Animals that don't Exist

The Time Fish

The time fish, Salmon temporalis, although being an animal, might be of more interest to physicists rather than biologists, although this is still the subject of a heated debate. The time fish is the least know, least studied, and least seen animal on the planet. Nonetheless, we cannot say that it is rare. Not with certainty.

Unlike every other animal known to this day, and unlike anything else we know of, the time fish is capable of traveling through time. It is not, however, able to move through space, relative to earth. This results in it being seen always at the same place.

In 2013, Dr. Jay Yeller, of the Institute of Advanced Coffee Consumption of Princeton (IACCP) went to take a walk in the forest near his house. As he was taking a break in a clearing, he suddenly saw a fish swim into existence in front of him. “I didn't care much about the fish, but the way it came into existence was fascinating!”, the young physicist told the 'Journal of Advanced Coffee Consumption'. Yeller theorized the fish might move through time and not space, and that it would reappear at the same spot. And it did. A picture of the fish taken by Yeller allowed biologists to identify the fish as belonging to the salmon family.

Beyond the possibility of time travel, the discovery of the time fish has raised a number of interesting questions. After Yeller found the initial specimen in Princeton, time fish-sightings, both fake and real, have started appearing all over the globe. Whether this is due to a clear picture of what to look for, or because our time is especially suited for time fish, is unclear.

It is also unknown how the fish reproduce. Although the fish has not been studied for long, DNA-testing seems to indicate that only one individual will occupy one place in space, which raises the question how mates find each other. Physicists have several explanations.

The time fish might all mate at the big bang, when time and space where one. Or the universe might be headed to a singularity, where the fish could mate. Some have proposed that the fish might be able to “jump” from one location to another. But this last method would have been revealed by DNA-testing, which has not happened so far.

Thanks to a joint task force of physicists and biologists, it has been deduced that it can swim through a time-span that is longer than its own life, meaning that the life of a time fish is shorter than all of time. Otherwise, the time fish would always be visible, although states of development would not appear in chronological order (this last fact is the case, larvae appearing later in time than the same individual as a fully grown adult).

There is still much to discover about the time fish. Certain old legends seem to reference it, and it is certain to have had a strong, as of yet unnoticed, influence on culture. In addition, conservationists are wondering what it might tell us about the state of the earth, and our environment. Hopefully the time fish will keep appearing long enough for us to find the answers to these questions.