Sunday, March 01, 2009

Psychedelic fish

No, it's not an acid trip vision. It's a real fish from Indonesia.

It's new, it's wild, and it's aptly named psychedelica, see photo at right. Histiophryne psychedelica for you latin name geeks. It's an angler fish without the classic dangling fake "lure" that many anglerfish use to attract prey.

I've seen things like this before, but only in bad dreams.

5 comments:

Bishfish said...

Anglerfish?
I think it may be a frogfish, it has the distinctive frogfish feature of fused front fins to allow it to 'walk' on the bottom.

Anonymous said...

Frogfish and Anglerfish are the same thing - both are common names for members of the family Antennariidae

Eric Heupel said...

I love the patterns meeting in the eyes, and those eyes...very cool little fish. A cousin of his caused me no end of pain in Belize when I sunburned my feet watching one in shallows off the pier. I could spend a llifetime watching fish like that.

Anonymous said...

For anyone who is interested the species description is published in Copeia 2009 No.1: 37-45

Anonymous said...

Wow... exotic fish..