I’ve seen this meme a few times and always thought it was like most other memes … about 90% BS. So I decided to look up the Bony-eared Assfish … it’s real, but the supposed reason for the name is not.

Bony-eared assfish is an official name of the species Acanthonus armatus, also referred to as a cavernous assfish.
Bony-eared assfish is a cusk-eel found in tropical and sub-tropical oceans. It lives quite deep, at around 1,171-4,415 metres below the surface.
Scientific name of the species, Acanthonus armatus, was provided to the assfish by German ichthyologist Albert Günther back in 1887. Günther was particularly interested in the assfish, its living environment and bizarre looks.
Armatus in Latin means “armed”. Assfish has spikes on its nose and gills, which explains why Günther chose that part of the name. Meanwhile Akanthos is Greek for “prickly” and onus means denotes a hake, a relative of cod. Put it all together and you get an armed prickly hake. Not that close to the bony-eared assfish, is it? But English names for species are rarely literal.
These spikes on the head of the assfish could be considered bones, which would make this fish “bony-eared”. If you choose to note those spikes, this part of the name is not that strange. However, even though onus means hake, it also means a donkey. So sometime along the line someone decided to name it a “donkey-fish” or simply a cavernous assfish.
A bony-eared assfish is really sloppy. It is difficult to grow substantial bones at such a depth where food is scarce. Which is why the assfish is flabby and its skeleton is light. It grows to a length of 37.5 centimeters and is quite light.
These fishes are not very common, but currently there is no danger for them to go extinct. Living so deep they avoid fishing nets and other potential dangers. In fact, they avoid so many things that they don’t even need a large brain, bony-eared assfish has the smallest brain-to-body weight ratio of all vertebrates.
But you have to be nice to the bony-eared assfish. Yes, it has a funny name. And yes, it is quite ugly and has a small brain. But all animals are beautiful in their own ways in their natural environment. At least unusual name helps the bony-eared assfish or cavernous assfish to be more well-known to the general public.