Monsters from the deep with the sex lives of vampires

So why is MATCOM working rather than supplying the needs of the DU Lounge?

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=504102


Monsters from the deep with the sex lives of vampires
By Kathy Marks in Sydney
23 March 2004



<snip>The project, funded by Australia's National Oceans Office and New Zealand's Ministry of Fisheries, uncovered weird and wonderful sea dwellers, including fish with tongues covered in teeth and fish with hinged teeth that enable them to swallow large meals. Another creature, the Pacific spookfish, uses its long snout like a metal detector to search out the electrical impulses of prey concealed in the seabed.

Among the species hauled in from more than a mile beneath the waves was the dumbo octopus, which navigates through the water with the help of a pair of flaps. According to Dr Mark Norman, a senior curator at Museum Victoria, it looks like "the cartoon character Dumbo the flying elephant".

One of the most curious discoveries made by the scientists concerned the mating habits of the deep sea angler fish. Dr Norman described the female as being the size of a tennis ball, with "big savage teeth, little nasty pin eyes ... and a rod lure off the top of her head with a glowing tip to coax in stupid prey", while the male looked like "a black jellybean with fins".

During copulation, the male bites the female and hangs on. "He drinks her blood in return for giving her sperm," Dr Norman told The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. The flesh of the two fish then fuses together and they remain permanently connected. "It's like sexual vampirism," Dr Norman said. "We found females with up to six males attached."<snip>

MY COMMENT: The article goes on about giant sea spiders with bodies so small they put their organs in their legs, and "fangtooth" who has two sharp teeth that poke out of its bottom jaw and slide into pockets in its head, and the deep-water batfish that walks along the ocean bed on fins modified into legs, with a head that comes to a point like a unicorn. But that is for another day.

It's a multi-disc set, but one of them has an episode on the deep ocean. You see a few of the critters mentioned here, plus a few more. The whole series is the best nature documentary I've ever seen.

sheesh.

Apparently deep sea life isn't much different from up here.

:D