#lancet fish

[dinoserious]

some kind of manfish; design ive been poking at for like a week

[bethanythebogwitch]

It's October and I want to talk about something creepy, so this Wet Beast Wednesday is about the lancetfish. These things look like what would happen if a fish became a vampire. Lancetfish are the only members of their family, Alepisauridae and consist of two species: The longnose lancetfish Apleisaurus ferox and the shortnose lancetfish Apleisaurus brevirostris. While they are often caught as bycatch, there is still a lot we don't know about them.

(image: a lancetfish held by an angler. Its body is long, skinny, and silvery. Its dorsal fin extends down most of its back and is supported by a series of long, thin spines. Its head is pointed and the moth is very wide. It has a large, green eye. The tail is out of frame)

Lancetfish are long and skinny fish capable of reaching up to 2.08 meters (6.8 ft). Their dorsal fins are especially notable, stretching down most of their backs and being spiny, resulting in one common name for them being the "handsaw fish". The fin likely gives stability when the fish swims fast and can fold down. The fin is situated in a groove so when it folds down, the top of the fish is smooth and reduces drag. Lancetfish are also one of the relatively few fish to have an adipose fin. The mouth is large and opens very wide. It has long, skinny teeth that point backwards and are adapted to hold onto struggling prey. Their bodies have no scales, only smooth skin with pores for the lateral line. The name "Alepisaurus" means "scaleless lizard", a reference to their body shape and lack of scales. The stomach can expand to hold a very large volume. Lancetfish lack swim bladders and are simultaneous hermaphrodites, posessing male and female gonads at the same time. They show some anatomical differences from other hermaphroditic fish, including testicles that are independent from the ovaries.

(image: a lancetfish held by a child on a boat. More detain can be seen on the dorsal fin, which includes four spines that grow long past the webbing. The tail ends in a forked fin.

Lancetfish are found worldwide except for arctic regions and are more common in temperate to tropical waters, but have been found as far north as Greenland. They are found in the mesopelagic (twilight) and bathypelagic (midnight) zones, but sometimes swim closer to the surface and can be found at a huge variety of depths. They are unusually large for fish that live in those areas. They are generally believed to be solitary, but may gather together to mate. They may also be migratory, as they have been reported seasonally appearing and disappearing in some locations. Lancetfish do also travel to colder waters if food is scarce. They are predators with extremely wide diets that include fish, cephalopods, tunicates, and crustaceans. They are also notoriously cannibalistic, as lancetfish show up in the stomachs of other lancetfish very frequently. There have even beec cases of scientists finding a lancetfish inside of a lancetfish inside of a lancetfish. They are so well known for cannibalism that they are often named "cannibal fish". Lancetfish are likely ambush predators. Their muscles are gelatinous, which is unsuitable for chases but does work for sudden bursts of speed. They most likely hang motionless in the water, waiting for prey to pass. How lancetfish reproduce is unknown, but they are probably broadcast spawners.

(image: a lancetfish in its natural habitat. It is suspended vertically in the water, with the head pointing up. Its dorsal fin is folded back)

One interesting feature of lancetfish is how slow their digestion is. Lancetfish are often found with undigested or partially digested food in their stomachs. One hypothesis is that They digest food slowly wile living a low-energy lifestyle to make the energy gained from each meal last as long as possible. Another is that the stomach acts like storage and will only begin digestion if the fish is low on energy. This provides an interesting avenue of research. Lancetfish caught as bycatch or that was up on beaches can be dissected to investigate their stomach contents, which are so much more pristine than those of other species. This means each lancetfish acts as a net, containing tons of specimens that give us a good (if biased) look at the bathypelagic food web and local biodiversity. Scientists are starting to find a lot of plastic in lancetfish stomachs. It is hypothesized that some of this plastic may be ingested by prey who practice daily vertical migration bringing tiny pieces of plastic down into deeper waters where they are ingested by larger predators. Some plastic pieces found may be too large to be explained by this method alone, such as a fragment of a black plastic bag around the same size as a hand towel found in one lancetfish. This is part of growing evidence that shows plastic pollution is not just a problem for the surface as was previously though, but exists throughout the water column.

I told you, its a vampire fish (image: a close-up of a lancetfish head. Its mouth is open, showing the teeth. They are long, skinny, and sharp. Most are short, but a few on the top and bottom are much larger than the others)

Lancetfish are not commercially caught as there is no market for them. Their gelatinous meat is considered unappetizing, though it is also said to taste sweet. They are considered pests in longline fishing industries for taking bait intended for other species. The amount of lancetfish bycatch is increasing, possibly indicating population growth due to overfishing of their competition and prey. Known predators of lancetfish include tuna, cod, opah, salmon sharks, and sea lions. Because of how deep they live, not much is known about any conservation needs

(image: a juvenile lancetfih. Its body is green and translucent and much shorter than that of the adult. The head has the same shape as the adult. The dorsal fin is much smaller and less distinct. The body is curved at the spine and the internal organs are visible through the skin)

[baka-unico]

DEEP SEA FISH #1

Tripod fish, Bathypterois grallator

Pelican Eel,  Eurypharynx pelecanoides

Longnose lancetfish, Alepisaurus ferox

Deep sea fish are so fascinating, I love drawing them and learn about them so much :)

[sobbles-bog]

lancetfish leave me alone

leave me ALONE lancetfish 😔

[charminggold25]

Me: Ok,I have a lot of fursonas,I think I got enough of them.

My brain: yeah,but what about *insert non-common species*

Me: shucks

So I got,Komodo Dragon,Lancet Fish,Killer Whale and Dolphin.

Im going to make a Penguin one and an Elephant (this ones is going to be cisgender)

But yeah,All my sonas (most of them) are trans hehe

[oranglesswrld]

art i made awhile back for a friends art challenge (crochetedflower on insta) love throwing your ocs into a new world in seeing what happens

[larabar]

well now we gotta come full circle hbjsdfhbj top 3 marine animals >:]

AA YAYYYY MY GUYS !!!!!!!!!!!

ok ummmm ill try my best to not make them all cetaceans

3. oceanic white tip shark they are round!!! and have fish friends!!!! 10/10 best shark everyone except bamboo sharks go home

2. any sturgeon literally any of them. roping arapaimas in there too i love big freshwater fish :]

1. ORCAS RRAAAAA theyre my everything i cannot express. how much i adore them. specifically pack ice large type b's theyve got big ol eye(patch)s

[withheartsaligned]

only have managed to catch two of the train fish so far that i didn't have, but the vibes are so wonderful

[an-ale-of-a-tale]

       -- He’s still been fishing.

      He went all the way back to the First in order to get a trans glowy fishing rod.

[spinchboli]

I love you frilled sharks I love you goblin sharks I love you viper dogfish I love you Greenland sharks I love you Cookie cutter sharks I love you crocodile sharks I love you winghead sharks I love you angular roughsharks I love you whitetip reef shark I love you epaulette shark I love you deep sea dragon fish I love you barrel eye I love you viper fish I love you frog fish I love you tripod fish I love you angler fish I love you hatchet fish I love you fangstooth I love you lantern fish I love you deep sea giant isopods I love you vampire squid I love you glass squid I love you blobfish I love you chimeara I love you hagfish I love you deep sea lizard fish I love you snaggletooth eel I love you lancet fish I love you sturgeon I love you moray eel I love you worm goby I love you lemon shark I love you great white shark I love you mako shark I love you thresher shark I love you salmon shark I love you deep sea skate I love you megamouth shark I love you sixgill shark I love you sleeper shark Iove you bigfin squid I love you white spot jellyfish I love you firework jelly fish I love you telescope fish I love you gulper eel I love you snipet eel I love you oarfish I love you sea butterfly I love you firefly squid I love you ceolocanth I love you crocodile snake eel I love you crocodile fish I love you sea Angel I love you alligator gar I love you wels catfish I love you arapaima I love you piranha I love you koi fish daggernose sharks I love you threadfin snailfish I love you bony earred ass fish I love you sea robin I love you plecos I love you sawfish I love you sawshark I love you leopard shark I love you zebra shark I love you wobbegong shark I love you angel shark I love you sand tiger shark I love you deep sea batfish I love you bamboo sharks I love you rattail fish I love you nautilus I love you squid worm I love you fish creatures all very very much

[regexkind]

i was going to put 'when does cum start decomposing' after that question! anyway how much active cum[< 1d old] do you reckon's in the sea? do fishes cum. there'd be a lot of semen in that case. let's assume only human cum, that would be more ..intentional?

According to the Population Reference Bureau something like 3 billion people live within 200km of the coast. I would guess without evidence that most people who are cumming in the ocean are

- closer in than 200km

- not visiting (they're residents)

So the question is how many people live within say 25km of the coast, which I would personally consider to be a more reasonable travel distance, with some caveats:

- I've ever traveled over 1000 miles for sex but that's the exception for me and not the rule

- if I was a Real Analyst or whatever I'd do some sort of integral where the integration region was "the populated world" and the term of integration was a product of "distance by land to the coast, multiplied by a term reflecting how economic means impact your capability for traveling." I could be a Real Analyst or whatever but by god my head is pulsing like a food processor right now. You're getting an abridged analysis.

According to Bill Moyers (ok, really PBS, but it's way funnier to cite him in a sex thing), some 1.1 billion people live within 25km of the coastline. I think it's actually pretty reasonable to assume most of these people live near "warm" water that won't kill you by swimming in it.

So now the question really becomes, what portion of people are the kinds of deviants who would engage in such behavior, and how often is sex in the ocean on the menu for the day? We can assume then that (# of people who had sex today in the ocean) * (jizz volume) * (percentage that stays in the (p|b|thr)ussy) is a reasonable estimate.

One of the biggest issues is that according to Quora (god I'm sorry for this C-grade source lmao) sex in the ocean is fun in theory and miserable in practice. Seems likely that of those who have sex in the ocean, those who do are not likely to repeat the experience. So we can estimate and say that of the coastal kinkster population, (1/lifespan) is the probability that they had sex today. AGAIN it would be so beneficial to do this weighted in a way that reflects how geography and lifespan interact. But I ain't doing that this morning.

So that leaves deciding what proportion of people are open to having sex in the ocean. Now this is just a ballpark estimate and I'm going to pretend that it's reasonable to say somewhere between 1% and 10% of people are so inclined. I have no data and no idea how to acquire it.

According to the Lancet, the life expectancy globally is like. 70 years. So our jizzers of the day can be estimated as

1.1 B * (range of kinky ppl) * (1/(365*70))

Which is between 430 and 4300 jizzers.

The volume of semen according to Medline is somewhere between 1.5 to 5.0 mL. Let us say that half the jizz ends up in the ocean, so 0.75 to 2.5mL.

Then we have 322mL as a floor and 11L as a ceiling.

A Fermi estimate is supposed to have the range of an order of magnitude and this is closer to 2 orders of magnitude. Sorry Mr. Feynman for letting you down.

This analysis also clearly fails to e.g. account for semen that is flushed down the toilet and directly into the ocean. But I'm gonna call it good and pass out for a hot second.

[xdraonarts]

Made my very own fake digimon last night since I’ve been having a low-key digirenaissance for the past few months, Intended to be a digi-egg of reliability evolution for my absolutely favorite digimon, Demidevimon! I’m sure it can be a decent edgy champion stage for some of the more marine-flavored digimon like otamamon as well, though

I was originally gonna call them Lancetmon since the Lancet Fish was my first point of inspiration for how this guy looked, but I think it lost all the lancetfish inspiration in favor of another deep sea fish called the dragon fish so I’m kinda lost for any other names at the moment.

[plaguedocboi]

top 5 creatures? (real or fictional; you choose)

I can’t possibly narrow down to top 5 creatures of all time so I’m gonna go with the creatures that are currently living rent free in my brain

1. Caddisfly larvae. They build little houses!!! Also there’s Philopotamidae, which straight looks like a shrimp.

2. All sea slugs, especially free-swimming ones, and especially the ones that are so highly modified they don’t even look like slugs anymore (example, Phylliroe, which looks and swims like a fish).

3. Ribbon worms! They have cool mouths.

4. Lancets, which are basically The Chordates of all time.

5. Giant salamanders. There are Always giant salamanders in my brain.

[ver-caster]

Caught two more fish over the weekend, the legendary Drepanaspis and while I didn’t get Lancet, I did get a compensation Starchaser!

[casenpai]

Local man in (Lancet) fish jail for fish crimes.

[hollowpelt-does-things]

dont mind me slipping in before the end of May~~

My original idea was to base them off of one type of marine animal each, but I feel in love with them being native to kelp forests soooo Sun's design is inspired by a Leafy Seadragon while Moon is inspired by Leopard Sharks. Both has aspects of Butterfly Koi and Lancet Fish in their designs as well!