Female Angler Fish: Big and Equally Scary as Its Male Counterpart
The angler fish is not dubbed ‘deep sea monster’ for no reason, the female angler fish itself is big and scary to look at. With its teeth crooked yet long and extremely sharp and with a protruding flesh on its head that illuminate to lure in prey, it definitely is the epitome of a monster that resides in the deepest of seas and oceans.
One thing that can distinguish the male angler fish from the female is that the latter can only be as small as 2.5 centimeters. It’s no larger than the palm of about any human. The female fish of the angler kind, on the other hand, can reach until 47 centimeters. Like the males, the female angler fish is globular in body shape and comes with a more elaborate means of luring in their prey. Another thing making them different and distinguishable from the males is that the females are able to eat more fish that come their way than the males because even as they mature, their digestive systems are still intact.
The angler fish that is female, like the male, a fine bony structure. They don’t have scales like the other fish in the sea. They have bones, a finely sculpted skeletal system that is, at the same time, really flexible. The flexibility of these bones for the angler fish of both genders, male and female are actually used to swallow whole the prey they have lured by the illumination in the protrusion on their heads. The female angler fish can actually swallow whole any fish that’s even twice and more her size. Truly, this is one frightening fish to come across with when you’re a fish yourself, but you’re not.
There’s no use running away from an angler fish, both male and female, that are looking for prey or food to eat. The other fish in the sea are easily curious about who bears the illumination only then to come face to face with the scariest creature in the sea, the angler fish.
The angler fish of the female kind is depended upon by the male that attaches itself to her. This is because the males do not have any functional digestive system when they mature. The digestive systems of male angler fish normally degenerate when they reach maturity. The male angler fish would search or wait for a female angler fish to come and then they would latch themselves to the female and they would be considered mated for a lifetime. This is one astonishing fact to know because not a lot of animals behave this way. It’s what they, scientists that study the fish, often term the ‘sexual dimorphism’ of the angler fish.
The males need females to survive thus it’s within their connected blood vessels that the female is able to give or feed the males food that females eat. This is also how the males end up fertilizing the egg of the females and fathering, of course, its children.
The angler fish that is female would lay eggs on what seems to be a material made of some thin gelatinous surface that’s about 9 meters long or 30 ft. long and maybe 2 to 3 ft., around 1 meter in width. These eggs float around in the sea freely until they mature and eventually hatch into larvae too tiny for the human eyes to see.
The small larvae, in turn, would often seek refuge on the surface so they could survive on plankton before they can mature and return back to the deepest parts of the sea even those of the ocean. They follow the same cycle then as what the males and females of this kind, the angler fish, of fish do their whole lives.
The female angler fish is just about as fascinating a study as the male angler fish. Not much is known about this fish’s will to survive the harsh environment of the deepest parts of the sea but they really do survive those places. These are normally environment that no man and no other animals dwelling in the sea can survive in. Thus these things remain an enigma and as such, have earned the right to be called ‘deep sea monsters’. This is basing on their appearance and even their behavior, especially their predatory habits.
