Muhammed Zaid, IV, The Blossoms School

852 views

0 likes

You will need to sign in before you can comment or like.        

   We know more about the moon than our own oceans. Only 5% of it has been yet explored. It is even tougher to reach the lower depths of the oceans, even then, scientists find all sorts of unusual, rare lifeforms thriving in this habitat of high pressure and darkness.

Goblin Shark (pictured above)
Spooky as it looks, the goblin shark has electro-sensitive organs (to sense the presence of their prey) in their elongated, flattened, blade like snouts. They developed these snouts because of the absence of light in their hunting grounds. These creatures have protruding and extremely delicate jaws that are equipped with long, slender, sharp fang-like teeth. Also called as ‘living fossils’ as they are unchanged for 125 million years. The fish appears whitish-pink or greyish-purple with pigment lacking skin.

Sarcastic Fringehead
Famous for its gaping mouth it displays to keep invaders off from its territory, the fringehead is a small fish known best for being aggressively temperamental and for the unusual way it defends itself. Fringehead can grow up to 12 inches long, but most are between 3 and 8 inches, having large pectoral fins and a brownish tinge with green lips. These creatures have poor eyesight and in case of threat, the mouth wrestling unfolds! The wrestle by pressing their highly distended mouths equipped with needle like teeth against each other, and the stronger fish becomes dominant.

Comb jelly
Comb jellies are gelatinous animals and, as their name suggests, their special feature is their padding combs generating a combination of colours glowing in colourful patterns. They are 95% water and have roamed the sea for nearly 700 million years. They swim by beating their combs rhythmically to push themselves forward. Their colour bands divide the body into eight symmetrical parts. They can prey on their own species if they do not find enough food. If starving, they shrink in size and stop reproducing. They use their bioluminescence, that is, in case of predatory threats, they flash brightly to blind the potential predator allowing comb jellies to escape. They can also camouflage in dark waters producing red pigment that makes them invisible.

Japanese Spider crab
Contrary to the spider crab's terrifying looks, the largest arthropod on earth is more gentle than it seems, scavenging on carcasses rather than hunting. This ten-legged animal measures 5.5 meters from one claw to the other (although average length is and height in its natural position is 3 m). The 40 cm wide body is covered with a spiny and tough calcareous carapace. The Spider crab is second in weight only to the American lobster, weighing around 20kg. The bumpy orange-white shell also helps in camouflage. Young spider crabs are also known to decorate their shells with crustacean and sponges to further this cause.

Giant Isopod
This monster, an oversized version of the terrestrial pillbug, cannot be seen easily, unless poachers (scientists, rather) raid the deep sea and bring them on land to raise them as their pets. They are carnivores and can stay without food for a long time. Giant isopods have widely spaced, fixed compound eyes with more than 4000 individual facets and, maybe they might not see well, they have a pair of antennae to compensate for that. To grow, they shed their exoskeletons and have the largest eggs of all marine invertebrates from which baby isopods come out.

Frilled Shark
Consider this one a living fossil as they are unchanged for 300 million years, since the dawn of the dinosaurs. This snakelike deep-water dwelling creature has a ruffled throat and lizard-like rounded head. It got its name from its frilly appearance of its six pairs of gills, with the first pair meeting across the throat. Another feature of this shark is its teeth numbering over 300 in all; each tooth is small, with three slender, needle -like cusps alternating with two cusplets, which indicates its primary prey is slippery squid. The frilled shark captures prey by bending its body and lunging forward like a snake. They live in the depths and are rarely caught.

Pacific Blackdragon
This horrifying fish can be said as the frightening hybrid between an angler and a viper fish, an ambush predator in all black. Even its stomach is covered with black tissue to block out any light that might be produced by bioluminescent animals that they eat. They have a separate light organ at the end of the long barrel that hangs down from the chin, which is used as a lure to attract prey. Even though it lives in deep waters, the Pacific Blackdragon receives some sunlight during the day, so the eyes are large and well developed. Females reach approximately 60 cm, the males being much smaller; having no teeth, stomach, or chin barrel, and are unable to feed. They never really leave the larval stage of development, and all of their energy comes from the egg yolk. Scientists believe that this extraordinary difference between the sexes is to reduce competition for lifesupporting resources that are limited in availability.

Barreleye
Absolutely alien on first sight, a person has to see himself to believe that a creature can have a transparent head and green cylindrical eyes (Yes, the two structures near its mouth are not eyes, they are fish equivalents of nostrils). The barrel like eyes mostly look directly upwards, except when its feeding. Even its brain is visible through its fluid filled head. The green substance filled eyes are ultra sensitive and highly capable of differentiating meagre sunlight from bioluminescence.

Colossal Squid
This massive squid, although shorter, is three times the giant squid's weight and holds the record for the largest living invertebrate, upto 65 feet. The colossal squid's tentacles reach up to 46 feet and have sharp hooks, usually tri-pointed. They weigh at least 550kg and have a reddish tint and a large fin. Surprisingly, most of the colossal squid's anatomy has been found already digested - in whales' stomachs ready for marine biologists to examine, although occasionally smaller specimens have been caught.

Sperm Whale
This enormous blue whale which feasts on the deadly colossal squid consumes over 2000 pounds of food everyday and hunts its prey with echolocation. It makes the loudest animal-made clicks, the loudest heard off the coast of northern Norway which reached 235 (dB re 1 ? Pa), which is equal to the sound pressure of the Saturn V rocket heard at about one meter distance. This showed that Sperm whales can stun or even kill their prey with sound. For speed, these whales can swim 5 to 15kph and when speed up, approximately 35 to 45kph and maintain this speed for about an hour. The biggest threat to this whale (other than colossal squids) are killer whales, although sperm whales are too big and aggressive for any other animal to hunt them down. Not only aggression, these marine creatures have the biggest brain and head in the world, five times heavier than a human's. They store large quantities of a substance called spermaceti in their brain. Spermaceti is a waxy substance that helps in echolocation that is also used in candles, ointments and cosmetics, which led to large scale whale hunting in the nineteenth century.
Why did deep some sea animals develop good eyesight or bioluminescence while others didn't? What other adaptations did they achieve to compensate for this? Research and mail us the reasons with examples (at least seven) to win a special mention in the next issue.

Comments