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It has huge sharp teeth, eyes that stick out on the top of its head, and between the eyes is a light attached to a long rod. Is it an alien? No, it’s a deep-sea anglerfish. The deep-sea anglerfish lives in the very deepest parts of the ocean.
With most kinds of animals the males are larger than the females, but not the anglerfish. The females are always larger, some grow as large as three feet, while the average male is less than 5 cm long. The male fish attaches himself to the female like a parasite. Her skin grows around him and some of his organs disappear making him completely dependant on her. He will never leave her, but he does still play a very important role. He fertilizes the eggs so that there will be more anglerfish.
There are one-hundred and fifty species of anglerfish. Most of them have the light hanging out in front of them like a fishing pole with bait. The wolftrap angler has a light hanging down inside of its enormous mouth. Indeed it is used as a type of bait. In the deep ocean waters there is no light filtering down from the sun, so many of the creatures have lights called luminescent. These lights attract other fish. When the fish is about to bite onto the light the anglerfish opens its mouth and swallows it. With its large hinged jaw it can even swallow animals twice his size.
The lights are used for other reasons, too. Some scientists believe that the fish can recognize each other by the different light patterns, and so are drawn to each other when it’s time to mate. Scientists also think the lights and the creatures enormous eyes allow it to see. Another reason for the light is that the anglerfish migrates closer to the surface each night. As the fish gets to parts of the water where sunlight filters down it would be an easy target for predators because animals looking up would see the perfect outline of its body. The lights help camouflage the fish be resembling the flickers of light from the sun.
As the anglerfish begins its daily migration it will pass many other strange looking fish. Black dragonfishes are long slender eel-like creatures. They have small eyes and fangs. These fish also have a rod with a luminescent tip. Theirs comes out of their chin. They also have lights all over their bodies. These lights are called photophores. When the baby dragonfishes are born they look very little like the parents. They are born long and transparent with eyes on long stocks half the size of their bodies.
Other fish that the angler might run into are lanternfishes and hatchetfish. Laternfish have photophores in a pattern all down their bodies. Most of them are around 15cm, but they can be as small as 3cm and as large as 35cm. Hatchetfish are flat and wide in front and narrow and handle-like in back. They are very small fish with photophores on the underside of the body.
One of the scariest looking fish is the viperfish. They have huge fang-like teeth and a luminous light attached to rod that can dangle in front of its mouth. When fish bite it the viperfish flick the prey into their mouths.
If you are ever out on the ocean you will never see these fish. They are used to living in the deep, deep water at least 400 meters below the surface. There is a lot of pressure in this deep water from all the water above the fish. Because of this pressure the deep sea fish can not survive if brought to the surface.
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