Small fish, big appetite

There's a lot of strange animals out there, and sometimes it'll prompt us to think if those creatures in science fiction really does exist? Today we'll look at fish bizarre enough to give you nightmares. The picture shown below is species of fish found in deep seas and also hot tropical waters up to 1,500 meters. It's scientific name is Chiasmodon niger, or better known as the Black or Great Swallower. The Great swallower can grow up to 25 centimeters.

A typical food chain would normally be large animal eating medium size, and medium size animal preying on the smaller size. The Great Swallower reversed all we have learned about food chain. If you look carefully, besides its strange monstrous look, it has an overproportioned large mouth. By now, you should've guessed where it earn its name from. This creature can actually swallowed prey that's 3-4 times larger. It has a belly that can expand like a balloon to accommodate the larger prey. One of the explanation why they need to hunt for prey that's larger than its size is because, well, they don't have to hunt at all! All it need to do is to wait for a predator to attack, not knowing that seconds later they've turned into a prey.

In October 2007, Local fisherman, McPherson ‘Dorson’ Wright while fishing in about 1,400 feet of water off the South Coast of Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, Mr. Wright’s spotted an object that was floating on the surface nearby. What he found was a Great Swallower. That's not all, in the belly of the Great Swallower was another fish, it was a Snake Mackerel that was more than four times its own length!

When he took it to the Department of the Environment to investigate further, marine scientist Phillippe Bush snapped some photographs and sent them up to the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in the United States. A short time later, Tracey Sutton wrote back saying the fish “was appropriately called a ‘Great Swallower’ and it normally lives in deep water.” The scientist was clearly excited by the pictures he was looking at. Mr. Sutton wrote saying “This is amazing! I have seen this fish with big prey before but yours takes the cake. It would surely rank as one of the largest, if not the largest, rations known among all fishes (relative to their own weight).”

The scientist at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute also offered to pay to have Mr. Wright’s fish shipped to the United States. The Great Swallower found off South Sound was just 7.5 inches in length. The fish it had eaten, an extremely aggressive Snake Mackerel, measured 34 inches, which is close to three feet in length. Local Marine Scientist Phillippe Bush was in awe of the smaller fish’s appetite. Since the Great Swallower lives in deep water, not much is known about this species, and scientist is still puzzled how on earth did the Great Swallower manage to avoid an attack by the Snake Mackerel and then turned it into dinner.

Source : filaman.ifm-geomar.dete
Source : www.caycompass.com

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