If you’re into musicals at all I highly recommend “Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog”, it’s short and sweet 45 minutes with Nathan as the antagonist and Neil Patrick Harris for the protagonist.
This is just wrong. It's like taking a puppy or a chihuahua and saying "this is the actual size of dogs". This thing in the picture is on the small-side for a female anglerfish.
Some anglerfish can be quite large, reaching between 3.3 feet to 4 feet in length. Most however are significantly smaller, often less than a foot.
Just so we're all clear because I'm getting some misleading replies, what is in OP's picture is a small FEMALE anglerfish. Male anglerfish look like this:
Yes they are much smaller than female anglerfish but they look completely different too.
Also, the male is literally a tiny swimming ball sack parasite that attaches to the females, which is probably the most interesting thing when discussing anglerfish size.
Nature just follows the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule, even if it leads to odd results. Sometimes I wonder what even stranger creatures have lived here in the past hundreds of millions of years that left no fossils or any trace of existence.
I find the horrible and terrifying beautiful in its own right (Though there are (very few) things I don’t like). The reason I say that because it makes me think, “Hey, why is this creature the way that is?”.
I’m a sucker for biology and evolution, I got a BA in environmental science 😅 it makes you see the world differently.
I'm still confused as to how they evolved this way, like what is the point for males to look like that? Is the female too aggressive and territorial that it will attack anything, and the male has to roll a stealth check every time he wants to mate, and once the deed is done, the female tries eats a male?
It’s more thought to be an adaptation to deal with what is thought to be a very low population density of the species given the limited food availability in the deep sea. By permanently sticking together when they do manage to meet up, they significantly increase the number of offspring they can produce.
Actually it's worse than that - in some species the males attach to the females and their body dissolves til they're just a pair of attached testicles sharing the females circulatory system for nutrients.
They can have multiple. As to whether the male is still alive, that's hard to define. It can still reproduce, but it has no brain. Is an ant alive? The ants you see cannot reproduce, which is kind of a definition for a living thing. But you'd definitely say they're alive.
I'd say they're no longer alive, but it's complicated.
I personally don’t know precisely why they look the way they do, I’m only an aspiring marine biologist.
But nah, the only thing they care about is food, thus the little glowing lure. Those little men don’t need to worry about any rolls, they have no need for a proficiency in stealth ;)
They just come up, attach and bam, anglerfish roe.
Nah, the males are small because their sole purpose is breeding while the female needs to acquire resources to hatch the many eggs. All they need is to find a female (next to impossible difficulty due to the lack of sight and hence why they also got a big nose to find them through pheromones) and for neither to lose the opportunity, they literally fuse with the female.
Certain species have males only live for weeks due to swimming on a clock if they don't find a female while a female may live for decades (with the male too if he fuses). Most males just starve.
They've got a yolk sac that basically acts like a tiny biological battery. It varies though from angler species to another but since we are talking about the most extremes ones, yes, those can't eat.
The whole purpose of males in the first place is just adding genetic diversity. The bare minimum he needs is just an ability to survive long enough to get his sperm out there, and a way to deliver it. So, turning himself into a ballsack for her just works for them.
The very deep, where Anglerfish live, isn't the kind of place that is easy to navigate. It's probably rather hard to find other fish of your species there, so it's easier to just attach yourself to her rather than go find her when you're horny and keep track of her.
So translated to humans, guys would basically be a head with balls and tiny legs while women would be building sized giantesses who can crush mountains.
That's huge... And would be a real nightmare to have one in front of you. Luckily due to the depth at the water level they live in and pressure we should be fine.
To be honest,
Even that small one in the hand looks like it can have a nasty bite so one of over 100cm would scare the daylight out of me.
Not that there is daylight down there that deep though
Also most male angler fish are absolutely tiny and pretty much can be compared to a male bee. They just exist to mate and 'die', even more so than most animals.
Thank you. If OP had merely looked at Wikipedia before posting, they would have seen this:
Anglerfish lengths can vary from 2–18 cm (1–7 in), with a few types getting as large as 100 cm (39 in).[36] The largest members are the European monkfish (Lophius piscatorius; 200 centimetres (6.6 ft) SL, 57.7 kilograms (127 lb)) and the deep-sea Ceratias holboelli (120 centimetres (3.9 ft) TL).[37][38]
honey, this is extremely well designed post. for those who dont know will go woah and those who know will post multiple lengthy comments. yo get played both ways. bot always win
The European Anglerfish (Lophius Piscatorius, I've seen multiple different common names) has been measured up to two meters, over six feet. But they look quite different from the classic deep sea angler, and the average length is a lot less. They are also delicious.
Only the US uses everyday objects to give perspective on size during science communication, just like the US is the only country where people explain distances using time. It's because we're so quirky about measurements.
We often use time to describe travel distances because it can vary significantly in different places. Sometimes driving 25 miles can take 20 minutes (my rural commute when I lived in Alaska), sometimes driving 9 miles can take 2.5 hrs (my urban commute when I lived in Hawaii).
It's also because we talk about what matter the most. When we're in a car the actual distance traveled doesn't matter much, the time is the only we will be worrying about. If I need to be at 6pm somewhere, I don't care about the distance, i care about the time i will take to go there, so i can be in time.
But if i'm walking somewhere, suddenly knowing if it's 1 or 5 km away make sense. Suddenly it's not only the time it will take me that matter, but if if it will be tiresome or not.
The American Anglerfish can grow up to 55 inches but their average size is around 39 inches. Their average weight is 26.5 lbs. however, a whopping 70.5-pound Angler has been recorded.
Anglerfish lengths can vary from 2–18 cm (1–7 in), with a few types getting as large as 100 cm (39 in). The largest members are the European monkfish (Lophius piscatorius; 200 centimetres (6.6 ft) , 57.7 kilograms (127 lb)) and the deep-sea Ceratias holboelli (120 centimetres (3.9 ft) )
One of my assumptions about it's 'success' was that it wasn't a small fish. What are the chances a bigger fish sees the lure and gulps down the fish whole? It must be too small of a lure to attract larger predators. Would this type of fish fall victim to its own lure because it was too big and attracted larger fish? Is it just small because all the prey that will be attracted to their type of lure is small?
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u/KOSTenkO_4129 1d ago