Anglerfish

**Anglerfish** are the members of the **Lophiiformes.** They are bony fish named for their way of catching prey, the anglerfish does this with a fleshy growth from the fish's head acts as a lure. Some anglerfish live in open water, while others are bottom dwelling. Some live in the deep sea and others on the continental shelf. They occur worldwide. Some forms are sideways and compressed while others are thick and wide, often with large upward pointing mouths.
 * Basic Information **

** Catching Prey ** The fish are named for their weird way of catching prey. Anglerfish typically have at least one long stick like structure sprouting from the middle of the head. In most anglerfish species, the bulb and stick are a part of their spine. The spine is movable in all directions, and the esca(bulb) can be wiggled to make it look like prey to other predators. Then uses it as bait to lure other predators close enough for the anglerfish to eat them whole. Some deep-sea anglerfishes can make light from their escas to attract prey. This is called bioluminescence, a result of special bacteria in the anglerfish that makes the esca glow. The bacteria may enter the esca from the seawater through small holes, scientists still do not know what makes the bacteria glow. In most species, the anglerfish has a wide mouth, which has very large sharp teeth extruding from the jaw. The wide mouth can swallow prey twice its size, which is a good resource to have when there is almost no animals around in the dark abyss. ** Reproduction ** Some Anglerfishes have an unusual mating method. Because individuals are rare and encounters are very rare, finding a mate is very hard. When scientists first started capturing anglerfish, they noticed that all of the specimens were females. These individuals were a few centimetres in size and almost all of them had what appeared to be parasites attached to them. It turned out that these parasites were highly reduced male anglerfish. At birth, male anglerfish are already equipped with extremely well developed reproduction organs. The male anglerfish lives solely to find and mate with a female. They are significantly smaller than a female anglerfish, and may have trouble finding food in the deep sea. Eventually, when the male reproduction organ starts to grow, it cannot feed anymore. Then the anglerfish must find a female to leech off of or it will mean certain death. When he finds a female, he bites into her skin, and releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. The male then slowly disintegrates, first losing his digestive organs, then his brain, heart, and eyes, and ends as nothing more than a pair of testicles, which release sperm in response to hormones in the female's bloodstream, then the female releases her eggs. The eggs then fertilize and 3 to 6 months later newly born anglerfish pop up. ** Human Consumption ** ** ﻿ One family of anglerfish is of commercial interest with fisheries found in the in north-western Europe, eastern North America, Africa and the Far East. In Europe and North America, the tail meat of the anglerfish, known as goosefish or monkfish, is widely used in cooking, and tastes like lobster tail, and also looks like it, so if you're in a restaurant and you see goose or monkfish on the menu remember it's Anglerfish. In Asia, especially Korea and Japan, it is a delicacy. ** ** Home Page **