You’d think a 5,000-pound fish eats huge things. Nope. Their favorite snack is jellyfish. They also eat salps, small fish, and squid. Basically, they are giant floating vacuum cleaners for the ocean’s most unappetizing drifts.
But here’s the kicker: jellyfish are mostly water and have almost no calories. So a mola mola has to eat a ton of them. Like, constantly. It’s a life of eternal, low-calorie snacking. Relatable, right? I feel that.
The Strange, Strange Ocean Sunfish • Lazer Horse
They’re Olympic Parasite Hosts
If you zoom in on a mola mola, you’ll see it’s not smooth. It’s covered in bumps, lumps, and hitchhikers. Over 40 species of parasites can live on a single sunfish. We’re talking flukes, copepods, and worms. It’s like a mobile apartment complex for sea bugs.
To deal with this, the mola mola does something weird. It leaps out of the water! Breaching, they call it. A 5,000-pound fish launching itself into the air just to shake off some itchy freeloaders. Imagine the splash. Imagine explaining that to your life insurance agent.
