The deep sea's real-life monsters are getting some extra close-up time in the spotlight in a traveling Smithsonian exhibit called "X-Ray Vision: Fish Inside Out," LiveScience reports.
According exhibit curator Lynne Parenti, the striking X-Ray images allow scientists to "study the skeleton of a fish without dissecting or in any other way altering the specimen."
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The only really amazing thing about these radiographs is that none, absolutely none, are of deepsea fishes. The first, for example is a species of carangid found in somewhat offshore coastal waters rather near the surface. The stargazer, tiggerfish, seahore likewise are all inshore, shallow water species.
The most amazing thing represented by this slide show is the extreme lack of knowledge in Biology that is evident on social media sites. This kind of ignorance about our natural world has profound implications, considering that that very natural world is disappearing at an alarming rate right before our eyes, yet most people who contribute to that destruction are completely ignorant about it. We like to think that we have many important concerns, but in reality the loss of natural biodiversity, which will primarily result from extremely rapid climate change and the adverse impacts of humanity on natural habitats is the single greatest threat to mankind.
Do yourself and your progeny a favor, learn more about what you can do to save it, while there is still time. At the current rate of loss, in another 100-200 years, it will be to late to save it and likely to save humanity as well. HuffPost really has a moral obligation here to improve the level of environmental education on this site. Lets only hope this comment might help in that process.
turkeyfish: The only really amazing thing about these radiographs is that
You wouldn't feel that way if you were a small copepod or other small invertebrate living on sea grass fronds. Then those kind and gentle fishes would be your worst nightmare. Then they would appear as monstrous vacuum cleaners ready to suck you up and make a meal out of you.
The most interesting thing about seahorses is that it is the males that have a brood pouch, into which the female deposits the eggs. The male then raises these in the brood pouch until they "hatch" as nearly fully formed miniature "adults", which like certain other fishes are ready to mate shortly after birth.
turkeyfish: You wouldn't feel that way if you were a small
Sadly, for seahorses, they are highly specialized to live in seagrass beds. Such beds are only about 1% of their natural extent, primarily due to man's degrading of their environment. The primary culprit the excessive turbidity caused by boat traffic, which lowers light levels to these plants. Warmer temperatures and more erratic temperatures have also resulted in increased disease and decay as has nearshore pollution. Another culprit is the aquarium trade and the Asian medicinal industry, which catches and destroys millions to ground them up into powder simple because of erroneous, but long held myths about them. Like Rhino horn they are erroneously thought to have aphrodisiac properties.
Look at them closely, as chances are very good that in 50-100 years time most will be extinct. Several species in the Gulf of Mexico have been extirpated from their native habits in part from the recent oil spill in the Gulf.
turkeyfish: Sadly, for seahorses, they are highly specialized to live in
Well, they are all chordata, and their bones and structure seem to vary more under some different principle that those that form creatures of the land.
I wonder if the physics of underwater environment imposes fewer constraints on evolution's ability to shape their skeletal structures?
We think of them as "primitive," I suppose, but they are, like us, the most advanced product of 3.5 billion years of continuous evolution.
2lib4oh: Well, they are all chordata, and their bones and structure
Most of the fishes are teleosts, which are among the most advanced chordates. The skulls of teleosts make ours look primitive. You are right, everything has been evolving for as long as everything else, but some lineages have added more derived traits than others.
Carachama: Most of the fishes are teleosts, which are among the
Actually, the skulls of fishes are more primitive in one very basic respect. They have a much higher complement of bones than does our skull. Take the lower jaw for example. In most bony fishes, the lower jaw is composed of three bones, a dentary, homologous to our own jaw, an angular, and an articular. These are all dermal bone that have ossified around the cartilages that are part of the first gill arch, since jaws in fishes arose first as gill arches. There are also a secondary group of bones associated with the second gill arch, which in teleosts also supports the jaw, namely the hyoid series. We still have these too, but in our case, they form the bones of our middle ear.
There is much to learn about ourselves by studying fishes, since in reality we are only very specialized fishes that have made the transition to a terrestrial lifestyle over the course of our evolutionary history.
turkeyfish: Actually, the skulls of fishes are more primitive in one
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The Huffington Post | By Laura Hibbard Posted: 04/16/2012 5:45 pm