This Weird Fish Has Clear Blood
Icefish Larvae This is a larvae of the icefish family, which includes about 25 species. Wikimedia CommonsLiving at 3,300 feet in one of the most inhospitable habitats on Earth, this fish has evolved in a very peculiar way. Deep in the Southern Ocean, just off the coast of Antarctica, there lives the Channichthyidae family of fish. These fish are highly unusual, and one of its species, the ocellated icefish (Chionodraco rastrospinosus), was just bred successfully in captivity for the first time. Deep-sea fish that live near the poles are pretty much exclusively weird; any large-ish animal (the icefish averages about a foot long) that can survive in one of the most extreme environments on the planet is necessarily going to be much different than the animals we see in more hospitable areas. The ocellated icefish, for example, has clear blood. It's not very well understood how or why this is. The...