Welcome blobfish - MD Class of 2012

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Posted on September 1, 2009

By Leigh Hurst

That's right, blobfish.  It is considered by listverse.com to be one of the 10 ugliest creatures on the planet.  A simple Google search helped the second year medical students choose this glorious specimen for the incoming class.

"Unlimited surfing opportunities exist by simply offering up key terms to the search engine deities. Magically, you have the results to your burning questions within seconds," says Natarie Liu, president, class of 2011.  "When faced with the important task of naming the class of 2012, the class of 2011 knew exactly what they needed to do. So into the Google search field went world's ugliest animals."

When it came to making the final choice between all of the "ugly" animals, it was a process of elimination. The class of 2011-better known as the kakapos which are huge, fat, smelly, flightless, nocturnal parrots-did two rounds of voting; the first with a short list of many really ugly animals, then a second round with the top contenders including blobfish, aye ayes, and sea squirts.

"Joining the existing sloths, glabers, and turkeys, we are proud to welcome the newly named, hideous, muscleless ‘blobfish'," Liu says.

The blobfish will take its place among the growing MD Menagerie. The Faculty of Medicine began naming its classes in 1975 when a professor became frustrated with the MD class and called them "a bunch of turkeys". The name stuck and so did the tradition. The turkeys named the class of ‘76 the beavers, and the beavers, in turn, a named the class of '77 the toads. In recent years however, the animals chosen have been a bit less common and much less flattering. For example, the class of '04 are the taphozous (a type of black-bearded tomb bat-although they had a less flattering description of themselves) while the class of '05 are the candirus (a parasitic, fresh water catfish that allegedly invades the human urethra).