Sea angel (lat. Clione limacina) is a gastropod from the order Gymnosomata that feeds on “sea devils” - pteropods limacina mollusks from the genus Limacina, in turn being food for toothless whales and seabirds. Sea angels inhabit the cold waters of the Northern Hemisphere, the Barents Sea, the White Sea and the waters of the Arctic.
Its elongated body, 2 (2.5 cm or 4 cm) long, visible in the light of spotlights (since the animal lives at great depths) and small wings give the impression that it is of unearthly origin. The head, well demarcated from the body, bears two pairs of tentacles. Sea angels lack a shell, mantle cavity and gills.
Having discovered the prey, the mollusk swims up to it, captures it with three pairs of buccal cones that turn outward, and with their help turns the prey with the mouth of the shell towards its mouth. After this, the predator scrapes out the soft tissues, extending and retracting bundles of chitinous hooks located in paired bags in the oral cavity. Ingestion of incoming food is carried out due to the movements of another element of the oral apparatus - the radula. Processing one victim takes from 2 to 45 minutes, after which the empty shell is discarded.
Sea angels are hermaphrodites with cross-fertilization, laying eggs. Juveniles rise to the upper layers of water feeding on zooplankton for 3-4 days, then become the same predators as adults.
The activity of sea angels during a storm drops sharply and, surrendering to the will of gravity, they descend to a depth of 350-400 m, using accumulated fat to maintain strength, starving in this way sometimes for up to a month, although their favorite delicacy, hidden in its shell, falls to the bottom in abundance from the surface "monkfish"
Angelfish, Clione limacine
Angelfish. Throw to the target.
Monkfish (Limacine helicine). The swimming of a monkfish in the water column resembles the flight of a butterfly, hence another name that has stuck in the USA and Europe - " sea butterfly".
Monkfish.
Limacina or sea devils (lat. Limacina) are a genus of gastropods from the order of shellfish (Thecosomata). Small inhabitants of the pelagic zone with a spirally twisted calcareous shell. The largest specimens of the animal are found in cold waters, where the mollusk reaches 1.5 cm. In warmer seas, the length of the limacine does not exceed 3 mm. Limacines lead a predatory lifestyle, collecting plankton using mucus nets. Some cetaceans and sea angels feed on representatives of this genus. Adult limacines have a spiral aragonite shell. Two parapodia extend from its mouth - wing-shaped processes of the legs, which the mollusk uses for vertical movements. When the parapodia are folded together, the mollusk begins to quickly sink (up to 25 cm/s), their horizontal position provides neutral buoyancy, and the flapping allows them to rise upward. The size of the fishing net is significantly larger than the size of a mollusk shell. The mucus for its construction is produced by the epithelial cells of the mantle and mantle glands, and the rate of secretion and retraction of the network is quite high. Limacina has a thin, almost transparent shell that is spirally twisted on the left side. The shell can be closed with a lid that lies on the back blade of the leg. The eggs are laid in numbers of several hundred, connected by a gelatinous substance into thin plates. The only thing the monkfish counts on when attacking it is to hide inside its shell in order to fall to the bottom as soon as possible and merge with the stones, pebbles and sand. Of the small number of limacina species in our northern waters, two are present. Limacina helicina is a cold-water species and is found in both the Arctic and Antarctic, and L. reverse can be considered a guest in the Barents Sea, brought by the North Cape Current from the Atlantic Ocean.
The monkfish or sea scorpion, from the order of fish-shaped fish, has a repulsive appearance. It has a huge head, half the length of the entire fish, with a large, sharp-toothed mouth that mercilessly swallows its prey: conger eel, red mullet, even small sharks and thousands and thousands of seabirds. Monkfish is found at depths of 600 m. Length: up to 200 cm, weight: 30 - 40 kg. Monkfish grow up to one and a half to two meters, weighing on average 20 kg. Its body is flattened on top, and it is completely covered with leathery growths similar to algae, pieces of driftwood and stones. On the head, behind the eyes, the monkfish has a growth with a glowing “flashlight” at the end.
The fishermen quickly deal with the monster's head. All that remains of the fish is practically only an edible tail, which goes on sale without the skin. Therefore, monkfish is often called the “tail” fish, whose white, dense, boneless and extremely tender meat can do honor to anyone. festive table. Being a master of camouflage, the monkfish, with its dark, often spotted, top part body, almost invisible against the background of the bottom of small coastal reservoirs, among stones, pebbles and fucus. There he usually likes to lie, watching for prey. Monkfish is found in many seas, mainly in the Atlantic and North Sea, up to Iceland.
Sometimes during a hunt, the monkfish moves in a very unusual way: it jumps along the bottom, pushing off with its pectoral fins. For this they called him “frog”. Merging with the bottom, thanks to its protective color and leathery lobes, the sea devil lures prey to itself with a blade-shaped bait-esque, fluttering at the end of the illicium rod - the seventh ray of the dorsal fin, which is located on the head. The fish lies motionless on the bottom. Monkfish can hold their breath for several minutes. When the prey swims up to the hunter, the angler opens its mouth in a split second and noisily sucks in water along with the victim.
This large, predatory stomatopod crustacean has the most complex eyes in the world. If a person can distinguish 3 primary colors, then the mantis crab can distinguish 12. Also, these animals perceive ultraviolet and infrared light and see different types polarization of light. During an attack, the mantis crayfish makes several quick strikes with its legs, causing serious damage to the victim or killing it. Capable of striking with its claws with the force of a 22-caliber bullet, some particularly large specimens of mantis crabs are capable of breaking glass with one or a couple of blows to it.
23. Giant isopod
Giant isopods can reach 76 cm in length and weigh about 1.7 kg. They have a tough calcareous exoskeleton made up of overlapping segments and can roll into a “ball” for protection from predators. Usually the food is carrion; they can live up to 5 years without food.
22. Frilled shark
A dangerous creature native to the Cretaceous period. This shark hunts like snakes, bending its body and making a sharp lunge forward. Long and very mobile jaws allow large prey to be swallowed whole, while numerous rows of small and needle-sharp teeth prevent it from escaping.
21. Black Crookshanks
This fish is capable of swallowing prey 10 times heavier and twice as long as itself. Sometimes these fish swallow prey that they are unable to digest. The decomposition of the swallowed prey begins, and the accumulated gases cause the death of the predator and raise it to the surface of the water
20. Deep sea anglerfish
19. Holothurians
These sea cucumbers They are unusual in that they never touch the seabed, but rather drift in the water. Holothurians feed on plankton and organic debris. The mouth of the holothurian is surrounded by a corolla of 10-30 tentacles, which serve to capture food, and leads into a spirally twisted intestine.
18. Tunicates
An underwater version of the Venus flytrap. In the waiting state, their hunting apparatus is straightened, but if a small animal swims there, the “lips” are compressed like a trap, sending the prey to the stomach. To lure prey, they use bioluminescence as bait.
17. Sea Dragon
This fish with a huge mouth lined with sharp, crooked teeth uses bioluminescence to lure prey. Having caught a prey, the sea dragon's color darkens in order to camouflage itself from other predators and enjoy the prey.
16. Pacific viperfish
The mouth is armed with huge teeth protruding from the mouth. Luminous organs (photophores) are also scattered on the head and body, which help them hunt and distinguish their relatives. With the help of teeth, the victim is held tightly in the mouth and, when the jaws are closed, they are pushed into the esophagus, in the front part of which there are several curved spines. The long, pouch-like stomach of these fish can easily accommodate even large prey, which allows them to wait for the next successful hunt. Hauliodas eat approximately once every 12 days.
15. Swima
The most amazing representatives of polychaete worms. Worms are distinguished by the presence of small formations glowing with a greenish light, resembling droplets in shape. These tiny bombs can be thrown away, distracting the enemy in an emergency for several seconds, giving the worms a chance to escape.
14. Hell's Vampire
A small deep-sea mollusk. The hellvampire usually measures about 15 cm in length. Adults have a pair of ear-shaped fins growing from the sides of the mantle, which serve as their main means of locomotion. Almost the entire surface of the mollusk’s body is covered with luminescent organs - photophores. The hellish vampire has very good control over these organs and is capable of producing disorienting flashes of light lasting from hundredths of a second to several minutes. In addition, it can control the brightness and size of the color spots.
13. Stargazers
They got their name from their upward-pointing eyes. They are the only perciformes known to produce strong (up to 50 V) electrical discharges. They usually lie on the bottom, buried almost entirely in the ground, and lie in wait for prey. Some lure it with a special vermiform appendage at the bottom of the mouth.
Angels and devils are pteropods. Sea angels, or sea angels (Clione limacina), live mainly in the cold waters of the northern seas, beyond the Arctic Circle. This is a circumpolar species, that is, living at both poles, both under the ice of the Arctic and off the coast of Antarctica. In the northern hemisphere, the number of its representatives is much greater. The angelfish leads a planktonic lifestyle, swimming in the water column, from the murky depths of a thousand or more meters to the very surface. Wide, flattened wings help it swim - once upon a time, a long time ago, a crawling leg turned into them (hence the name of the group of mollusks - pteropods). Swimming in the water column and actively feeding, clyons quite quickly grow to their maximum size, which is only 4–5 centimeters. Afterwards, they begin to accumulate what they have eaten and digested in the form of subcutaneous fat drops, which is why a well-fed adult angel is dotted with small light dots.
Sea angels are extremely active predators, and their only prey is another pteropod - monkfish.Klion's nutrition is one of its most amazing features. Angels are extremely active predators, and their only prey is another pteropod, Limacina helicina, which is called monkfish for its dark, almost black color. Compared to angels, devils are very tiny - the size of their shell rarely exceeds a few millimeters, on average only two or three. Angels swim serenely almost all the time, slowly flapping their wings. But as soon as a devil appears nearby, the head of the klion instantly splits in two, and six huge orange hooks turn out of it - buccal cones covered with small rough tubercles. At the same time, the Klion begins to frantically flap its wings and swim in circles. As soon as the unfortunate victim touches one of the buccal cones, the angel collapses them, and the little devil is squeezed, as if between the fingers of two hands. Inside the head, in the center, there is another pair of hook-shaped jaws hidden, as well as a radula - a special chitinous “grater” with teeth, which is used for grinding food. Almost all known mollusks have it. After the angel grabs the devil, he needs to turn the mouth of the shell in such a way as to pull out the food from there. Despite the fact that the Limacina shell is very thin and fragile, only a large angel can break it. To rotate the shell into a comfortable position, the angel unclenches the buccal cones for half a second, then contracts again, and so on several times; In these seconds, the devil tries to escape, but every time he is caught, without even having time to flap his wings. Finally, he turns the way the angel needs, and he begins to eat. Hard hooks of the jaws pull the soft body of the mollusk out of the shell, and the radula grinds it into a puree, which enters the esophagus into the large stomach. The process of eating the devil is far from fast, so the angel continues to swim calmly, holding its prey between the halves of its head. If the predator is still small, only a couple of times larger than its prey, then it looks very comical - it swims as if in a helmet, with a devil on its head, since there is no other way to hold the captive - when the prey is caught, the buccal cones are retracted . Angels are quite voracious: in a season, one individual eats up to five hundred devils! From time to time there are unusual outbreaks in the numbers of both devils and angels. There were cases when there were more than 300 angels per cubic meter of water. The density of devils at times also exceeds all reasonable limits, and the sea becomes like an oversaturated living broth, when at low tide hundreds and thousands of these small pteropods remain in each puddle. It is surprising that, according to all observations, except for devils, angels do not eat anything at all. But devils appear en masse in the sea for a very short period of time - only two to three weeks at the end of spring - after which they disappear. Scientific research showed that on fat reserves accumulated during active feeding, angels are able to live without food for three to four months, but what they eat the rest of the time is a mystery, as well as where they go. After all, after the influx of devils, many angels immediately appear, and then they simply disappear from the plankton and are found very rarely. Despite the fact that angels were subjected to detailed anatomical studies back in the 19th century, and their physiology was studied very seriously for half of the 20th century, complete life cycle of these creatures, from birth to death, is unknown to science. No one can still explain their sudden disappearance. It is believed that they go deep and spend most of the year there. Unfortunately, their life cycle is extremely difficult to trace, since the necessary observations require expensive manned underwater vehicles with photo and video cameras and a lot of time and effort. “Animals living in the water column are very poorly studied,” says BBS director Alexander Tsetlin. – The fact is that even if they can be kept for some time in marine aquariums, they only survive there. To learn something about their behavior, nutrition, vision and other senses, you need to study them in their natural environment. That is, floating in the water with them, observing, photographing.” How do sea angels live and what do they do at great depths? BBS scientists find this mystery damn interesting and watch them from year to year.
Ecology
Nature sometimes surprises us a lot. We may encounter such bizarre forms of life on our planet that we may not even believe that they really exist. Marine life can be especially surprising, as they hide in such depths that rarely can anyone see them or capture them in photos or videos. Find out about amazing sea monsters that can only come to us in nightmares.
1) Fish that looks like a predator
This fish boasts a huge toothy mouth, which, undoubtedly, only a predator could have. Fish species Neoclinus blanchardi or, as it is also called, pike blenny, looks pretty scary. Before this sea creature opens its mouth, its appearance is not much different from that of ordinary fish, although he has strange wrinkled cheeks, like an old man. As soon as this “dog” opens its mouth, it turns into a terrifying monster that is ready to swallow you whole.
The pike blenny is an incredibly territorial creature. Pisces use their giant mouths to collide with each other, although their fights are somewhat reminiscent of two parachutes colliding.
2) Sea flycatcher
It may seem that these creatures were pulled out from the bottom of the impact crater of some alien planet, but they live on Earth, more precisely, in deep-sea canyons near California. Tunicate predators look like carnivorous plants flycatchers, but live in the depths of the sea. They anchor themselves to the bottom and calmly wait for unsuspecting prey to swim alongside their gaping, glowing mouth. As soon as the prey is near, the tunicate immediately grabs it. Having learned to hunt this way, these creatures cannot afford to be too picky about their diet.
In addition to the fact that carnivorous tunicates look like extraterrestrial life forms, they also have the ability to give birth to offspring without mating with other individuals, producing both eggs and sperm at the same time.
3) Fish that attacks from below
This living creature kind Astroscopus guttatus with not the most attractive appearance received the name speckled stargazer. This name evokes associations with some small, bright fish with large eyes, but this fish is not like that at all. Who else can count the stars? Obviously, this is the devil who sits on his throne somewhere in hell.
This fish spends most of its life buried in the mud at the bottom, looking from below at everything that moves nearby. Moreover, she has special organs above her eyes that can release electrical discharges.
4) A shark that looks like a rug on the floor
Looking at this creature, you cannot immediately tell whether it is a plant, an animal, or even an inanimate object. Actually it's carpet shark, which received this name because of its resemblance to a rug, although this rug has teeth and can bite painfully.
5) 7-meter fish
Remnetel or herring king is the longest bony fish in the world. What is the length of this giant? For example, in 1996, in California, the US military caught a 7-meter belt, which was not an easy task to pull out of the water. These giants are very rare to find, and most of those that are discovered are already dead. Although in a dead state such a monster is much better than in a living state. Apparently, it was this creature that became the prototype of the legends about the sea serpent - a terrible sea monster.
6) A real sea monster
You've probably heard that there are giant squids in the world, but it turns out that there are squids that are even larger than giant squids. In 2007, fishermen landed the largest known squid ever caught. The length of this monster was 10 meters, and its weight was about half a ton!
Eyewitnesses said that the eyes were the size of a large plate, and if it occurred to someone to make squid rings from this creature, then each such ring would be the size of a tractor tire.
The people who caught the giant were forced to freeze him right on the ship, apparently after a fierce struggle. Since then it has been on display in a New Zealand museum.
7) The largest fish in the world
8) Fish that can walk
Do you think that fish don’t need to have legs in the water at all, since they are not going to wander along the bottom? You are wrong! Some fish have something like legs. Fish family Brachionichthyidae, which were recently discovered near the island of Tasmania, Australia, not only have four “limbs” where they would have fins, but they can move them as they wander along the bottom. It looks very funny.
9) Fish that looks like an alien
Pisces of the genus Idiocant often called black devil fish because of their appearance. They live in the depths of the sea, where they cannot reach sunlight. They have a special hunting strategy: their body emits infrared light, which only they themselves can see, that is, these creatures have something like night vision goggles, when, like all other living beings, they are practically blind.
Interestingly, only the females of these fish have impressive teeth, and the males do not even have a well-functioning stomach. It has been suggested that males are needed only to give birth to offspring, therefore they have no use for all other organs except the genitals.
10) A clam that looks like a penis
This creature is called guidak, whose name is borrowed from the Indians and means "digging deep". The body of the mollusk extends far beyond the shell and makes it look like a male organ. These mollusks are distinguished by the fact that they have an impressive life expectancy - 140 years or more, and can also grow to large sizes (up to 1.5 kilograms or more). This shellfish is quite popular in Japanese and Chinese cuisine, where it is often eaten raw.