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Recently, at a depth of 1, 600 meters off The coast of Hawaii, Nautilus scientists encountered a strange-looking, mysterious creature called ”gulper eel.”
At first, the creature also saw the scientists and puffed up his body to show that he was big. Then, feeling safe, he slipped away.
What is that mysterious creature, and why is it so strange-looking? How can you let your body get bigger and smaller? It's today's hero, one of the strangest-looking creatures of the deep sea -- the gulper eel.
The phagocytic eel is a deep-sea fish with a short, fat body and a long abdomen area. Some phagocytic eels are about 60 centimeters long, while others can reach up to 2 meters.
It was curious for its grotesque appearance, with its huge jaws loosely attached to its head, which opened like a net. The jaw muscle is the only muscle developed, perhaps to allow the devouring eel to quickly open its lower jaw and swallow its prey into its large mouth. When it opens its mouth wide, it can easily swallow animals larger than itself, giving it the name of "umbrella mouth devourer" in the West, while it is called "wide swallow fish" in Chinese. It is also known in the West as a pelican eel.
Gulper eels have very small eyes, and they use their eyes to detect light. Since the deep layers are very dark, vision is not important.
The tail of a gulper eel is so long, about three quarters of its body length, that it ends in a whip-like shape, and wide-gulper fish hauled to the surface are often found with their tails tied in several knots.
Like many deep-sea fish, they have a glow on the tip of their tail that glows red, and scientists think they may often hold their tail in front of their mouth as bait to lure prey. Observations of them show that they like to swim in circles, perhaps to chase prey that are chasing their tails, or to entangle prey with their long tails.
Now that we know who the devouring eel is, where do such strange creatures live? These eels live in the deep waters of the world's oceans, inhabiting depths ranging from 914 to 1,829 meters to 1,524 to 1,829 meters. But they can't swim to the surface because the change in water pressure will kill them. Devouring eels live in cold, dark parts of the ocean, where they never see sunlight in their lifetime. Humans rarely see fish, and only a few fishermen catch them.
Juveniles live in the photosynthetic zone at depths of 100 to 200 meters, where strong photosynthesis enables phagocytic eels to grow up healthy and swim to the bottom as adults. Adult males enlarge their olfactory organs and lose teeth and jaws, while females do not. But the females bite their prey more aggressively than the males.
Because the gulper eel has no ribs, its stomach is so stretchy that the gulper eel can expand its stomach to lower prey. However, do not therefore misunderstand it to eat large animals, in fact, its main food or slow swimming small fish, shrimp and so on, when eating a big meal or a few.
Although the mouth is large, it cannot be greatly expanded, and its weak structure and small teeth prevent it from catching large prey. In the water, they sometimes hang their glowing balls near their mouths. Gulper eels are not good swimmers, and they usually use their glowing balls on their tails to attract the attention of prey.
When feeding, the gulper eels swim in a circular path, luring prey with red light from their tails. When prey comes within range, they wrap their long tails around it before eating it. Like most deep-sea fish, gulper eels swim with their mouths open and eat anything that floats in their mouths.
