Good Tuesday! Today's focus is on the gulper eel! A suggestion from Mason. I hope you enjoy this one Mason, you can stop asking me when this email is gonna come out now. It's nice to see your enthusiasm for deep sea eels.
The gulper eel, also known as the pelican eel and Eurypharynx pelecanoides is a species of deep sea eel that is very rarely seen by humans due to their scarcity and their depth. They are found in the temperate and the tropical ocean around the world at the depth of 1,600 to 9,800 feet deep.
The most notable feature of the gulper eel is the large mouth that they use to swallow prey several times larger than themselves. They use this similar to how a rorqual whale uses ventral grooves. Skin slots that can expand outward when put under the stress of water and large prey.
As seen below this means that when their mouths are under the stress of water being inside of them, they can appear something close to a balloon. And unlike other deep sea eels they are not known to take part in vertical migration.
Gulper eels are truly amazing hunters, employing a chase method rather than waiting for something to float into its mouth like many deep sea creatures do.
I hope everyone has a good Tuesday!