The feature is typical for all species of ceratioid anglerfish, which they indeed use to lure other fish to their spiky jaws.
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At the depths these fish live in, there is no sunlight. “The latest discovery looks like a hunchbacked, rotting old shoe with spikes, a scraggly mustache and a big mouth with bad teeth”. And, like its human counterparts, this fish dangles the appendage until an unsuspecting fish swims up thinking they found a meal, only to quickly learn that they are, in fact, a meal themselves.
Adding to the list of deep-sea creatures, a Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography researcher recently found a never-before seen species from the deep waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico.
Are you as weirded out by this thing as we are? It is only illuminated by the bioluminescent fish that resides in it. This midnight zone is said to be the habitat of creatures that depends on the marine snow for their survival.
In these conditions the fight to find food is fierce, and the anglerfish has a curious adaption in its arsenal.
There are now three female specimens of the newly discovered anglerfish.
At these depths the only light is made by creatures with bioluminescence, which means they generate their own light source.
“Not especially similar to any of the five previously described members of the genus, the new species is unique in having a cylindrical, internally pigmented, anterior escal appendage and a pair of elongate distal escal appendages”. Despite their small stature.
“As a researcher, the one thing I know is that there’s so much more we can learn about our oceans”, said Tracey Sutton, Ph.D., of NSU, in information provided by the organization Deepend Consortium (DC).
The parasitic relationship is how many anglerfish reproduce.
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According to the researchers, the reproduction in anglerfish occurs by a parasitic relationship in which the male anglerfish sticks to the female fish and fertilization occurs when the time is right.
