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Barreleye fish: The deep-sea weirdo with rotating eyes and a see-through head (www.livescience.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As their name suggests, barreleye fish have really weird tubular eyes that they can rotate to gaze upward through their transparent foreheads. Although they appear green, the lenses are actually tinted with a yellow pigment that helps these bizarre fish distinguish between sunlight and bioluminescence.

Link to some actual footage of one.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Very rude to call it wierdo, you are making it feel bad :(

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I thought the same thing! I felt a little better when they explained why it's awesome further down, being an awesome weirdo is good

The article explained that in the twilight zone (200-1000m down) there's just enough sunlight filtering through that creatures on the sea floor make shadows, and they've evolved bioluminescence to eliminate those shadows, but this fish's eyes filter out sunlight so that it isn't fooled. That's pretty neat!