For a long time, deep-sea fish with a transparent head was perceived by ichthyologists not as a separate representative of the fish genus, but as an ugly sea creature. It is possible that it got into fishing nets earlier, but it was first described in 1939. Then scuba divers caught her in the abyss and tried to pull her out of the water to explore. But it turned out that a fish with a transparent head is unable to survive in other conditions. A transparent hollow ball covering her head bursts already in the upper layers of water.
Fishermen for her huge eyes called her barrel eyes . Indeed, a fish with a transparent head has eyes similar to two large cylinders compared to its body. This unique optical system
It has a high degree of photosensitivity and can very accurately focus on the subject. In fact, a fish with a transparent head has two powerful binoculars that can recognize objects even in absolute darkness. Interestingly, her body is small and slightly flattened from the sides. It is only ten to twelve centimeters long, but her green eyes in a transparent bubble covering her head are pronounced and cannot be combined with a small mouth.
It is interesting that only in 2004 ichthyologists got the opportunity to study this species of fish in the world's oceans thanks to the advent of new deep-sea technology.
With the help of such an apparatus, a fish with a transparent head, living at a considerable depth, was photographed, photos and videos made it possible to collect unique material about her habits. Therefore, today we know for sure that there are a lot of such amazing creations in the sea, and that they are all independent species of a very small family of opistoproct fish.
Their habitat zone is at a depth of two hundred and fifty to two thousand and five hundred meters. Scientists have already studied ten representatives of this family. It is wonderful that some of them he met only in a few copies. But the heroine of our story - a fish with a transparent head - is very numerous and widespread in the northern waters of the Pacific Ocean. Often find it in the waters washing the coast of Kamchatka.
According to scientists, the deep-sea habitat in the northern latitudes is the reason for the lack of vitamin D in the fish organism, therefore its skeleton is poorly developed. Her
muscular system is also weak, but her fins are wide and strong. Therefore, it was concluded that the small-sized macropinna swims little over long distances in the horizontal direction, and obtains food for itself, maneuvering in the water column mainly vertically.
Studies have confirmed this assumption. A fish with a transparent head maneuvers perfectly when searching for food. If during the day she hunts for drifting mollusks, plunging to a depth of two kilometers, then at night she can approach the surface of the water to a depth of twenty meters, where her favorite jellyfish live. The transparent spherical dome of the head allows the fish to continuously observe while scanning the space. When an interesting object is discovered, it focuses on it and overtakes the prey.