HALLOWEEN PICTURES: Spooky Species Discovered This Year

[Kerry Lenzendorf]

HALLOWEEN PICTURES: Spooky Species Discovered This Year



October 29, 2009--While he may not vant to suck your blood, this male fish does sport spooky-looking fangs that have earned it the name Danionella dracula—and that's more than enough to qualify as a one of the spookiest new species announced in 2009.

The fangs of D. dracula--discovered in March 2009 in Myanmar (Burma)--aren't actually true teeth. The line of fish that gave rise to the ghoulish species is thought to have lost teeth for good around 50 million years ago.

Instead, researchers think the males use these extralong fangs to spar with each other during aggressive displays.
— Photographs courtesy Ralf Britz, Natural History Museum

[Kerry Lenzendorf]

A bizarre six-foot-long (two-meter-long) fish (species pictured in larval stage),  was found floating dead off Brazil's Bahia coast in September 2009. Later examination revealed that it was a rare type of bloblike fish from the deep.

(See video of the adult form of the newfound fish species.)

Such so-called jellynose fish--known for their soft, blunt noses and scaleless, tapered bodies--are thought to be bottom-feeders, eating whatever they can suck off the seafloor.
—Photograph by Dave Johnson

[Kerry Lenzendorf]

This newfound blind cave eel--one of 850 creatures discovered underneath Australia in 2009--has no need for eyes in its dark habitat.

At 16 inches (40 centimeters) long, the rare eel--found in aquifers along the Cape Range mountains--is the longest underground species known on the continent, researchers said.
— Photograph courtesy Douglas Elford, Western Australian Museum

[Kerry Lenzendorf]

The newly identified Eastern Pacific black ghostshark haunts waters thousands of feet deep off the coasts of California and Mexico's Baja California peninsula.

The odd fish, which has a club-like sex organ on its forehead, belongs to the mysterious and little-studied chimaeras--perhaps the oldest group of fish alive today, scientists said in September 2009.
— Ghostshark photographs courtesy MBARI (top) and by Kelsey James (bottom)

[Kerry Lenzendorf]

The fearsome-looking Hickmanolobus linnaei, eats tiny, spineless creatures in the leaf litter in New South Wales, Australia, scientists said in March 2009.

The spider is 1 of 19 new species, including a spider-killing wasp, found on the continent earlier this year.
—Photograph courtesy Mark Harvey, Western Australian Museum

[Kerry Lenzendorf]

An oddity among oddities, a new carnivorous sea squirt traps fish and other prey in its funnel-like front section, scientists announced in January 2009. Most of the 2,000 or so known sea squirt species are so-called filter feeders that strain plankton from seawater.

Tethered to the seafloor 13,143 feet (4,006 meters) underwater, the 20-inch (50-centimeter) sea squirt is one of the deepest-dwelling animals ever found in Australian waters (more on the carnivorous sea squirt and pictures of other creatures discovered off Australia).
—Photograph courtesy Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory WHOI