Usually, a belly-up fish isn’t long for this world.
But video evidence from the deep ocean suggests that some species of anglerfish — the nightmarish deep-sea fish with bioluminescent lures — live their whole lives upside down.
“Just when you think they couldn’t get any weirder, anglerfish outdo themselves,” said Pamela Hart, an associate professor at the University of Alabama who researches fish that live in extreme conditions.
The behavior, documented earlier this month in the Journal of Fish Biology, is “beyond anyone’s wildest imagination,” said Elizabeth Miller, who studied the evolution of deep-sea fish as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oklahoma.
(Neither Dr. Miller nor Dr. Hart was involved in the discovery.)
Persons:
—, “, ”, Pamela Hart, Elizabeth Miller, Miller, Hart
Organizations:
University of Alabama, Fish Biology, University of Oklahoma