ANN ARBOR, MI—Admitting that the shifty fish has managed to evade detection by mankind for thousands of years, researchers at the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology discovered Wednesday that the coelacanth successfully faked its own extinction in order to escape a massive gambling debt. “For years we thought all but one related species was gone from this planet forever, but after recent discoveries, we now know it had gone into hiding in the Indian Ocean because it was in deep with some pretty rough customers,” said research professor Marcus Zambrano, who claimed the rare fish only resurfaced recently after it had built a new life for itself and was sure the heat had died down. “It made a dumb bet with the wrong people, but it wasn’t just thinking about itself. It knew if it stuck around something could happen to other species it cared about, because the mob was constantly threatening them—that’s why it had to disappear. We might think it’s cowardly to pretend to be extinct for hundreds of thousands of years, but in the end, it did what had to be done, and it survived.” At press time, the coelacanth was in a full-on panic after putting every shell it owned on the Hawks getting plus eight against the 76ers.