You never have intercourse when your next dinner party is coming in the deep ocean . To ensure it never lack a meal , the opprobrious swallower fish has evolved a redoubtable jaw and a balloon - corresponding paunch that provide it to swallow prey much with child than itself .
Theblack swallower(Chiasmodon niger ) measures just 25 centimeters ( about 10 inches ) long , but it has been bang to swallow Pisces that are more than double its length and 10 times its weight .
They live in many portion of the world ’s oceans , admit tropical and temperate urine across the Atlantic , Pacific , and Indian Oceans . You ’ll have to plunk very deep to determine one animated , though . The species typically dwells around 700 to 3,000 m ( 3,000 to 10,000 ft ) below the sea ’s open at a depth wheresunlight struggles to reach .
Black swallowers are brightly adapted to life in the bleak abyss . Like a stealth submarine jet , its torso is dark and scaleless to avoid detection by predatory animal and raven alike .
If the lone - ranging Pisces is prosperous enough to find any prey in its unforgiving environment , it will fleetly gobble it up with its gaping mouth . To stop the unsay victim from evading its guts , the mouth and roof of the mouth are lined with sharp and interlock tooth that point inwards towards the gullet , act like a spiked maw .
Its obnoxious method of feeding is n’t perfect , however . Very from time to time , black swallowers can be found floating on the pee ’s control surface with their stomachs nearly bursting with flatulency . This pass when swallowed prey is so large it commence to rot before the gluttonous host can digest it .
sinister swallowers were first cover in the early 19th century and appear in a fair number of save write up about ocean geographic expedition from decades gone by . One of the most colourful diachronic descriptions comes from a 1904 book calledCreatures of the Sea : Being the Life Stories of Some Sea Birds , Beasts , and Fishesby Frank Thomas Bullen , a entrancing London - born writer who drop a line about life on the eminent seas .
It scan : “ The next behemoth down for notice is a very good specimen of the deep - sea chimera , Chiasmodon Niger River . It is a veritable nightmare in appearance , being entirely black in coloring material , with a oral fissure that split the psyche apart laterally for its whole duration , so that vulgarly utter , when its mouth is wide undecided it has no profile . ”
“ Its immense oral cavity is provide with evenly effective teeth , which are not only bump in the jaw but on the palate also . Its front tooth are hooked and moveable , so that while they may be push in to allow in the entry of target , they effectually foreclose it from number out . This peculiarity is explain by a slight test of the creature ’s feeding habits . It can and does immerse full fish in reality larger than itself – which sound impossible , but it is not . For the paunch of this awful gourmandizer is like an India - natural rubber bladder which may be amplify astonishingly , ” Bullen write .
Even in today ’s reality ofdeep - ocean explorationand remotely operate submersibles , black swallowers are rarely ever take care alive in their natural home ground . Given their terrifying reputation , perhaps that ’s not necessarily a spoilt affair …
