#20: Barreleye Fish
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| We're starting out big already! |
This species of deep-sea fish has a mostly clear head. They get their name because of their barrel-shaped eyes. These eyes are telescoping and usual face upwards but can be rotated forwards.
#19: Japanese Spider Crab
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| You better be glad this guy can't make its home in your basement! |
This deep diving species of crab gets its name because its super long legs make it look like the world's biggest spider. While they look threatening and have fairly long reaching claws, they are fortunately harmless to humans.
#18: Cone Snail
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| Don't touch it! You'll die! |
These snails catch pray by stabbing them with biological harpoons filled-with venom and then swallowing them whole. When not hunting they lie buried in the sand, with a nostril poking out for breathing. The venom these snails have is strong enough to kill a human and currently there is no anti-venom for it.
#17: Northern Stargazer
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| Don't give me that look! |
This fish has its eyes, nostrils and mouth on top of its head. It is also camouflaged to resemble the sea floor. These fish hunt by burying themselves in the sand, leaving their eyes peeking out, and jumping out at any fish that get within striking range.
#16: Gulper Eel
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| Don't challenge this fish to an eating contest! |
The eel part of this creature's name is a misnomer, as it technically isn't an eel. The gulper part on the other hand is very accurate, as this fish can open its jaw wide enough to devour prey that's twice its own size.
#15: Zebra Worm
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| Stretch it, baby! |
These worms spend most of their time under rocks on reefs and tide pools. When resting they are about 76 centimeters, but they can expand 50 times that size. They capture annelid worms and small crustaceans using a strong proboscis armed with a barbed stylet.
#14: Sea Pig
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| You won't get this pig's bacon! |
Contrary to the name, these guys are actually sea cucumbers. They get their name because of their plump, pink bodies and short legs. They spend their days shifting through the undersea mud looking for small animals to eat.
#13: Scaled Wormsnail
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| He slimed me! |
This is a species of sea snail that spends its entire life clinging to a single area. To hunt it shoots out large nets made of slime to capture microorganisms and bits of kelp for consumption. It also has 2 tentacles to sense the direction of the water currents.
#12: Vampire Squid
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| Somebody call the SCP Foundation! |
The tentacles of this creepy little cephalopod sports various sharp spines and a webbing that wraps around them. For defense it can either wrap its tentacles around its body, spray a bioluminescence ink that confuses predators or emit a bluish light to camouflage itself in the water. Funnily enough it's Latin name, Vampyrotheuthis infernalis, actually translates to vampire squid from Hell.
#11: Venus Flytrap Anemone
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| That's one fatal flower! |
Sea anemones as a whole are pretty strange, but these guys take it up a notch. In addition to the venomous tentacles, these creatures can close up just like their terrestrial plant namesakes. They can be rooted to their posts via long string-like growths and will root themselves either to rocks like other anemones or to dead animals.
#10: Hagfish
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| What? It's just an ordinary... OH MY GOODNESS!!! |
These fish are the only known creatures in the world to possess skulls, but no spines. They also lack fins, instead swimming with their paddle-like tails. They have jawless mouths full of sharp teeth that they use to devour undersea corpses. When attacked they spew out large amounts of slime to drive away predators.
#9: Brittle Star
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| Shuma-Gorath had babies! |
This thing isn't a sea star, but it is related. While it has 5 spine covered tentacles, it is harmless, and it moves around using 5 little feed-like protrusions on its underside. As if that wasn't strange enough, its mouth is located in between its feet, said mouth has 5 jaws and it also excretes waste through its mouth.
#8: Goblin Shark
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| A face fit for a screamer prank! |
This is a deep diving species of shark with a distinctively scary face, complete with sword-like nose and a jaw that extends outwards to catch prey. They are also called living fossils because they have a lineage that goes back over 100 billion years.
#7: Comb Jelly
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It's a living light show! |
This is a collection of jellyfish-like creatures that use multicolored cilia to move around. Each species is different in appearance and behavior: Some species catch prey with long, sticky tentacles, while others have huge mouths that open wide when they touch something.
#6: Anglerfish
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| My what big teeth you have! |
This species is an extreme case of sexual dimorphism. The females are the ones you've probably seen before, the ones that have luminous lures on their heads that attract prey to their waiting, spike filled mouths. The males are much smaller and instead of hunting, they permanently attach themselves to females to feed off of and fertilize the eggs.
#5: Christmas Tree Worms
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| Ho ho ho and an ocean of strangeness! |
These colonial worms live in tropical water and get their name because of their Christmas tree-like appendages. These are appendages are their mouths, which are covered in feathery tentacles that push food towards their digestive apparatus.
#4: Bobbit Worm
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| Bob it! Pull it! Bury it! Eat its liver!!! |
These disturbing worm-like creatures bury themselves in the ocean floor, waiting for other aquatic creatures to swim by. When a fish or other sea creature swims too close, it lunges out of its burrow, grabs the hapless prey with its many mouthparts and drags it underground to be devoured.
#3: Enypniastes eximia: Headless Chicken Sea Cucumber
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| Here's something you wont find in Bikini Bottom! |
This sea cucumber got its name because it resembles a chicken who lost its head. As if that didn't differentiate it from most other sea cucumbers, this guy doesn't stay on the sea flood for nearly its entire life. Instead, it swims around and only lands on the ocean bottom to feed.
#2: Blob Fish
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| Why the long face? |
These gelatinous fish don't have any bones in their bodies, instead getting their structural support from the extreme depths that they inhabit. It's also because of this fact that they look the way they do when they're on dry land.
#1: Zooids
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| That's no worm (at least no single worm)! |
These are tiny worm-like creatures that band together in colonies to form various different animals. One such animal is the giant pryrosome (pictured above), which is a filter feeding animal with holes on both sides of its body that can grow up to 60 feet in length. Another example is the siphonophore, a super long string-like creature that uses stinging tentacles to catch small animals not unlike jellyfish and sea anemones. They are also a candidate for longest creature on Earth, with the longest one recorded allegedly being 150 feet long!
If you were aquaphobic before, I apologize if these guys made your fear of swimming bigger. With the deep oceans being as poorly mapped out as they are, there's bound to be more unusual creatures that we haven't found yet. Some honorable mentions include the Dumbo Octopus (that thing's downright adorable compared to these monsters!), the giant squid (the vampire squid is way odder), the frog fish (I'll talk about that in a list of unique fish), and the lamprey (those are freshwater fish). If you can think of any other bizarre sea monsters I might've missed, dive on down to the comment section. Thanks for reading and be glad these beasts don't live in your backyard pool!
