Creature Feature: Black Swallower.

It's about time I got back into the swing of things. That means more cool creatures, hopefully with another 6-day week of entries at a faster pace. There is still more weird stuff out there, and I intend to cover a lot of it. In this case, a friend of mine was awesome enough to send me a real monstrosity:

The black fish above is a black swallower (Chiasmodon niger). These small (10 inch) fish are restricted to dark, tropical and subtropical waters.  They themselves are rather dark, being brown and scaleless like many non-glowing abyssal animals. They eat bony fish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Yes, we are still talking about the tiny black fish - not the pearly blue fish it attempted to eat.

Oh, and yes, the thing did indeed swallow something larger than its entire body up there. It can swallow prey over twice its length and ten times its mass. The black swallower doesn't bother to chew them, either - just swallows them whole, presumably jaw-walking over them from the tail up just to fit it all in. Nobody has ever seen this taking place. This is almost like a human swallowing a whole cow without chewing, regardless. Have fun with that image.

To help with this insane capacity to swallow, the black swallower's stomach is so stretchy that it makes python skin look like plastic. Things are enclosed whole in the stomach lining, which can stretch so thin that it looks like a bubble waiting to be popped. As one can imagine, this doesn't work 100% of the time; many black swallowers have been found with their stomachs popped like fleshy bubbles.

It's a miracle that almost nobody has done anything in pop culture with this weird little fish. Its strange eating habits sound like the perfect setup for a monster. Combine it with certain other abyssal creatures and we might have a terror of the deep on par with Jaws. Better still, its young have been found near Bermuda. Hm...I sense a new B-horror flick coming on.

Shark Week: Goblin Shark.

OK, let's be honest: I haven't shown off any particularly strange sharks. Sure, it's kinda neat that the nurse shark can sleep and sucks stuff up from the sea bottom, but that's not too odd unless you're a real fish nerd. Hongeohoe? That's a skate, not a shark. Allow me to compensate: 

If you thought regular sharks looked nasty, the goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni) could win almost any "ugly shark" contest if such a thing existed. It has been around and gone nearly unchanged since Cretaceous, i.e. 125 million years ago. Go figure, it's an abyss-dweller. Unlike the orange roughy, however, these sharks are rarely caught. We presume Dagon would not want us to catch this particular Lovecraftian nightmare regardless.

The goblin shark gets its name because of its funny "nose," which greatly resembles the crowlike noses of Japanese goblins ("tengu"). Much like the bill of a platypus and the hammerhead's titular head, this nose has "ampullae of Lorenzini," which allow the shark to sense electromagnetic waves from the bodies of animals hiding near the bottom. Aesthetically, it just contributes to our fears that something very nasty must be lurking at the bottom of the sea.

Aside from the snout, the goblin shark has one other really bizarre feature: its jaws. Like something out of Alien, the goblin shark can extend its jaws almost to the end of its snout. Words cannot justify how strange this looks. Here's a video instead:



Luckily, this freak is probably one of the laziest sharks on the planet. It's believed to be sluggish, snagging crustaceans, fish, and other deep sea crunchies with its massive alien jaws instead of swimming after them with its stubby fins. It avoids human contact, most of the time, in part because it lives in the dark abyss. You may have noticed that there's a lot of "data deficient" spots on this entry; this is why.

Did I mention that these sharks can get as long as a car? No? Have fun sleeping.

Creature Feature: Loosejaw Stoplight Fish.

Ah, back to the deepsea abyss. Regardless of how many people treat space as the final frontier, we have yet to truly know our own planet. Even taking deep sea trawling into account and having orange roughy constantly in classy restaurants, the abyss is almost as unknown as the rainforest. How similar can things down there be to life on land when it evolved without sunlight? The Sumerians believed that their embodiment of the ocean, Tiamat, birthed unholy monstrosities; they were right.

RAWR. 

Check out this thing: the stoplight loosejaw (Malacosteus niger). It is a denizen of the deepsea abyss, eating anything large enough to catch in its teeth. It is not a very big fish by any means - only 25 cm long. A lot of abyssal fish are shown with the lens zoomed in; even the largest anglerfish can easily fit in the palm of one's hand. Just because it's easy cat food doesn't mean it isn't neat.

The stoplight fish gets its name from a single unique trait: it can produce not one, but two different colors of bioluminescence. It makes red and blue-green light - just like a traffic signal. Blue-green light passes well in the ocean depths; nine out of ten times, things will give off blue light if they glow in the depths. Red light is like its private hunting and communication signal; it also means that red-colored things are not safe from this fish's extending head.

Source. 

Yes, the "loosejaw" part comes from a very loose jaw indeed. In fact, it can dislocate its entire head to snap up edibles. The only other thing that does that is a dragonfly nymph - an invertebrate. That's how creepy-cool abyssal stuff is: it can all but behead itself on a regular basis and be fine. C'mon, Hollywood- make a monster out of this. Swallowing things like that is a talent.

Don't be fooled by Ariel. The bottom of the ocean is not a place full of happy sea creatures singing about how great life is. It's a place of psychedelic darkness trying to kill you with pretty lights and jaws out of nowhere. 

"They Actually Eat That:" Orange Roughy.

If you live near any big city, there is a fine chance that there is an aquarium near you. Aquariums tend to have handy little pocket guides for what seafood is safe and sustainable and what is not. If you can get a hold of such a chart, I can promise you this fellow will be on the "avoid" list. Not the guy, the fish:

Source.

The fish above is an orange roughy (Hoplostethus atlanticus). It is a deep-sea fish, much like the anglerfish and other glowing creatures. The red-orange color comes from eating crustaceans, just like with pink flamingoes. It is also called a "slimehead" or "deepsea perch." "Slimehead"- what a lovely name. It makes "roughy" sound appealing by comparison. 

Here's the kicker: every single orange roughy is wild-caught. Certain restaurants might even market this fact. There are no orange roughy farms, yet tilapia and salmon pile themselves upon grocery shelves. It seems to be a fairly popular fish, so why hasn't anybody tried to farm them?

Here's a little-known facet of what makes an animal good for domestication: the reproductive age must be equal to or less than that of a human. Humans start becoming reproductively-capable in their teens; most pet and farm animals take two years, if that, until they are ready to reproduce. The orange roughy takes anywhere from thirty-three years to fifty. 

Yes, this popular food fish takes fifty years to become sexually mature. Anyone who wanted to breed orange roughy would be in for a very long wait. Even if someone possessed that amazing level of dedication, they would not be able to keep up with the demand for this fish. The orange roughy on one's plate could be around 150 years old - most humans do not live that long. No wonder the stocks around Australia and New Zealand are depleted -  they're trying to feed creatures that multiply like rodents. Never mind the mercury; orange roughy is on that "avoid" list for a very good reason.

Personal preference time:I have tried orange roughy, unsustainable though it may be. I absolutely love this fish. It ranks up there with halibut and certain forms of salmon as one of my favorite food fish. Aside from sweets, this fish is among my guiltiest of guilty pleasures. Now I'm going to feel even guiltier about ordering it at a certain Greek restaurant.

Creature Feature: Swimming Sea Cucumber.

Ah, sea cucumbers. We could do endless entries simply about how weird sea cucumbers in general are. These turds of the sea are related to starfish, can excrete their bowels to ward off predators, and are animate despite looking like Shamu's waste. Yet, stray outside of the typical sea cucumbers and there is a whole other level of bizarre.

This is a swimming sea cucumber (Enypniastes). They are found in abyssal waters, presumably wherever the sea gets deep enough. It's harmless to humans, although exactly how many humans have seen one up close is a different matter. Not all sea cucumbers are created equal, that's for sure; a lot of the deep sea ones are quite strange. 

Already, there is something unusual about these sea cucumbers: they swim. Both the front and back ends sport rings of webbing that let the sea cucumber move up and down in the sea. Plus, almost anything is better than being compared to a vegetable or animal dropping; pink, swimming blob is a nice step up.



There is much more to this sea cucumber than meets the eye, although it is pretty neat to look at. Like many deep-sea creatures, this holothurian can glow in the dark - or, to use the scientific term, bioluminesce. If a predator attacks this relatively helpless invertebrate, it sheds a layer of glowing skin onto the attacker while making its escape. Not only does the sea cucumber get away, its assailant is now marked with a glowing, neon band screaming "EAT ME." (Source: Field Museum, "Creatures of Light" exhibit. See it now.)

Alas, as with much abyssal life, we don't know much about these odd creatures. There are probably even more strange sea cucumbers waiting to come to light.  After all, who knew sea cucumbers favored bright pink?

Newsflash: Neat Footage of a Giant Squid.

In case you haven't seen it already, here's footage of a giant squid that surfaced (ha-ha) some 3-odd days ago: 



This footage was caught in a collaborative effort between Discovery Channel and the NHK, a major Japanese television network. It took over 100 tries to get that video. The two used "ultra-sensitive camera systems with light invisible to squid, bio luminescent lures and secret squid attractants" to get the squid close to their very special camera. Congrats on succeeding!

The unique thing about this footage is that it shows a giant squid in its natural habitat. Prior, we had only found dead specimens. Giant squid live in the abyssal depths of the sea, so they are very hard to catch on film. We knew they existed simply because those carcasses had to come from something. This is the first time we've seen one alive. It's a treat.

The video, combined with a few other dead specimens, has revealed some terrifying things about this sought-after sea monster. For example, it has "eight arms and "two very, very long tentacles which it uses to grasp its prey." Its limbs have suckers lined with sharp teeth." (That article is wrong about Scylla, BTW; the popularization of Scylla as a tentacled monster strays very far from the original woman with dog heads extending from her waist.) This is sounding more and more like nightmare fuel.

So, so far, seamen have been right about sea serpents and giant cephalopods. If a real mermaid (not a dugong) comes up, I'm going to start wanting a swig of their rum. Monsters are real, guys. Oh, and if Cthulhu awakens, causing mass-insanity? Don't say this blog didn't warn you.

Week of the Abyss Cont'd.: Walking batfish.

Yes, that is a fish...and it's walking.  Creationists beware: You have found your proof that Darwin was right.

Just when you thought anglerfish could get no weirder, the walking batfish crawls up and says "hello." They are native to nearly all oceans, and can also be found in shallower waters. More on those varieties later.

Fish-people are inevitable.

 

The walking batfish (Family Ogcocephalidae) barely looks like a fish at first glance. Its pectoral fins have been modified to walk on the ocean floor. With limbs so adapted for walking, batfish are poor swimmers. They are also proof that Dagon is, in fact, raising an army in the depths. Shh, keep that one a secret between us.

All species of batfish are predatory. Like other anglerfish, they have a lure (properly called an "esca") at the end of their long noses. Instead of using light like most other species, however, this lure emits a chemical bait. Abyssal hunters tend to be very lazy; all the fish has to do is snap prey up. They usually eat worms, fish, and small crustaceans.

I'm Batfish. And

Several species of New World batfish live in shallower waters. These species are...colorful, to say the least. One could honestly wonder whether the fish above was a poor PhotoShop job. One species, the Louisiana Pancake Batfish, was damaged by the Gulf spill early last year, so please pay it a visit while you still can. People who know about this weird fish have been bemoaning its decline thanks to the spill.

Oh, and by the way: This is one of the few abyssal creatures that one can actually keep as a pet. There are several videos of these fish walking in aquaria and a few care sheets floating around. The requirements for batfish are kind of specific, but we almost guarantee that nobody else on the block will have one.

Week of the Abyss cont'd.: Comb Jellies.

The video speaks for itself: UFOs are officially underwater. The blinking lights look more fit for a spaceship than a living thing. Yet, we swear to whatever god exists, the video above is footage of a living creature.

 

Comb jellies are not even tangentially related to true jellyfish. They have their own phylum, Ctenophora, making this entry one of the biggest 'blanket entries' on this blog. The phylum is somewhere between sponges and cnidarians. They are quite abundant, spanning all marine environments at virtually all depths. That includes the deep, where they are particularly common.

Comb jellies (and their phylum) derive their name from the rows of cilia along their bodies. They are the largest animals that move via cilia (see also: Paramecium). Most modern comb jellies have 8 rows of cilia, allowing them to move like oversized protozoans while sparkling. They do not technically glow in the dark...but you could've fooled us, nature.

Hey, it gets the ladies.

 

All comb jellies are predatory. They will eat roughly anything that fits in their pitcher plant-ish mouth. That includes fish larvae, jellies, other comb jellies, and the ever-popular copepods. The hunting technique varies with the species: some lie in wait, others chase, and still others use tentacles like spider webs. That said, they wreck ecosystems when they are accidentally introduced; the Black Sea got hit with a North Atlantic comb jelly that will likely get its own entry.

Comb jellies one of the oldest animal groups known to man. They have been around since at least the Devonian according to a remarkable fossil record. Some ctenophores were found in the Burgess Shale, which sported many specimens of sea life from the mid-Cambrian Period (505 m.y.a). From these preserved specimens, we know that older comb jellies had more mounted combs than their modern counterparts, and that some of them had very big mouths. There is no say on whether these comb jellies glowed like UFO's or not.



We personally hope they did.

Week of the Abyss cont'd: Giant Isopods.

There's more to the deep sea abyss than long teeth and pretty lights. Although the great majority of the abyssal fish we've covered so far are relatively small, the abyss is home to some true monsters. There is a concept called "deep sea gigantism" that posits that many deep sea animals are larger than their shallow-water counterparts. Nobody really knows why except in the case of tube worms, which are...special.

For everything else, we must assume that the deep sea abyss exists to make us humans believe that there is a hell, and that it is filled with things like this:

 

Actually, that's kinda cute. What is it?

Giant isopods (genus Bathynomus; Bathynomus giganteus is a favorite) are the abyss's version of the roly-poly, woodlouse, or pillbug. They are native to all oceans with very little difference between species. If you took one of those little stunted millipedes (actually crustaceans), then supersized it to a little over a foot in length, you would have a giant isopod. It's an isopod and it's giant.

Giant isopods are vicious scavengers. They prefer meat, but will take what they can get in the depths of the sea. Once they find a good chunk of meat -say, a whale carcass - they will gorge themselves to the point of being rendered immobile. On the surface world, they will still eat anything they can get, including Doritos.

 

These oversized pillbugs actually do remarkably well on land. This allows them to be easily studied in comparison to other types of abyssal life. We know that the peak mating time for giant isopods is between winter and spring. Most of them are caught in the Americas, and then put in aquaria with relatively few issues. Given that most abyssal things with spinal cords do not last a day in aquaria, this is quite a feat.

The giant isopod holds the unique honor of being the most memetastic of all abyssal life forms. Not only do they have a lot of funny pictures (both PhotoShopped and real), they have a whole CD's worth of songs. Sure, there are only 5 songs, but this is the most random crustacean-related music I've seen since I heard "Triops Has Three Eyes."

This is a thing.

Week of the Abyss cont'd.:Viperfish.

We've said it before and we'll say it again: If you add "fish" onto almost every word in the English dictionary, there is probably a real creature to match. Some of these matches are justified. Others not so much. The viperfish most certainly is, even though it is not venomous in the least. Just...



...what else WOULD you call this?

Viperfish (genus Chauliodus) range from 1-2 feet (30-60 cm) in length and, yes, are fierce predators. They are native to tropical waters. Their lifespan is uncertain, with speculations ranging from 30-40 years in the wild.  Again, this is the week of the abyss continued; viperfish spend the majority of their time in pitch darkness, but venture up to lighter depths occasionally. Both sharks and dolphins have been known to prey upon viperfish.



The most striking thing about this fish are, of course, those disproportionately huge teeth. The bottom teeth on this fish are so big that they curve behind the fish's head. Like many abyssal predators, the viperfish uses a light lure to get little fishies curious before immobilizing prey with its long teeth, meaning that the viperfish does not need to swim far or fast to get a meal.

That is not all the light lure is used for. Unlike anglerfish, viperfish have been shown communicating with each other using their natural lamps. Does this show pack hunting - perhaps even intelligent behavior- within the depths of darkness?  Perhaps their name ought to be changed to "raptorfish" if they show coordinated attacks. There is still much to learn.

Although not as well-received as the anglerfish in popular culture, the viperfish is a fairly popular deepsea fish. Artists absolutely love this thing - after all, what says "fierce" better than a mouth with teeth so big that they barely fit? This is probably the most kickass head tattoo I have ever seen - not that I would EVER do something like that myself. 

Week of the Abyss: Giant Tube Worms.

If fish and eels were not freaky enough, nature really gets crazy with worms in the sea. Even without diving into the abyss, while we're more or less stuck with earthworms and leeches on land, annelids have Christmas Tree Worms and the rather unflattering pig-butt worm among their more interesting members in the ocean.

Things get even weirder in the abyss, where the harmless earthworm becomes a species whose sole purpose in life is bad hentai potential:

 

Permanently stuck around the geothermal vents ("black smokers") of the deep sea, these giant tube worms (Riftia pachyptila) are some of the largest annelids in existence. They can get 2.4 meters (7 feet ten inches) in length. Those tentacles can be pulled into the worms' white sheaths when danger approaches, not that they have many predators.

The tentacles on these worms are red for a reason: like our blood, they contain hemoglobin. The red tentacles have complex hemoglobins circulating in them, which allows them to circulate oxygen in a highly sulfuric environment. They are not poisoned by the hydrogen sulfide in their environment- instead, they benefit from taking in a substance that would kill any other animal.

Hell's lipstick.

If the tentacles coming out of their tubes were not creepy enough, imagine a 7-foot-long creature that lives solely on symbiotic bacteria. The bacteria in these worms is designed to convert hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide - basically, the stuff that Hell is made of - into usable material for the worm. These giant worms do not eat and have no gut. The millions of bacteria inside them do all the work. They're almost more like fungi than animals.

Hope you enjoyed the absolute nightmare fuel found in the deep, deep sea! Since weeks have been stunted, expect a bonus abyssal critter or two next week as well. :)

Week of the Abyss: Umbrella Mouth Gulper Eel.

Raise your hand if, after the "They Actually Eat That" entry on eel pie, you went to a sushi store and got some non-jellied eels. No? Nobody? Then we agree that regular eels are already somewhat creepy. In the abyss, however, nature takes everything up to eleven...

...including eels. Technically, the Umbrella-mouth gulper eel/pelican eel (Eurypharynx pelecanoides) is not even a real eel, but what else would you call it? This eel-like fish is native to all tropical and subtropical areas of the sea. Like all things this week, it can only be found at depths where the sun doesn't shine. Even for eels, it is creepy in its simplicity: No scales, limited fins, and very low swimming capability.

The most noticable trait about this eel is, of course, its jaw. The pelican eel's lower jaw can theoretically stretch large enough to swallow food that is bigger than the whole fish. Despite this awesome jaw, however, the eel's diet consists of tiny prey such as small crustaceans and plankton. Unlike anglerfish, it has tiny teeth. What a relief!

Like many things in the deep, the pelican eel glows in the dark. At the end of the eel's whiplike tail is a lure made of glowing, red tentacles. It's just enough to distract little things from that giant mouth waiting to swallow them up from behind...

Is that a hungry eel, or is it just happy to see us?

The pelican eel has received enough publicity to get its own Pokemon in Huntail. Like the pipefish-chimaera Gorebyss, Huntail evolves from Clamperl and is based off of deep sea life. The sprite even glows in the dark in some games. Know this beast well; as of Gen V, it will become more and more competitive with the addition of Shell Smash, and if they do rerelease Gen III games for the 3DS, wellll....pray to whatever god you believe in that they don't.

Huntail is the thing that ISN'T an anglerfish.

Week of the Abyss: Wolf-Trap Anglerfish

Say the words "deep-sea life" and the anglerfish is probably the one that will pop to most people's minds. Rightfully so; with head-lures, creepy jaws, and an almost nonexistent male that turns females into self-impregnating hermaphrodites, it makes sense that they would be the abyssal fish.

If you know nature, however, you know that she loves kicking things up to eleven. The phrase "There's always a bigger fish" mutates into "there's always a weirder fish" in regards to the deep-sea abyss. In this case, imagine if someone took an anglerfish and fused it with the Xenomorph from Alien. You would get something like this:



Yes, that is a real thing, not some monster somebody drew out of their nightmares. It's a wolftrap anglerfish, also called a "wonderfish" from the family name Thaumathichthyidae.  We're not sure in exactly what way this fish is wonderful aside from the mere fact that something that creepy exists. The "wolf trap" name comes from the jaws. Like other anglers, it lives in depths at which the sun does not reach.

Just...look at that thing. Its jaws are just plain nuts; if what we've seen is any indication, some wolftraps have the upper lip flipped up, exposing those nasty teeth to whatever happens to be above them. People say those jaws look like a wolf trap. Looking at them, we have to agree that any animal unfortunate enough to get caught by those teeth will be whimpering.

 

Wolftraps also have better hooks than the average anglerfish. Instead of simply being a light lure above nasty jaws, these things have sophisticated fishing rods above even nastier jaws. Species can be classified based on how complex their fishing rods are, complete with glowing baits. Some rods even have little hooks on them, just like ours.

Oh, and all weirdness that applies to anglerfishes applies to these girls, obviously. The only wolftraps ever caught have been hermaphroditic/parasitized females. It's safe to assume that all the nightmare fuel that comes with 'normal' anglerfishes applies to wolftraps as well. Sleep tight.

Creature Feature: Dumbo Octopus.

The deepsea abyss is full of things that you thought only existed in nightmares. There are things with diminished eyes, huge jaws, tentacles, and other traits that make one wonder if R'lyeh was really Atlantis at some point. Maybe H.P. Lovecraft was right about evil gods living at the bottom of the ocean.



For example, this is baby Cthulhu. Or, if you prefer, the Dumbo octopus (genus Grimpoteuthis). Dumbo octopuses live in the abyssal depths of 3-4,000 meters, feeding on worms, bivalves, copepods, and, presumably, human souls. The largest of the Dumbo octopuses are 1.8 meters in length (almost 6 feet) but most of these cephalopods are smaller.

The Dumbo octopus gets its name from the cute earlike flaps on its head. They make it look somewhat like Disney's classic flying elephant as it swims through the water. It also has another method of crawling along the bottom in which it flattens itself into a pancake, which is just as adorable. This other style gives it the name "flapjack octopus."

As creatures of the abyss, they do not need the sophisticated camouflage seen in other octopus species. Instead, they employ light tricks similar to those of the vampire squid. They can do anything from making their skin glow to making it completely clear. When you live in a place with so little light, color does not matter nearly as much. They also have no suckers, simply because they do not need them.

Alas, Dumbo octopuses are rare. Some researchers have even called them the rarest of all cephalopods. As abyssal sea creatures and octopuses, they also fare poorly in captivity. They would probably make adorable pets if only we could keep them! Good thing this mini-Cthulhu is one of the least terrifying creatures this week.

Creature Feature: Brittle Star.

Echinoderms are darn strange compared to what we usually think of as animals. They have pentaradial  symmetry (that is, the creature is split into 5 even sides instead of two), mouths on the bottom of their bodies, no real cephalization to speak of, and have "tentacle rape" written all over them. Or "Facehugger," take your pick.

In conclusion: This blog needs more starfish, dammit!


(Yes, they can be legally kept as pets.)

That's a rather strange starfish, no? Brittle stars (Ophiuroidea) do not look like Patrick or any other friendly starfish you can name. With their spindly legs, quick movements, and bands, they almost look more like five snakes joined at the cloaca (those stars above have "serpent" in their name, for example). They are found everywhere in the ocean, from reefs to the deepsea abyss. A few even live in brackish water. Some of the abyssal ones glow in the dark!

No two are exactly alike!

 

Brittle stars are so named because their arms are, well...brittle. Unlike more fleshy starfish, the arms of brittle stars are covered in segmented armor. These arms have no tube feet, and can break off easily to allow the star to escape.

These starfish are the unholy eldritch lords of regeneration. Starfish, as a general rule, can regenerate their limbs. Brittle stars are the masters of this, being able to regenerate segment-by-segment unless all arms are lost. A certain group of brittle stars called Amphiuridae can regenerate sexual organs and innards. Some can even perform binary fission with little harm. In other words, brittle stars make themselves very hard to kill.

MWAHAHA, they're gonna take over the world!

Fun fact: Although brittle stars are not toxic, they are among the few animals that humans have not yet found a way to eat. Trust us, the list is very small.

Creature Feature: Hatchetfish.

If one looks around, it is possible to attach almost any noun to the word 'fish' and it will be a legitimate species. Swordfish? Sure. Cow, squirrel, dog, cat, rat, bird, butterfly? Those are all real fish species. Hell, one can put any weapon on a fish and it will be legitimate. We can even pick a random thing like a hatchet and make it a...




...wait, what is that? GET IT OFF THE SCREEN.

Those are marine hatchetfishes (Sternoptychidae). The hatchet form is not as visible from the front as it is in a side-view, but, aesthetically, the thorax forms the 'blade' and the tail forms the 'handle.'  None of that matters once one sees that uncannily-human face staring at them with dead, black eyes and a mournful expression. The side-view is only slightly less disturbing.



As with many creepy fishes, marine hatchetfish live where the sun just barely shines. Their large eyes are oriented upward to help them see prey drifting down from the from the surface. Like many deepsea animals, they have evolved bioluminescence along the bottom of their bodies as a form of countershading.

If you are getting freaked out, do not be. These creepy, fascinating fish are small.  They grow only a few centimeters in length. Many bigger fish eat them. Everything in the abyss is pretty freaky, but at least the hatchetfish does not have teeth so proportionately huge that they curve over its head. It is far from the weirdest thing Tiamat has cooked up.

 

Also, the freshwater version  is a lot cuter:

 

Creature Feature: Sea Pig.

At one point, it was thought that everything on land had a direct counterpart under the sea. That is why certain creatures have names like seahorse, sea cow, sea lion, and so forth, even if they do not really look anything like horses, cows, or lions. Ancient naturalists thought, "eh, close enough." Hell, the same could be said of sea cucumbers, even though they are not even plants. They just look like it.

 

Sea cucumbers in general are pretty weird creatures. (Wow, echindoderms really do not get enough love on this blog, do they?) They resemble, umm, cucumbers that have already been partially digested, sometimes with acid paint jobs for good measure, and just stay on the ocean floor, chillin' and eating whatever floats down. If a predator comes along, they pull the ultimate nasty prank and let out some of their internal organs into the ocean. Don't worry; they grow back. 

One of the members of the sea cucumber family ups the weirdness ante by a few more dollars. Ladies and gents, meet the sea pig (genus Scotoplanes):

Oink.

 














 Part Babe and part eldritch horror, the sea pig is the cutest of the sea cucumber bunch. It lives in large herds with 300-600 members, scrounging the deepsea abyss for anything tasty that floats down from the surface. They prefer rich, organic tissue such as fresh whale meat.

Sea pigs are the only holothurians with tube feet large enough to be called legs. The sea pig uses special water cavities inside its body to inflate and deflate sections around its 'limbs,' allowing it to walk like a little piggy in the darkness of the abyss.

 

Sea pigs (as well as sea cucumbers in general) have another fascinating defense mechanism: They can liquefy their inner parts to slip into the tiniest crack. Again, they come out perfectly fine afterward; sea cucumbers have barely any skeletons to speak of. We should all be ashamed for having such rigid spinal cords.


Looks like one of those splatter-pig toys...

The sea pig is currently under threat from deep-ocean trawling. Whole herds have been pulled up in fishing nets, which is unfortunately one of the few reasons we know sea pigs even exist. They are, like land pigs, a valuable source of food for deepsea predators. Better stop, guys; Cthulhu might get mad if we eat all of his ham.


Sea Pig by =TheEclecticEccentric on deviantART
(Plus, they're kinda adorable.)


Tomorrow: Speaking of weird echinoderms, this next one's a real basketcase!

Creature Feature: Yeti Crab.

Every year, more and more new species are found. Some of these are in unexpected places, like those frogs recently discovered in the Himalayas; others are in places that mankind simply has not poked around in, yet. The deepsea abyss is one of those places.

In our narrow-minded perception, life cannot exist without sunlight. Plants need sunlight, and plants feed everything else; therefore, all life needs sunlight. It makes sense to us on the surface world, therefore we make the sun a god and all that jazz. There's no way that anything else could be the case...right?

WRONG!

It turns out there there is a whole ecosystem that gets along just fine without any hint of sunlight. New organisms are discovered every time we take another look down there. The yeti crab (Kiwa hirsuta) is one of the more recent ones.

The yeti crab was discovered in the South Pacific by Monterey Bay Aquarium specialists in 2005. Seen via submarine (the pressure down there kills humans), this crustacean was found along the Pacific-Antarctic ridge near geothermal vents. In surface world terms, this is a couple thousand miles away from Easter Island. The discovery was officially announced on March 7th, 2006. 

Yeti crabs get their name from the furry setae on their legs and pincers. The fuzz contains bacteria that may help detoxify the water around geothermal vents. It is assumed that this crab is carnivorous, perhaps feeding on other geothermal-friendly bacteria, but more likely eating bigger prey.


Just like a real yeti!

Other than that, nobody really knows much about this fuzzy crab; it has only been known to science for a little over four years. Sheldon knows that they will be around for a long, long time to come, so we'll have plenty of chances to learn more. Our surface world seems pretty insignificant now, doesn't it?


Tomorrow: Giant blue earthworms? That sounds like a bad porno.

Creature Feature: Pig-Butt Worm.

This blog covers some pretty weird stuff: trippy colors, shiny bugs, and mind-controlling fungus, to name a few. Frustration upon frustration in the span of a few hours is enough to make me hit you all with one of the weirdest things yet: A pigbutt worm.



No, seriously; even the Latin (Chaetopterus pugaporcinus) thinks that this annelid worm resembles a pig's hindquarters. Another not so flattering name for it is "flying buttocks," which sounds like something out of a Monty Python sketch. There is no flattering name for a worm that resembles an ass.

 Yes, that is a worm. The two middle segments are inflated such that the worm resembles a hazelnut-sized behind. They live just below the oxygen minimum zone in the ocean, which explains why scuba divers and marine biologists were not having underwater gigglefits until recently.

Unfortunately, the entry has to end here. This worm was only discovered recently (2007) by experts at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Said experts suspect that it might even be some weird larval form of some...actually, let's not think about what the adult stage of a floating behind would be. Most worms of this genus have adult forms that live in parchment-like tubes on the ocean floor. A disembodied rear end cannot become anything worse than that...right?

Creature Feature: Barreleye.

As stated in the manta ray entry, there's a whole zone of the world's oceans that laughs at our surface world's definition of "normal." When you get to the depths at which the sun doesn't shine, things begin to glow in the dark, lose all bodily coverings except slime, and have eyes on the top of their heads.



The barreleye lives slightly above that zone. This does not make it any less terrifying than the things that actually live in the deepsea abyss. They live in the mesopelagic ('midwater') zone, but that's almost like saying "hey, I live right next door to Hell." Regardless of where you want to place this fish, there are a lot more of them than you think (6 genera with 13-14 species total).


(The one that you see most often is Macropinna microstoma.)

See those green blobs in the barreleye's submarine window of a head? Those are its eyes. Barreleyes have their eyes set in 'barrels' on top of the skull; the structure covering it is all soft tissue, making dried out specimens look freakier than the healthy, live fish.

Even the Japanese wouldn't eat this...

Barreleyes use their strange, upturned vision to see the shadows of potential prey. Some sources say that the eyes can also be turned forward, but these fishes are using what little light they can get from above most of the time. They are among the few fish to possess binocular vision, and the only vertebrates around to use mirrors and lenses in their eyes.


No. No, this fish does not look any better as a sketch.

The eyes are just the start of this fish's weirdness. Depending on what species you are looking at, they might have scales or not. Their fins are mostly spineless (seriously, check out the crystalline fins on the dried out specimen above). They have gizzards like birds, and some of their organs even glow in the dark thanks to bioluminescent bacteria. They even have some 'mirror lighting,' which is like countershading on crack. There is much more to these fishes than meets the eye, but the eyes are what everybody focuses on.