This little man made himself at home while I cleaned his enclosure. He didn’t want to let go when I was finished, I guess he enjoyed my warmth! (Source: https://ift.tt/2CXki9Z)
“Is it engorged or is it…like that?” “Lookathislittleface!”
Gulper eels (also known as pelican eels) are such cool creatures. Their most notable feature is, of course, their giant mouth – but interestingly, they’re thought to mostly eat small crustaceans. Their lower jaw has a huge pouch of skin on it that looks like of like a pelican’s- hence the name.
Similar to how baleen whales gulp seawater and filter their prey out from it, gulper eels are thought to gulp mouthfuls of prey and water simultaneously into their pouch, and then slowly press the water out through their gill slits until they’ve got a mouthful of food to swallow. It looks like that’s what we’re seeing in this video – it starts with the eel having a full pouch of water, and at the end, you can see the regular size of the gulper eel without it’s maw inflated by water.
For all gulper eels look scary, they actually have tiny teeth and are only found in very deep water (this video was filmed at a depth of around a mile). So if they squick you out, you never need to worry about running into one in real life.
And, yes, the commentary on this from the observing scientists is gold.
today i learned that, when Jared Leto sent Margot Robbie a live rat as a part of his rude, bullshit “method acting” fo Suicide Squad, she was scared but still refused to abandon or harm the rat.
she overcame her initial fear in order to buy him a proper set up and take care of him until she found the rat a reliable owner, who… ended up being Guillermo del Toro for some reason?
so yeah that’s what happened with the Suicide Squad rat
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 