If you're looking for bizarre creatures that defy explanation, there is no better place to look than the deep sea. Every year, researchers capture incredible footage of alien-looking animals and strange new species lurking in the deep, and this year was no different. Here is our list of the top 10 weirdest deep-sea creatures.
Fangtooth
Fangtooths are beryciformfish of the family Anoplogastridae (sometimes spelled "Anoplogasteridae") that live in the deep sea. The name is from the Greekanoplo, meaning "unarmed", and γαστήρ (gastḗr), meaning "stomach". With a circumglobal distribution in tropical and cold-temperate waters, the family contains only two very similar species in one genus, with no known close relatives.
Blood-red jellyfish
Like a floating beret fringed with thin tassels, the jelly in question has a blood-red body and appears to belong to the genus Poralia, the researchers said in a statement. Only one other Poralia species has been described so far — Poralia rufescens, which has a bell-shaped body, 30 tentacles and lives in deep water across the world's oceans.
Elusive glass octopus
The glass octopus (Vitreledonella richardi) is a very rarely seen cephalopod found in tropical and subtropical waters around the world. The species gets its name from its nearly-transparent body—you can see straight through to the optic nerve, eyes and digestive tract. These octopuses mostly live in the aphotic zone, meaning deep waters where sunlight doesn’t reach, at around 3,000 feet. They can grow to about 1.5 feet long and are estimated to live about 2-5 years.
Zooplankton
Zooplankton are the animal component of the planktonic community ("zoo" comes from the Greek word for animal). Plankton are aquatic organisms that are unable to swim effectively against currents, and consequently drift or are carried along by currents in the ocean, or by currents in seas, lakes or rivers.
Zooplankton can be contrasted with phytoplankton, which are the plant component of the plankton community ("phyto" comes from the Greek word for plant). Zooplankton are heterotrophic (other-feeding), whereas phytoplankton are autotrophic (self-feeding). This means zooplankton cannot manufacture their own food but must eat other plants or animals instead — in particular they eat phytoplankton. Zooplankton are generally larger than phytoplankton, most are microscopic, but some (such as jellyfish) are macroscopic and can be seen with the naked eye.
Leptocephalus larva
The marine eels and other members of the Superorder Elopomorpha have a leptocephalus larval stage, which are flat and transparent. This group is quite diverse, containing 801 species in 24 orders, 24 families and 156 genera. They arose in the Cretaceous period 140 million years ago.
Leptocephali have laterally compressed bodies that contain jelly-like substances on the inside, with a thin layer of muscle with visible myomeres on the outside. They have a simple tube as a gut. They have dorsal and anal fins, but they lack pelvic fins. They also don’t have any red blood cells, which they only begin produce when the change into the juvenile glass eel stage. They also possess fang-like teeth that are present until metamorphosis, when they are lost.
Shape-shifting whalefish
There are three members of the Cetomimidae family: Tapetails, Bignose, and whalefish, the Smithsonian said.
Tapetails are the young fish, or larvae, according to the museum. “They use their upturned mouths to gorge on small shellfish.” Next are the bignose, who are the males and “feed off their huge livers and use their large nasal organs to sniff for females.” Lastly are the whalefish, which Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute spotted. These female fish “use their gaping mouths to capture large prey,” the Smithsonian said. When tapetails grow up, two very different forms take shape: bignose or whalefish, according to the Smithsonian.
Emperor Dumbo
The Emperor Dumbo is about 30 centimeters long. Evolutionary biologist Dr. Alexander Ziegler recovered it from depths of more than 4,000 meters in the North Pacific.
According to Ziegler The creature was about the size of a human head and had eight webbed arms. The pair of fins on the side of its body clearly marked it as a Dumbo octopus—so-called because the fins resemble the oversized ears of Disney’s cartoon elephant.
Dragonfish & Hatchetfish
The thread-tail fish and the boxer snipe eel have long, thin, ribbon-like bodies. The thread-tail’s body is about 30 centimetres long, with streamers twice as long on its tail, which gives this fish its name. Its other name is the ‘tube-eye fish’ thanks to the binocular-like lenses of its eyes, which are used to spot the shadows of prey in the twilight zone. So unusual is the tube-eye fish, that it’s the only species in an entire taxonomic order.
The boxer snipe eel grows to nearly 1.5 metres long, and feeds by sweeping its long jaws through the water, snagging the appendages of passing crustaceans on its fine teeth.
Thread-tail fish & Boxer snipe eel
In the fish-eat-fish world of the twilight zone, creatures tend to strip away all the body parts that don’t serve them. Over time, the snipe eel has taken this evolutionary asceticism to the extreme, paring its body down to a mere filament at the end. In the case of N. scolopaceus (the slender snipe eel), the only place its anus would fit is on its slightly wider throat. Males of this species also shorten their jaws and lose their teeth as they grow, perhaps signaling their sexual maturity. As thin as they are, snipe eels haven’t skimped on their backbone, however: N. scolopaceus holds the evolutionary honor of having the most vertebrae of any species on earth (750 on average).
Various species of snipe eels have been caught—either alone or in the bellies of other fish—in waters as deep as 4,500 meters (14,800 feet). They’re most commonly found between 300 to 600 meters, or about 1,000 to 2,000 feet. Like most eels, juveniles (known as leptocephali) are flat and transparent, a trait that lets them hide in plain sight in the warm surface layers of tropical and temperate seas.
Anglerfish
Life can be scarce in the dark depths, which is a problem when animals need to find a partner for mating. Hanging on to a potential mate is a good solution, and some deep-sea anglerfishes take that to extremes.
The males are much smaller than the females, and when boy meets girl, he gives her body a kiss that lasts the rest of his life. The male’s blood supply joins up with the female’s through his lips, and he lives off her like a parasite while she catches prey with her bioluminescent lure. But the dangling male is a handy accessory for the female to carry around, ready to fertilise her eggs when she releases them.
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