by While Valentine’s Day has come and gone this year, life and love in the natural world continues ever onward. Today we’ll take a closer look at how a group of extraordinary animals love (or at least love to mate) in a truly bizarre way.
Anglerfish are some of the strangest inhabitants of the sea. They can be found in almost every part of the ocean, from shallow tropical seas to the darkest depths. Anglerfish range in size from 1 to 3 feet in length, with most trending towards the smaller end of the spectrum. In some species the males are so much smaller than the females as to look like a completely different species.
Anglers get their name from the curious way they fish for fish. A specialized spine on their dorsal fin hangs in front of their faces to lure in unsuspecting prey. The glow of their lures is produced by special bacteria that emit light. Anglerfish are splendidly grotesque, with massive mouths filled to the brim with curved teeth ready to snap shut around any tasty morsel they can find. These fish have enormous stomachs that can swell to hold prey twice their size. But one of the strangest facts about these creatures is how they try to find love in the wide, open expanse of the ocean.
Life can be lonely for an anglerfish. While they live in various underwater habitats, they tend to be locally rare with only a few individuals inhabiting a given area. This lone-wolf lifestyle can put a serious damper on the possibility of romance. But a group of deep-sea angler species have evolved a way to work around this problem. In a truly remarkable feat of evolution, the males of certain species of anglerfish have completely devoted their life to sex.
Instead of constantly roaming the open ocean looking for a mate, once a female is located, male anglerfish have evolved to literally latch onto their object of desire for dear life. Having sunk his teeth into a female, the male anglerfish will begin to fuse with her body, eventually merging bloodstreams and receiving all of his nutrients from his lady host. This extreme behavior is known as sexual parasitism. As the male continues to cling onto the larger female, his eyes and organs will begin to wither and atrophy. Eventually all that is left of him is a functional set of testes that the female can use once she is ready to produce eggs. A female can in some cases carry multiple fused males as she drifts through the dark ocean abyss. Talk about rolling in the deep.
While it may seem strange, scientists have only recently observed some of this parasitic behavior in the wild. Attached below is a video of a live pair of mated deep-sea anglerfish, the first of its kind.
https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/00000162-54eb-dba4-ad6e-5effec490000
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