Page 179 - The Secret Museum

HOW MANY FISH CAN YOU see in the photo at the end of this chapter? Believe it or not,
there are two, one of each sex. The female is the big one, and her boyfriend, the little
one, is hanging on to her bottom. Trace a line from the female’s jaw downwards to
her backside, and there he is.

This happy couple lives in a glass jar on the third floor of part of the Darwin
Centre known as the Spirit Building, behind the main Natural History Museum in
London. They’re rarely on display because they are one of only three complete
anglerfish couples the museum owns and they need to be easily available to research

scientists. If they were out on display in the main museum it would be difficult to
access them when they were required.

This specimen (Linophryne brevibarbata) was collected in 1973 in the eastern
central Atlantic. It came to the museum in 1995 and since then has been examined
many times by researchers. This couple came out of hiding for the Sexual Nature
exhibition in 2011, but now they are back in storage.

The male didn’t have much of a life. He hatched from a sheet of eggs. He used his
superb smelling abilities to sniff out this female and chomp into her bottom. Then his
life’s mission was accomplished. All he did, from that point onwards, was squirt
sperm whenever it was needed. He spent the rest of his existence as a tiny parasite,

living off the nutrients in the female’s bloodstream, incapable of independent life.

He is not quite as stupid as he sounds: this is clever evolution. When the female is
ready to spawn, she has a mate right there ready to do his job; hormones in her
bloodstream tell him when it’s time. Without this bizarre arrangement, the female
might not be able to find a mate in the vastness of the sea.

There are 322 known species of anglerfish, living in both deep and shallow water.
The male of one species (Photocorynus spiniceps) is the smallest vertebrate in the
world (6.2 millimetres in length; the females average around 50 millimetres).