![]() ![]() Considering boats have brought the young up on baited lines, the fish appear to be active predators as juveniles.īut even though it’s removed from the relative safety of the seafloor, the juvenile is far from conspicuous, having evolved its own form of clever camouflage. “We thought it was a different species entirely,” says Gomon, “but the form of the body changes quite dramatically” between the juvenile and adult stages. Its eyes and mouth, for instance, aren’t angled as far back on the head, allowing it to better tackle prey straight ahead. The juvenile’s body is uniquely suited for this lifestyle. But this species’ larva spends an inordinate chunk of its life braving a zone even more dangerous than the seafloor, the open ocean, only settling once it’s reached a foot long. Other stargazers will swim around as juveniles and settle into the sand once they reach about 2 inches long. Which makes one species, Pleuroscopus pseudodorsalis, particularly strange. Really, though, the stargazers’ strategy is to go unseen. This has an added bonus of hiding the stargazers from their own enemies swimming above. To get a jump on their prey, the fish burrow into the sand, exposing only their mouths and bug-eyes. ![]() Death comes from above, sideways, and, with the strategy of the 50 or so species of stargazer thrown in the mix, from below. Unless you’ve got a coral reef to duck into, the bottom of the ocean is a place of constant peril. ![]() singular looks, this is one of the sea’s most remarkable fishes-it’s venomous and it shocks like an electric eel. The bulging eyes and frowny mouth that make it look like an aquatic pug are brilliant adaptations for an ambush predator. It may not be worrying about a visit from Child Protective Services, but it does have to worry about eating. It’s a kind of terror a fish known as the stargazer embodies its entire life. You freeze, you go wide-eyed, and your jaw drops a little. Or in the case of two particularly irresponsible parents in the early ‘90s, I left Macaulay Culkin in the house, didn’t I. You get a half hour away from the house and realize, I left the stove on, didn’t I. ![]()
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