Bubble Eye Goldfish

The Bubble Eye is a small variety of fancy goldfish with upward pointing eyes that are accompanied by two large fluid-filled sacs. It is a dorsal-less fish, and good specimens will have a clean back and eye bubbles well matched for colour and size. The bubbles are fragile and the fish should be kept separately from boisterous types and away from sharp tank decor, although the bubbles will regrow if punctured. The bubbles can disadvantage the fish as it is not a strong swimmer, with a seemingly low bobbing head at times, bubbles are infamous for being sucked into filters and siphons in an aquarium. It is known as suihogan in Japan.

The Bubble Eye normally has an evenly curved back that lacks a fin. The pair of large pouches of skin attached under its eyes jiggle as it swims. Bubble Eyes have metallic scales and they are similar to the celestial eye goldfish. The eyes of the Bubble Eye goldfish are normal in the young fry, but will start to develop eye bladders three months after hatching. Like ranchu, the bubble eye goldfish lacks in dorsal fin and has a double tail. They normally grow up to 3 to 4 inches in length. If one of their "Bubbles" pop due to pressure or collision with a sharp object, there is a risk of infection where the inside of the sac has been exposed.

Red Lipped batfish

The red-lipped batfish or Galapagos batfish (Ogcocephalus darwini) is a fish of unusual morphology found around the Galapagos Islands at depths of 30m or more. Red-lipped batfish are closely related to rosy-lipped batfish (Ogcocephalus porrectus), which are found near Cocos Island off the coast of Costa Rica. This fish is mainly known for its bright red lips.

Batfish are not good swimmers; they use their highly-adapted pectoral fins to "walk" on the ocean floor. When the batfish reaches maturity, its dorsal fin becomes a single spine-like projection (thought to function primarily as a lure for prey). Like other anglerfish, the Red-Lipped Batfish has a structure on its head known as illicium. This structure is employed for attracting prey.
The body color of the Red-lipped Batfish is light brown and a greyish color on its back, with a white stomach.On the top side of the batfish, usually there is a dark brown stripe starting at the head and going all the way down the back to the tail. The snout and horn of the Red-lipped batfish is sort of a brownish color. And as the name of the fish states, the batfish has bright, almost fluorescent, red lips. The color of the squamation of the red-lipped batfish is shagreen like with a relatively smooth texture. The bucklers are concealed by a layer of fine spinules. When compared to the porrectus, red-lipped batfish have a shorter disk perimeter but higher fiber pectoral fin ray count. Regarding the amount of scales along the lateral like, there are four to nine subopercular scales, six to nine on the cheek usually. The red-lipped batfish usually has around nineteen vertebrae. Some may wonder where the fish gets it name from. Batfish get their name from their display. Batfish are said to resemble some characteristics that a bat possesses. However, the red-lipped batfish is not the only batfish in existence. All types of fish that are considered a “batfish” have consolidated bodies. All batfish fall into one of two families: Ephippidae, or Ogcocephalidae. Batfish that belong to the Ephippidae family typically have prolonged fins and parallel abridged bodies. On the other hand, batfish that belong to the Ogcocephalidae family, like the red-lipped batfish, usually have transversely compressed bodies and don't have normal sized fins. The longest red-lipped batfish that has been recorded is about 40 cm long. Red-lipped batfish are not your typical fish saltwater fish, in fact they are far from it. From appearance, to physically ability they are far from ordinary. Batfish are not good swimmers;they are bottom dwellers who “walk” across the ocean floor instead of swimming. They have altered pectoral fins that enable them to “walk”. On the top of the batfish's head there is a special body part that extends outward called an illicium. After the red-lipped batfish fully matures, its dorsal fin becomes a single spine-like projection that comes out of the top of the head. The batfish uses the illicium as a way to lure prey near them. The longlure angler fish also has an illicium on the top of its head. Much like the red-lipped batfish, the longlure angler fish also uses their illicium to hunt for their preys. At the top of their illicium, is an esca. The esca puts off a bright light and since these two fish dwell in deep waters, the light lures other fish over near where the batfish is positioned. The esca lures the prey over to the batfish which then allows them to eat on the small creatures that fall into the batfish’s trap. Red -lipped batfish have extremely bright red lips, which allows people to distinguish them from other batfish. Marine biologists believe that the bright red lips of the red-lipped batfish may be used to enhance species recognition during spawning. Although they are very strange looking, they are harmless to humans.

Sea Unicorn- Narwhale

The narwhal, or narwhale (Monodon monoceros), is a medium-sized toothed whale and possesses a large "tusk" from a protruding canine tooth. It lives year-round in the Arctic waters around Greenland, Canada, and Russia. It is one of two living species of whale in the Monodontidae family, along with the beluga whale. The narwhal males are distinguished by a long, straight, helical tusk, which is an elongated upper left canine. The narwhal was one of many species described by Carolus Linnaeus in his publication Systema Naturae in 1758.

Like the beluga, narwhals are medium-sized whales. For both sexes, excluding the male's tusk, the total body size can range from 3.95 to 5.5 metres (13.0 to 18.0 feet); the males are slightly larger than the females. The average weight of an adult narwhal is 800 to 1,600 kilograms (1,800 to 3,500 pounds). At around 11 to 13 years old, the males become sexually mature; females become sexually mature at about 5 to 8 years old. Narwhals do not have a dorsal fin, and their neck vertebrae are jointed like those of other mammals, not fused as in dolphins and most whales.

Found primarily in Canadian Arctic and Greenlandic and Russian waters, the narwhal is a uniquely specialized Arctic predator. In winter, it feeds on benthic prey, mostly flatfish, under dense pack ice. During the summer, narwhals mostly eat Arctic cod and Greenland halibut, with other fish such as polar cod making up the remainder of their diet. Each year, they migrate from bays into the ocean as summer comes. In the winter, the male narwhals occasionally dive up to 1,500 metres (4,900 feet) in depth, with dives lasting up to 25 minutes. Narwhals, like most toothed whales, communicate with "clicks", "whistles", and "knocks".

Narwhals can live up to 50 years old. They are often killed by suffocation when the sea ice freezes over. Another cause of fatality, specifically among young whales, is starvation. The current population of the narwhal is about 75,000, so narwhals qualify for Near Threatened under the criterion of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Narwhals have been harvested for over a thousand years by Inuit people in northern Canada and Greenland for meat and ivory, and a regulated subsistence hunt continues.

Glass Frog

The glass frogs (or glassfrogs) are frogs of the amphibian family Centrolenidae (order Anura). While the general background coloration of most glass frogs is primarily lime green, the abdominal skin of some members of this family is translucent. The internal viscera, including the heart, liver, and gastrointestinal tract, are visible through this translucent skin, hence the common name.

The first described species of Centrolenidae was the "giant" Centrolene geckoideum, named by Marcos Jiménez de la Espada in 1872, based on a specimen collected in northeastern Ecuador. Several species were described in subsequent years by different herpetologists (including G. A. Boulenger, G. K. Noble, and E. H. Taylor), but usually placed together with the tree frogs in the genera Hylella or Hyla.

The family Centrolenidae was proposed by Edward H. Taylor in 1951. Between the 1950s and 1970s, most species of glass frogs were known from Central America, particularly from Costa Rica and Panama, where Taylor and Jay M. Savage extensively worked, and just a few species were known to occur in South America. In 1973, John D. Lynch and William E. Duellman published a large revision of the glass frogs from Ecuador. showing the species richness of Centrolenidae was particularly concentrated in the Andes. Later contributions by authors such as Juan Rivero, Savage, William Duellman, John D. Lynch, Pedro Ruiz-Carranza and José Ayarzagüena increased the number of described taxa, especially from Central America, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

The evolutionary relationships, biogeography, and character evolution of centrolenids were discussed by Guayasamin et al. (2008) Glass frogs originated in South America and dispersed multiple times into Central America. Character evolution seems to be complex, with multiple gains and/or losses of humeral spines, reduced hand webbing, and complete ventral transparency.

The taxonomical classification of the glass frogs has been problematic. In 1991, after a major revision of the species and taxonomic characters, the herpetologists Pedro Ruiz-Carranza and John D. Lynch published a proposal for a taxonomic classification of the Centrolenidae based on cladistic principles and defining monophyletic groups. That paper was the first of a series of contributions dealing with the glass frogs from Colombia that lead them to described almost 50 species of glass frogs. The genus Centrolene was proposed to include the species with a humeral spine in adult males, and the genus Hyalinobatrachium to include the species with a bulbous liver.[2] However, they left a heterogeneous group of species in the genus Cochranella, defined just by lacking a humeral spine and a bulbous liver.Since the publication of the extensive revision of the Colombian glass frogs, several other publications have dealt with the glass frogs from Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Ecuador.

In 2006, the genus Nymphargus was erected  for the species with basal webbing among outer fingers (part of the previous Cochranella ocellata species group).

The four genera (Centrolene, Cochranella, Hyalinobatrachium, Nymphargus) have been shown to be poly- or paraphyletic (2008) and recently a new taxonomy has been proposed

Angler Fish

Anglerfishes are fish that are members of the teleost order Lophiiformes . They are bony fish named for their characteristic mode of predation, in which a fleshy growth from the fish's head (the esca or illicium) acts as a lure.

Anglerfish are also notable for extreme sexual dimorphism seen in the suborder Ceratioidei, and sexual parasitism of male anglerfish. In these species, males may be several orders of magnitude smaller than females.

Anglerfish occur worldwide. Some are pelagic, while others are benthic; some live in the deep sea (e.g., Ceratiidae) while others on the continental shelf (e.g., the frogfishes Antennariidae and the monkfish/goosefish Lophiidae). Pelagic forms are most laterally compressed, whereas the benthic forms are often extremely dorsoventrally compressed (depressed), often with large upward-pointing mouths.

A mitochondrial genome phylogenetic study suggested the anglerfishes diversified in a short period of the early to mid Cretaceous, between 130 and 100 million years ago.

Ranging in color from dark gray to dark brown, these carnivores have huge heads that bear enormous, crescent-shaped mouths full of long, fang-like teeth angled inward for efficient prey grabbing. Their length can vary from 8.9 cm (3.5 in) to over 1 m (3 ft) with weights up to 45 kg (100 lb)

The Purple Forg

Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis is a frog species belonging to the family Sooglossidae. It can be found in the Western Ghats in India. Names in English that have been used for this species are purple frog, Indian purple frog or pignose frog. Although the adult frog was formally described in October 2003, the taxon was recognized much earlier by its tadpole, which had been described in 1918. With its closest relatives in the Seychelles, Nasikabatrachus is thought to have evolved separately for millions of years. Its discovery also adds to the evidence that Madagascar and the Seychelles separated from the Indian landmass sometime well after the breakup of Gondwana had started.

The species was described from specimens collected in the Idukki district of Kerala by S.D. Biju from the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute in Palode, India and Franky Bossuyt from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels), in 2003. However, it was already well known to the local people and several earlier documented specimens and publications had been ignored by the authors in the 2003 paper that describes the genus and species.

The body of Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis appears robust and bloated and is relatively rounded compared to other more dorsoventrally-flattened frogs. Its arms and legs splay out in the standard anuran body form. Compared to other frogs, N. sahyadrensis has a small head and an unusual, pointed snout. Adults are typically dark purplish-grey in color. Males are about a third of the length of females. The specimen with which the species was originally described was seven centimeters long from the tip of the snout to the vent. Tadpoles of the species had been described in 1917 by Nelson Annandale and C. R. Narayan Rao as having oral suckers that allowed them to live in torrential streams. Suckers are also present in rheophilic fishes of genera such as Glyptothorax, Travancoria, Homaloptera and Bhavania, adaptations that are the result of convergent evolution. Some of these fishes co-occur with Nasikabatrachus tadpoles in the hill streams. Its vocalization is a drawn-out harsh call that sounds similar to a chicken clucking.

The Goblin Shark

The goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni) is a rare species of deep-sea shark. Sometimes called a "living fossil", it is the only extant representative of the family Mitsukurinidae, a lineage some 125 million years old. This pink-skinned animal has a distinctive profile with an elongated, flattened snout, and highly protrusible jaws containing prominent nail-like teeth. It is usually between 3 and 4 m (10 and 13 ft) long when mature, though it can grow considerably larger. Goblin sharks inhabit upper continental slopes, submarine canyons, and seamounts throughout the world at depths greater than 100 m (330 ft), with adults found deeper than juveniles.

Various anatomical features of the goblin shark, such as its flabby body and small fins, suggest that it is sluggish in nature. This species hunts for teleost fishes, cephalopods, and crustaceans both near the sea floor and in the middle of the water column. Its long snout is covered with ampullae of Lorenzini that enable it to sense minute electric fields produced by nearby prey, which it can snatch up by rapidly extending its jaws. Small numbers of goblin sharks are unintentionally caught by deepwater fisheries. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed it as Least Concern, citing its wide distribution and low incidence of capture.

Hairy Wolverine frog

The hairy frog (Trichobatrachus robustus), also known as the horror frog or Wolverine frog, is a Central African species of frog in the Arthroleptidae family. It is monotypic within the genus Trichobatrachus. Its common name refers to the somewhat hair-like structures on the body and thighs of the breeding male.

The species is about 11 cm long from snout to length. The large head is broader than long, with a short rounded snout. Males are much larger than females. The former have a paired internal vocal sac and three short ridges of small black spines along the inner surface of the first manual digit. Breeding males also develop – somewhat hair-like – dermal papillae that extend along the flanks and thighs. These contain arteries and are thought to increase the surface for the purpose of absorbing oxygen (comparably to external gills of the aquatic stage), which is useful as the male stays with his eggs for an extended period of time after they have been laid in the water by the female.

The species is terrestrial, but returns to the water for breeding, where egg masses are laid onto rocks in streams. The quite muscular tadpoles are carnivorous and feature several rows of horned teeth. Adults feed on slugs, myriapods, spiders, beetles and grasshoppers.

The hairy frog is also notable in possessing retractable "claws" (though unlike true claws, they are made of bone, not keratin), which it may project through the skin, apparently by intentionally breaking the bones of the toe. In addition, the researchers found a small bony nodule nestled in the tissue just beyond the frog's fingertip. When sheathed, each claw is anchored to the nodule with tough strands of collagen, but, as Gerald Durrell discovered firsthand, when the frog is grabbed or attacked, the frog breaks the nodule connection and forces its sharpened bones through the skin.

This is probably a defense behavior. Although a retraction mechanism is not known, it has been hypothesized that the claws later retract passively, while the damaged tissue is regenerated.