Louisiana pancake batfish

Louisiana pancake batfish, belongs to the Ogcocephalidae family of batfish. It is native to the Gulf of Mexico, and was discovered in 2010, during the cleanup process following the infamous oil spill in the gulf, which affected everykind of batfish.

The louisiana pancake batfish's name comes from its shape, which quite closely resembles that of a horrendously prepared pancake. They live at depths of up to 400 metres (1,300 ft). Although numbers are not precisely known, in the initial trawl which led to their discovery out of around 100,000 fish only three were pancake batfish. 

Pancake batfish are so named from their body shape, which is flattened with an enlarged head and trunk giving a rounded disc shape. The strange manner it has of moving  along the ocean floor is described as being similar to the way a bat crawls. The Louisiana pancake batfish was named as one of the top ten new species of 2010 by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University. John Sparks, credited as one of the discoverers of the species, said "If we are still finding new species of fishes in the Gulf, imagine how much diversity, especially microdiversity, is out there that we do not know about". 

The pancake batfish feeds on invertebrates, which it uses chemical lures to capture. They are small enough to fit in the palm of a human hand and are described as being as thick as a "fluffy pancake".