Longnose lancetfish
Alepisaurus ferox
— Where the name comes from
Alepisaurus is “scaleless lizard”, from the privative a-, lepís and saûros: the body is entirely naked, soft and silvery. Ferox states the character, and the teeth bear it out — long, thin and curved like darning needles. The common name looks at the blade-like shape of the whole animal.
— Facts
- Group
- Fish · Actinopterygii · Chondrichthyes
- Order
- Lizardfishes and allies
- Habitat
- Open sea between 200 and 1,800 metres, higher at night
- Range
- All oceans except the Arctic
- Size
- 100–150 cm, up to 215 cm; 5–8 kg
- Diet
- Fish, squid, jellyfish, salps, crustaceans
- Lifespan
- unknown
— Characteristics
- 01
It carries a sail on its back as tall as its body, which it can fold away.
- 02
Its muscles are soft and jelly-like: it swims little and saves energy.
- 03
It is hermaphroditic: every individual has both male and female organs.
— What sets it apart
Its stomach is a scientific instrument. It swallows whatever passes and digests it extremely slowly, so the gut contents of a captured specimen are a nearly intact sample of what lives in the mesopelagic zone: oceanographers open it and find species of squid and fish no net can catch, some of them described for the first time that way. Increasingly they also find fragments of plastic — and that is how some of the first time series on deep-sea pollution were obtained.
