A spell back, I was riding out near Stinking Lake (which is not as bad as it sounds) when I happened across Jacqueline Hyde, the romantic interest of Rusty Swingset from the Darwin Ranch. She surprised me by telling me that Rusty has been getting way to clingy lately. I commenced to telling her about the female anglerfish.
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Someone finds this female anglerfish, Cryptopsaras couesii, attractive Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Masaki Miya et al. (CC BY 2.0) |
Anglerfish live way down in the deep ocean's nothingmuch. There was a time when it was thought that the darkness, pressure, and other factors would prohibit life, but there are some fascinating critters in the abyss — especially these predators with the portable lure-lanterns. What is rather startling is how the Creator designed an unusual combination of symbiosis and parasitism. Feminazis are going to be thrilled with this: the male is much smaller and cannot survive without the female, so he adheres to her. A kind of merging, I suppose. However, Saruwatari learned that the belief that the males become absorbed by the females, leaving only a knob or bump, is false.
I'll let the good doctor tell you share his excitement in a PDF, "Debunking an urban legend of the Deep Sea: The Queen of the Abyss and her contribution to Ceratioid Anglerfish biology". If you can find a date that this would be published, I'm be much obliged if you'd drop me a line.
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