This time is is the barreleye fish (which I heard about listening to the most recent episode of the Geologic Podcast). The barreleye fish live deep in the Pacicif and, until recently, were only known through dead, mangled fish caught in nets. Finally, researchers at the Monteray Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) got a live one to study . Let's take a look at the fish in question.
This strange fish has a transparent skull! Those two things in the front that you think would be eyes are used to detect smells. Those two green spherelike objects under the transparent skull are the eyes. The eyes can rotate to look upward, forward or any direction where the skull is transparent.
I am just loving the unique adaptations that fish use to survive and see at depths where little to no light exists!Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.
Posts
7 comments:
Sometimes I think we know more about outer space then what on the bottom of our oceans.
But it is a cool looking fish, kinda like the carp family.
Ok Lizardmom. are you going to take in an orphan?
Ser, I think we know painfully little about both! One thing I wonder about this (as I have had more time to think) is if that truly is a transparent skull. When I think of a skull, I think of a nice hard material like our bones. I can't help but wonder if the transparent material is soft, more like a human cornea. Since the article states these fish have never been caught with an intact skull, that seems to indicated a more delicate structure.
Just more questions I want answered!
sure LJ, I'll take him in, he's kinda cute and definitely funky, whacked out eyes just like me!
That fish kinda looks like a submarine...
Did they eat him after they examined him?
Post a Comment