My Obsession with Anglerfish

An illustrated memoir

I spent a lot of time looking at really ugly fish today. Witness the Black Sea Devil, or one of over 200 species of anglerfish.

I believe the type of creature I want to explore on any given day is directly related to the kind of mood I’m in. If I’m feeling fluffy and happy and optimistic, I tend to gravitate towards, well, sheep, or dogs. Or sheepdogs.

If I’m feeling pensive, it’s probably something like a lizard, or birds of some sort. Something about which I don’t know a whole lot.

And if I’m in a really rotten mood, I look for something unusual. Really bizarre. I think I do this so I can lose myself in a thing no one really understands; study a thing for the very sake of its weirdness. Why, one day I lost myself in those little tufts that sit atop a giraffe’s head.

Today it was the anglerfish. These are those deep-sea fish that wear lures on their heads to catch other fish. They typically have cage-like teeth that snap shut to keep prey in. (These teeth are an orthodontist’s wet dream: they do not fit together at all.) Their eyeballs in the weirdest-looking species are wayyyy up towards the tops of their heads. Witness the stargazing sea devil.