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”
I just picked up a stuffed animal angler fish at the local goodwill for my dog to play with. The tag said it was a football fish, which is a type of angler. It’s about 16″ and my dog loves it. I kinda wonder if it had scared a small kid, thus why it was at the goodwill. Ps~ I agree, the fish on Finding Nemo was an angler.
I’M HELPING MY 10 YR OLD WITH A REPORT ON “DEEP WATER FISH THAT PRODUCES ITS OWN LIGHT” WHEN I CAME ACROSS THIS SITE. I BELIEVE THE ARGUEMENT IS SETTLED…IT IS AN ANGLER FISH! MY QUESTION IS..WHAT CHARACTER IS AN ANGLER FISH? I SAW THE MOVIE BUT I DON’T REMEMBER A SCARY FISH WITH A LIGHT. THANKS
hey everyone, i am watching nemo at this very moment and was wondering if this….”scary” fish (i am SO not about to get in the middle of the argument)was real. After a while i came across the site and really got a kick out of you guys…and learned a ton of info on this whatever you want to call it fish (i just wanted to know if it was real!) The pictures were amazingly…interesting, to be politically correct (not that i ever am) and for the last hour i’ve been oh-so-entertained. At this point i’ve forgotten about the movie. so i just wanted to thank you guys for the fun trivia and a good laugh. im 15, and though i dont have any project due next week on the fish, im happy to say that if i ever do, i’ll be back!! ok, gettin sleepy..goodnight folks!!
hi there,
I saw the debate about angler and viper fish…
check out the following, the viper angle may not be entirely incorrect,
http://www.seasky.org/monsters/sea7a1d.html
cheers
J
i wanted a pet angler fish because there so cute when they are little but then i read this. on the finding nemo site it does say that its an angler fish. good job on the research.
I think that you are right and that the people that say that it isn’t an angler in finding nemo are wrong! It cannot be a viper fish or else it wouldn’t have a biluminescent light on it!
I would also like to say that I agree with you 100% that it is strange that the people that agree with you write a lot and people that don’t, they just write on line without backing themselves up with at least another website or something that they know for sure! I see that I’m a bit late seeing as it is 2005 and this conversation started and ended in 2003 so I’m not so sure that anyone is going to read this!
Does anyone know what enemies/predators of the angler fish are?
Definitely an angler fish. May have added an elongated body, larger teeth and the light organs, but fully an angler fish otherwise, no doubt.
Wow, this discussion has been going on for a while. Thanks for all the interesting links. I knew existed angler fish before I saw the movie, but I did not know much about them. There was a Japanese cooking show on tv recently where angler fish liver was used as an ingredient. I had thought that they were all deep sea fishes and small, so I thought it was strange that people would eat them. I did not realize that some can grow to over a metre. I assume that it is a shallow water species that was used on the show. Does anyone have any idea what it would be?
I believe that the fish seen in finding nemo is infact a viper fish. If you google image search viper fish you will find a few pictures of these creatures that have ‘lures’ on them try this.