In the deep sea, some shrimp use their own bioluminescence to ‘vomit light’ and blind predators. In the ocean, light may penetrate from the surface, so some marine species use an array of light-emitting organs on their bellies to hide their silhouette from predators lurking below, known as counterillumination.Īnimals like the Southern Bobtail Squid can even change the intensity of their in-built light to match different conditions.īut that only works when there’s enough light from above. So, what can other creatures do to defend against this? Its bioluminescent organs emit red light, which only they can see, giving them quite an unfair advantage over their hapless prey. It’s for this reason that many deep-sea creatures are red themselves because it makes them effectively invisible to most other predators. Red light has the longest wavelength of the visible spectrum and doesn’t penetrate more than 100 metres below the surface. The thing about these predators is that they make use of a rare trait in the deep sea-they can see red. Platypuses nocturnal nature made researchers suspect they might glow under ultraviolet light. The yellow cheek pads on this dragonfish of the genus Photostomias are bioluminescent, along with the yellow dots on its belly. There are other deep-sea fish that use light to hunt in a slightly more creative, and terrifying, way.ĭragonfish have light-emitting organs, called photophores, on their cheeks. No matter the way animals put on a glow, the results can be astonishing and even mesmerising-no coincidence given it’s often the desired result for animals like the anglerfish, which uses its light to lure in prey. The important distinction is that this occurs without the influence of external light sources, like sunlight, and doesn’t generate heat.īiofluorescence on the other hand, happens when organisms absorb sunlight and transform it-emitting the light as a different frequency or colour (usually green, orange, or red). Living things that produce light usually do so via one of two ways-bioluminescence or biofluorescence.īioluminescence (from the Latin lumen, meaning light) is the process of generating light from a chemical reaction (involving two molecules: luciferin a substrate, and luciferase an enzyme) inside the bodies of some animals and plants. This female Humpback Anglerfish ( Melanocetus johnsonii) has a male attached below. The anglerfish is perhaps the best-known marine animal to make use of bioluminescence.
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