I found this interesting picture illustrating how extensible the belly of the anglerfish is. They gulp more than their share in body weight! Quite a nice adaptation when you never know another meal will pass you by.
Culled from a classroom page at Warrensburg Schools in Missouri. Way to go learning about the deep sea!
All my high school science teacher talked about was hamsters, birds and farm animals. If only he had shown us the “Fish from Hell, deep-sea fishing adventure” video: http://www.myfavouriteplaces.org/wl/pivot/entry.php?id=91 :D
*storing this post away for later nightmares.
There’s something else that might not come your way that often in the bathypelagic realm — a date. In the theme of “later nightmares”, remember that some of these deep-sea anglerfishes also have parasitic males that attach themselves to the much larger females and slowly become “reduced to little more than a pair of testicles.” (See the post at blogfish.com: http://blogfishx.blogspot.com/2007/02/parasitic-males.html)
Happy Fish Fridays!
Thats hilarious Dave! I was working on a song today about parasitic deep sea angler fish males! What a coincidence lol
I was thinking of calling it “I am male hear me roar” set to the song “I am woman hear me roar” by reddy helen *lolz* about a parasitic male that wants tired of being ignored and made to feel worthless!
Yay!!! Anglerfishes, at last!!!! For those of you who (like me) find these fishes fasinating, a heads-up. Ted Pietsch, the greatest living taxonomist and researcher on this group, has a book on them coming out at the end of the year. THE definitative account of what is known to date – species, reproduction and a whole heap more. YES………..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you can’t wait that long – check out the journal ‘Ichthyological Research’ 2005 vol 52, pages 207 to 236 for Ted’s fantastic paper titled:
“Dimorphism, paratism, and sex revisited: modes of reproduction among deep-sea ceratioid anglerfishes (Teleostei: Lophiiformes)” Enjoy :-)