Discover the Top 10 Bizarre Deep-Sea Creatures You Won’t Believe Exist. It’s been said that 95% of all the waters in the world remain unexplored. The deepest parts of the ocean, especially, are a challenge to unravel, as they pose a lot of biological and engineering challenges just to get there. As such, almost anything that comes out of its dark depths always looks bizarre, almost alien to us. Let’s shed some light on some of the most bizarre deep-sea creatures you won’t believe exist!
- Weird Octopuses
Octopuses are already strange creatures. They have eight separate, dexterous tentacles, a very squishy, flexible body, nine brains, three hearts, and blue blood. They even have an intelligence level that rivals that of dolphins and orangutans. However, our regular tentacle friends actually look rather tame compared to their deep-sea versions. Here are some of the strangest you’ll find in the deep sea:
- Flapjack octopus – they live between 200 to 1500 meters below the ocean and are mostly native to the eastern Pacific, with a few species scattered throughout the mid-Atlantic ocean. With its tiny size, gelatinous body, almost adorable build, and eyes that just seem to sparkle with curiosity, it completely differentiates itself from the more grotesque and extended build of an ordinary octopus.
- Casper octopus – make a flapjack octopus more translucent and give it a rounder body, and this is what you have. The informally named Casper octopus gets its inspiration from its ghastly look. First found thousands of meters deep in the Hawaiian seas, they have been observed to lay their eggs on the stalk of dead sea sponges and then guard them to the death, literally. They will wrap themselves around the sponge without leaving or ever feeding until they finally die. Now that’s dedication!
- Dumbo octopus – as you may have already guessed, its nickname is derived from its ears, which are actually fins with a peculiar shape. Just like the flapjack and the Casper ghost octopus, it also has a seemingly smaller build than the average octopus, which allows it to thrive at depths as deep as 7,000 meters below sea level.
- Anglerfish
Of course, we can’t talk about the deep sea without mentioning just about every super wide-jawed oddity that lurks down there. On the top of the list is none other than the anglerfish, which gets its name from its unusual hunting method, which involves luring prey close to its mouth using that weird luminescent appendage coming out of its head. Apart from that, it has a very unusual mating process, similar to humans. Male anglerfish spend their lives finding a single female through pheromones she releases. Once found, he bites onto the female and fuses onto her like a parasite. He gets his nutrients from her to survive and is practically an on-demand testicle ready to reproduce when the female needs sperm.
Another frightening fish is the Viper fish, measuring around 60 centimeters or 23 inches in length. It’s essentially an angler fish made to look even more alien. Its fangs’ jaws can open wide to almost 90 degrees, and it’s similarly configured bioluminescent lure can invite shallower fish down to their instant doom.
Probably even more hideous are deep-sea dragonfishes, a similar class of wide-jawed monsters that make Viper fish look like they’re incomplete cousins. What’s particularly special about this fish is they don’t just produce blue light like most other deep-sea creatures. They also produce red light. To emit this
