a lovely gentle giant. You know what they say: never bring a fish to a stabbing contest.

## Winner: Lowland streaked tenrec
The wetapunga is the heaviest and the batfish is the most cursed, but the **lowland streaked tenrec** is the only contestant that reinvented an entire sense. It is the sole mammal on Earth known to talk by stridulation, it does half of it on a frequency you cannot hear, and if you object it will stab you in the nose with barbed quills. Cool, weird, and gross in one 200-gram package. The walking lipstick fish and the egg-weight bug fought valiantly; the violin that bites takes the crown.

## FAQ

### Can the red-lipped batfish actually not swim?
It can technically swim, it is just bad at it. It is a poor swimmer that prefers to walk across the seafloor using its modified pectoral, pelvic, and anal fins like little legs. Think of it as a fish that took one look at swimming and decided to commute on foot instead.

### Why is the streaked tenrec the only mammal that stridulates?
Stridulation, making sound by rubbing body parts together, is normally an insect and snake move. The streaked tenrec evolved a cluster of specialized quills on its back that it vibrates to communicate with family, making it the only known mammal to do it. Much of the sound is ultrasonic, so humans need a special microphone to even detect the conversation.

### Is the wetapunga really the heaviest insect in the world?
It holds the record for the heaviest individual insect reliably weighed: 71 grams, recorded in a gravid (egg-carrying) female. Typical females are around 40 grams. By that measure it is the heavyweight champion of the insect world, even though it is a gentle, flightless leaf-eater endemic to New Zealand.

## Sources
- Red-lipped batfish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-lipped_batfish
- Red-lipped batfish species profile: https://galapagosconservation.org.uk/species/red-lipped-batfish/
- Lowland streaked tenrec: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowland_streaked_tenrec
- The wonderfully weird world of tenrecs: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the-weird-world-of-tenrecs.html
- Giant weta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_weta
- Giant weta: https://www.britannica.com/animal/giant-weta

Tags: Actinopterygii, Mammalia, Insecta, Lophiiformes, Afrosoricida, Orthoptera, totally-random, island-endemics

Canonical: https://lamalo.blog/red-lipped-batfish-vs-streaked-tenrec-vs-wetapunga