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7. Anglerfish
Known as a rare “black sea devil,” anglerfish (from the order Lophiiformes) are a deep-sea fish that marine biologists have been able to document in marine trenches. If you’ve watch the Disney-Pixar movie Finding Nemo, you’ll remember the scene when the goggles fell to the very bottom of the sea and Marlin and Dory were lured by a light only to find a large mouth and big teeth ready to eat them up. There are no exaggerations there. The anglerfish really is equipped to lure prey in.
Not scary enough, you say? Their mating process actually makes the female anglerfish more scary-looking.
Females are much larger than male anglerfish. When it’s time to mate, males simply bite the females and latch on until his body is fused with hers. Think of it as literally a free ride. The male is forever attached to the female and his eyes, fins, and some internal organs—atrophy, degenerate and wither away, until he’s little more than a lump of flesh hanging from the female. All he does is take food from her and provide sperm whenever she’s ready to spawn.
