I have just discovered how the deep-sea anglerfish mates. My apologies if this is old ichthyological news to you, but it is new news to me, and it is very definitely going to be the hook for this week’s column.
The female deep-sea anglerfish is very large compared with the male deep-sea anglerfish. In some species, he sniffs her out (using his giant nostrils) and upon finding his mate, he bites into her, his teeth and lips then dissolving into her flesh. His little fishy body dangling off hers like a limp appendage, he loses himself utterly, including the use of his eyes – what is the point of them, when he has hers? Some males “become little more than blobs or skin tags”, says James Maclaine, senior curator of fish at the Natural History Museum. The two fuse together so completely as to become one physiological entity, with one combined bloodstream, living one life and, eventually, dying one death.
