This marine survivor looks like a perfect piece of CGI handiwork. The barreleye fish or spookfish has been found in the depths of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, including locales in the Mariana Trench. Though only documented in its entirety in 2004, researchers have known of the animal’s existence since the late 1930s, but previous collection methods had ruined the most delicate, and amazing, of the creature’s anatomy.

Within the fish’s dome-shaped transparent head are two barrel-shaped tubular-eyes that face upwards, colored green by a layer of fluid that filters light from above. This allows minor illumination of prey (mostly jellies) even in the pitch dark, and protects the barreleye fish from their dinner’s stingers. What looks like eyes on this critter are in fact nostrils, and while the fish spends most of its time motionless, when it does smell or spot prey it maneuverers its tubular eyes to face forward and strikes upwards, swallowing prey whole in its toothless mouth. Researchers also think barreleye fish may be opportunistic hunters, scavenging tiny crustaceans and other jellies from the food-collecting limbs of giant siphonophores, jellies that can reach up to 130 feet in length.

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5 Otherworldly Deep Sea Creatures of the Mariana Trench

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