2007-04-28

Batfetishes

To help Myra figure out what her favorite fish is, here are some batfish.
The above batfish I was talking about (which I saw, unusually, swimming on the surface from a boat's deck in the Galapagos) is a member of the anglerfish family, Dibranchus atlanticus. It is normally a deep water bottom-dwelling fish, and nobody I was with had an explanation for what the thing was doing flopping around that night in the boat's running lights. They are so distinctive, however, that our identification was pretty certain.
The Flying Gurnard is another very distinctive batfish. It does, in fact, fly -- as much as any fish.

There is also a common aquarium fish called a batfish (a type of spadefish), as well as a Pacific stingray. Which is cheating, since stingrays are elasmobranchs like sharks, and we all know people really mean teleosts when they say fish. And probably other fish as well that I've never heard of.
This is the 1992 outfit Batman might wear to go collect some Dibranchus atlanticus -- Deep Dive Batman! Hand me down the shark repellent bat spray...

3 comments:

Jenny McQueen said...

Myra said "More batfish"

KRM said...

Hmm -- there is only one other Batfish I know of.

Q said...

This guy has a 3 m to 76 m depth range and lives in the right place.

http://filaman.ifm-geomar.de/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=8199