Barreleye fish: The deep-sea weirdo with rotating eyes and a see-through head
Barreleye fish: The deep-sea weirdo with rotating eyes and a see-through head
Thanks to a yellow pigment that filters out sunlight, barreleyes can't be fooled by a common deep-sea camouflage tactic.
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.
Very rude to call it wierdo, you are making it feel bad :(
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!