So the other night, my son asks me about this fish he saw in Finding Nemo. Normally I might not share such a tale, because it’s probably only memorable to our family – but the answers found from this innocent question were pretty impressive indeed.
You see, the alleged fish has a light on it’s head and huge fangs. I don’t know about you, but I’d never heard of such a beast. In fact, I thought it sounded like someone had been having a little fun in the animation room. I even made the mistake of mentioning that it might not be completely real!
You can imagine my surprise when I finally found a picture of the fish in question. That’s a freaky fish indeed, and it seems that very little imagination would be necessary to get this fellow looking like a scary fish!
So I looked around some more and found all sorts of information, including this little tidbit that seems to provide all the information you might need (sorry, link died). You see, apparently this vicious beast is the female of the species! And you thought human women were bad! Luckily they only live at depths of 1,600 to 10,000 feet!
The luminous organ on her head actually attracts her prey. She can vibrate the thing, too, presumably to attract prey if they’re blind. The worse part is that the male of the species lives only to bond himself to the body of the female and provide his seed so that the species may continue. He’s also a lot smaller and not quite as strange looking,
I even found a picture of a live one (or a recently live one – about halfway down the page). Strangely enough, this beast is not the ugliest creature in the ocean. No, that honor belongs to the Fangtooth, a fish so bizarre, that he actually has sheaths in his head for his teeth to slide into when his mouth closes (about one-third of the way down the page)!
And that’s not all – don’t skip the main creature feature, more creatures and still more creatures. Pages courtesy of the Norfanz Voyage web site.
Comments
215 responses to “The Angler Fish”
does anyone know a really good website about anglerfish? i have to do a project for my 10th grade .3 biology class, and i can’t find much…especially diagrams of their life cycle. I need information about their life cycle, life span, what happens to the babies, communication, and migration/hibernation. i can’t do an image search because that’s blocked at school (which is ridiculous). any help would be great. email me at [email protected]. it would be much appreciated!!!
I am marine biologist and study the ocean creatures. I go scuba diving alot and I do alot of reashearch of the fish we normaly don’t hear about. The Angler fish lives miles into the deep ocean. It has a light emmiting antenna on it’s head. It is used to catch pray. You may see all the pictures of Angler fish, the big ugly things are all females. The male’s look very diffrent. their the size of your thumb and they hook onto the female and live there forever. there eyes start to desolve and there organs disinigrate. The males are used for sperm for the female. The female gives nutirents to the male. When there conected it’s like there cells conect. If a male canot find a mate it eventually dies.
i think your website is good, it gave me the right information i had been looking hours for, thank you!
Why are Viper Fish allergic to sun light?
deffinitely an angler fish. sure the viper fish looks similar in the mouth, but when you pull up two pictures, one of the viper and one of the angler, who could even doubt it? creepy creepy fish. *shudder*
What kind of fish is Dori?
wow… so much discussion on a nemo fish… but still it is useful. I am working on a school project on an anglerfish so i came across this. Just one little fact: the fish in finding nemo was a deep sea angler, so not all anglerfish look like that one
What is the taxonomy of Dory from Finding Nemo? I Know she’s a regal blue tang and all, but its for a school thingy. One last thing, PETA Sucks!
Hi guys,
Nice to see y’all discussing. Well, that beast is in fact an angler with some modifications, like those photopores and the elongated body. It is definitely not a viperfish, because the viperfish has a VERY long, snake like body, does not have a large, round head like this creature, and its glowing rod used for attracting its prey is located on the BACK side of its body, just in front of the upper fin, not on the head. The other modifications were made to just make it look more scarier and fit for a movie monster (pretty strong for an angler fish – it breaks clear through an entire pile of rocks!!) and there’s nothing bad in doing that – actually, the villainous Carnotaurs in “Disney’s Dinosaur” were at least 7 or 8 times smaller than iguanodons like Aladar, they were made bigger just to make ’em look more more dangerous. It’s not a big deal. Thanks for wasting five precious minutes of your lives reading my lil’ novel.
Adios amigos! – Lord Beletio
Elle, there is a site mentioned awhile back.
Check it out..It identifies the characters of the movie.