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

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.