Post #13690

Saberfish: Its body seems to be cast from metal. Why do ordinary fish shine so brightly? Imagine: you are sitting in a boat off the coast of Italy, Spain, Africa or Australia, quietly fishing. For a couple of hours now you have been dragging small, boring fish from the World Ocean one after another. And then something serious tugs at your fishing rod. You enter into a fight with him for the right to keep the fishing rod in your hands and, in the end, you pull out... a two-meter strip of silver metal with a fish head at the end! Congratulations, you've just met a sabrefish! Even a second glance at it is enough to understand how different the saber fish is from its neighbors in the ocean. Her body is elongated almost to the limit, her dorsal fin evokes associations with a punk mohawk. And the most noticeable thing is that the fish has no scales at all, only thin skin, sparkling like well-polished metal! One thing is not clear: why did the already not the largest fish give up its only protection in favor of brightly shiny skin? The answer lies in the lifestyle of the saber fish. Unlike the moray eel, which has similar proportions, our heroine does not hide among corals and underwater rocks, but lives directly in the depths of the ocean, where there is no shelter and is not expected. In such conditions, not a single scale, even the most durable, will protect a medium-sized fish from dolphins and sharks. Therefore, the saberfish decided to rely on optical camouflage. The cells of her skin are almost entirely filled with guanine crystals, the layers of which are interspersed with layers of cytoplasm - the internal liquid environment of the cells. And it is precisely this complex structure that gives a bright, metallic shine, which is very difficult to distinguish from reflections on the surface of the water. But the guanine crystals in their cells are located differently, and the space between them is occupied by colored pigments. And the most interesting thing is that camouflage works not only on fish, but also on people. We still know practically nothing about the lifestyle of the fish, and we learn about fluctuations in its numbers from fishermen who catch saberfish as bycatch. This means that the disguise works! Author: Yaroslav Ilyin 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot