Strange creatures found in Atlantic ocean

With a fearsome grin fit for a movie monster, this viperfish is a real-life predator that lurks in one of the world's most remote locations. An international team of 31 researchers found this and other strange animals while exploring the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an underwater mountain range that runs from Iceland to the Azores islands west of Portugal (see Europe map). Over the course of five weeks, the team cataloged a host of exotic worms, colorful corals, unusual sea cucumbers, and weird fish. Clearly, viperfish has plenty to eat. Many of the species found on the ridge are rare and had only been discovered in recent years, scientists said. At least one species found during the survey—a tiny crustacean called a seed shrimp—is thought to be new to science.

Despite its delicate, decorated appearance, this jewel squid was found 1,650 lung-crushing feet (500 meters) beneath the surface of the North Atlantic. Scientists on a recent deep-sea expedition found the squid, called Histioteuthis, along with an abundance of other species thought to be very rare, if not unknown, elsewhere. Jewel squid are known for their mismatched eyes, one of which is larger than the other to scope for prey in the deep's darkness.



With its polka-dot mantle and cartoonish expression, this glass squid brings out a lighter side of the inky ocean deep. Scientists found the squid and other species while mapping more than 1,500 square miles (3,900 square kilometers) of an undersea mountain range in the North Atlantic. Until now the region had scarcely been explored because of its remoteness and depth. But the new survey shows that the ridge is teeming with life, said Monty Priede, expedition leader and director of the University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab research center. "The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is roughly equivalent in size to the European Alps and is one of the largest areas of habitat available in the ocean," Priede said.

In an ironic strategy for survival, a tiny shrimplike creature called an amphipod shows everything it has, inside and out, in an attempt to disappear. The unusual animal, called Phronima, is one of the many strange species recently found on an expedition to a deep-sea mountain range in the North Atlantic. Many small deep-sea creatures are transparent, or nearly so, to better camouflage themselves in their murky surroundings, scientists say.

Flying Fox Discovered

This unusual species of flying fox was recently discovered in the Philippines not long after it was deemed not to exist. Jake Esselstyn, a biologist with the University of Kansas, was among a team of researchers that found the animal, a type of fruit bat, last year while surveying forest life on the island of Mindoro. "When we first arrived on Mindoro, a local resident that we hired as a guide described the bat to me in great detail, and he asked me what it was called," Esselstyn said. "I politely told him that there was no such bat. I was wrong." Several days into the survey, the scientists accidentally captured a creature in a net that fit the guide's description: a large flying fox with bright orange fur and distinctive white stripes across its brow and jaw. "Our guide's description of the animal was quite accurate, and I had to apologize for not believing him," Esselstyn said, adding that the animal is now known as the Mindoro stripe-faced fruit bat. In his own defense, the scientist pointed out that the species' closest known relative lives some 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) away on an island in Indonesia. "It makes you wonder if there are other related species on islands between [the two]," he said. "It also makes you realize how there are probably many more species which have yet to be discovered—in the Philippines and elsewhere," Esselstyn added. "This discovery emphasizes the need for a great deal more basic biodiversity inventory research."