When we look back at the animal kingdom, we are greeted by innumerable living things with different characteristics. While these traits may seem cool to us, we don’t think much of them arising mainly out of necessity. For example, cats’ strange ears enable them to hear extremely well, while their eyes allow them to see well in low light. Their appearance is largely formed in the context of these needs.
This is true not only on land, but also in the oceans. Especially when we look at the creatures that we are not used to seeing every day, that live in the deepest parts of the ocean and that scare most people, many features that we are not used to seeing in the ocean creatures we know stand out.
When you look at these deep creatures, their big eyes attract attention. But isn’t the bottom of the ocean just dark?
First of all, yes, these areas where sunlight cannot reach are naturally quite dark. But most of the creatures living here have the ability to produce their own light. This makes light a tool for mating and hunting.
In order to catch this light, big eyes are needed, as in the creatures we see in the depths. While this doesn’t provide a completely clear picture, it can be critical for survival in an almost-everything consumer environment.
As an example of creatures with their own light, let’s look at the anglerfish (specifically, the melanocetidae family), which we encounter especially in the cinema world.
On the top of his head we can see that light that makes him special. Thanks to this light, it can attract its prey towards itself.
Through the same light, the male of the species can find the female and thus mating can be achieved. In other words, this is a feature that evolves in line with needs.
There is something strange about the posture of these creatures, but we did not know exactly what it was. So what is this due to?
What makes their overall shape strange is their body, which has adapted to the enormous pressure on them. When you think about these conditions, you can see that they actually have perfect physical features according to their environment.
Let’s take another example from the angler fish.
The abdomen of the species in question has the capacity to expand so much that they can hunt creatures up to twice its size.
The advantage of this is that, contrary to what is on the surface, the logic of “you will eat what you find” is valid for deep food.
It’s not unusual for these creatures to starve for long periods of time, but this feature, found in anglerfish and many other species, makes it possible for them to sort of stock up on their food.
Their disproportionately large mouths and teeth also have a reason.
It is noteworthy that the mouth part of most deep-sea creatures has a huge expansion capacity. Of course, without the disproportionately large sharp teeth, it doesn’t mean much to them.
These teeth prevent prey from escaping once caught. For the creatures that enter the giant mouth we mentioned, these teeth turn into bars that prevent them from coming back.
You may have noticed that some of these creatures are transparent.
There’s not much to hide behind at the bottom of the ocean. This makes it possible for transparent creatures to camouflage in their natural state and survive in this way.
Apart from the transparent ones, it is noteworthy that there are also bright red-colored creatures in the deep. This is an effective camouflage method, as most of the creatures here cannot distinguish red.
So how come their bodies are not harmed?
As we dive deeper, the air in our body is compressed more and more. Fish that do not live in deep have air sacs that allow them to rise and fall in water.
However, these air sacs are not found in deep-sea creatures. Therefore, there is no air to be compressed. Therefore, their bodies are not harmed.
Blobfish, which has become a legend on the internet and was once chosen as the ‘ugliest animal’, is one of the creatures that live in the deep:
But this creature doesn’t actually look like that. This creature, which does not have a musculature, skeleton and air bladder as we know it, uses water itself as a support like other species. For this reason, while it conforms to the definition of fish, which we are very accustomed to in the deep, it distorts when we bring it to the surface.
It would not be nice to say that, but when we consider the pressure change in question, we can say that it has even preserved its shape quite well.
When you collect what we have listed here one by one, strange views appear before you. But as we said; These are all features that arise out of necessity.
Sources: Monterey Bay Aquarium, BioGeoPlanet, Science ABC
25282
