The Mola mola, or sunfish, can reach 10 feet in length and the same in height. To reach its dorsal fin, a person would have to stand on a friend’s shoulders. Large specimens can weigh as much as 1,100 pounds.
One of the sunfish’s most fascinating behaviors is that it often sleeps at the ocean’s surface. Small boats have collided with these sleeping fish, and sailors reported that the impact felt like hitting a reef.
But the sunfish is remarkable for more than that—other ocean creatures are even larger. Like all fish, the sunfish spawns eggs. A single egg hatches into a tiny larva measuring just 0.87 inches (22 millimeters). To grow to an adult’s size, this tiny fish must increase its weight by an astonishing 60 million times.
This is thought to be the largest size gap between an adult and its offspring in the animal kingdom.
