17. Ompax: Secrets, Lies & Fishy Platypusses

Darwin's Deviations

Join us as we twist and over-exaggerate the very true falsehood of a completely fabricated forgery fish which was totally considered a genuinely authentic species…for over 5 decades! What would you do if you were served an atrocious fish of unknown origin? You’d eat it! And you’d pay for it as well! Because you do this all the time without your knowledge! But hey, at least you move on with your life, instead of making a mockery of the scientific world…unlike some people :)

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Intro/Outro sampled from "Sequence (Mystery and Terror) 3" by Francisco Sánchez (@fanchisanchez) at pixabay.com

Sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com

YVA voiced with FreeTTS

Image Credit: Karl Theodor Staiger (d. 1888), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Episode image is heavily edited, the image owner reserves all rights to their image, and is not affiliated with our podcast)

SOURCES:

Wikipedia: Ompax spatuloides

Wikipedia: Gayndah

The Fishiest Fish

A Fishy Tale

A Book of Creatures: Ompax

Gayndah bear mystery

Survey Finds That Fish Are Often Not What Label Says

What Is Imitation Crab and Should You Eat It?

Castelnau, F. (1879). "On a new ganoïd fish from Queensland". Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales. 3: 164–165.

Whitley, Gilbert P. (1933): Ompax spatuloides Castelnau, a mythical Australian fish. Am. Nat. 67(713): 563–567.

Helfman, G.; Collette, B.B.; Facey, D.E.; Bowen, B.W. (2009). The Diversity of Fishes: Biology, Evolution, and Ecology. John Wiley & Sons. p. 294. ISBN 9781444311907.

Bolt, Roelf, and Andy Brown. 2014. The encyclopaedia of liars and deceivers. Reaktion Books. p. 77.