What are the strangest feeding mechanisms found in sea creatures?

Two vastly different sexes, with two vastly different solutions to the food scarcity of the abyss. One can eat anything it comes across, whereas the other has done away with eating altogether. And not to mention those ghostly tapetails, who look nothing like either. Alas, through discovery of their mind-bending metamorphosis and wacky sexual dimorphism, three fish families were united into one. The new family took the name of its first-discovered predecessor, so all these animals are now dubbed flabby whalefish.

Here’s the body of one up close. Bizarre isn’t it? Tapetails feed exclusively on copepods, abundant crustaceans that are often too small to see with the naked eye, but are found throughout the world’s oceans wherever the sun’s light can reach.

I’m not exaggerating when I say I could write a hundred different answers to this question. From clams that eat mud and rock to worms that devour the bones of old whales, the oceans have no shortage of bizarre feeding strategies. However, I elected the fasting flabby whalefish (and all its fabulous forms). Fins crossed I made a good choice for you guys! I hope those of you who celebrate had a wonderful Christmas, and to all my readers: thank you so much!

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The first family, the flabby whalefish, actually represents just the females of this new taxon. They are striking creatures, bright velvet red in colour - down in the abyss they call home, no red light can penetrate through the massive water column above, so to their prey they might as well be jet black. They have a huge, gaping grin, and a bizarre gill bone structure allowing them to distend their jaws and engulf even the largest of victims.

But what of the male larvae? What fate do they befall? Arguably, their transformation is into something much more alien. What we now know are adult males of this singular fish family were once known as bignose fish. Between that title and “flabby whalefish”, these animals really get a hard time on the names front. Whoever discovered them must’ve woken up on the wrong side of the seabed…

Not that they ought to be known for their good looks, hmm? I’m sure you’re wondering what that gigantic egg-like structure is; we’ll get to that in just a moment. In any case, this brings us to the answer to your question. The bignose fish does not eat. It has no mouth - during its grotesque metamorphosis to adult form, its jaws fuse shut forever, and its digestive system vanishes.

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So, as you know, some fifteen years ago it was revealed that tapetails and flabby whalefish are not separate brands of fish. Every tapetail born female eventually turns into a flabby whalefish. To figure this out, one would have to either witness the metamorphosis firsthand or run a DNA test, as the two creatures are anatomically worlds apart, even to the keen eye of a marine biologist. As they transition to adulthood, the larvae undergo unfathomably radical changes to their very skeletal structure.

Oh, where to start? Perhaps with an animal that doesn’t even feed at all. It all begins in the year 2009, with a shocking discovery: what had previously been thought to be three different distantly related families of fish were actually all the same fish.

The second supposed family, the tapetails, turned out to be the larvae. The babies, that’s to say. Though they live in somewhat shallower waters, tapetails are extremely rarely seen, and for that reason it never raised suspicion that the few specimens known before 2009 had all seemingly been juvenile individuals.

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The eyes are practically useless, having atrophied over the millions of years, but note the lateral line - that chain of sensory pores along the flank. These are incredibly sensitive to vibrations in the water, allowing each whalefish to construct a sensory map of her surroundings. Scales, swim bladders, pelvic fins, and fin spines have all also been lost to evolution. The void is very much a “use it or lose it” environment - natural selection will weed out any trait that costs energy without providing much in return.

Pity the sea creature that finds itself on the wrong end of that maw. The ability to expand the jaws so wide affords a flabby whalefish a crucial advantage in the deep sea. Down in the depths, opportunities to eat are few and far between. Fortunately for her, she can swallow pretty much anything she comes across, and has all the time in the world to digest.

Your typical tapetail is a few centimetres long, with the majority of that length coming not from the body but from the “streamer”. This is what gives the would-be family its name: a long, ribbon-like projection trailing behind the larva. The precise function of the streamer isn’t really known (like much about all of these fish), but it may serve as a decoy to predators.

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Instead of feeding, it spends the rest of its days living off a bolus - that engorged blob in the photo above. The bolus sits where a stomach once was, a huge, compacted mass of hard copepod remains: leftovers ingested in its gluttonous childhood as a tapetail. Though these crustacean shells provide very little in the way of nutrition, it’s enough to fuel the rest of the bignose’s life. After all, the fish does basically nothing, drifting aimlessly, its sole life purpose to find a female to mate with.