Mating Behavior of Anglerfish: Almost Entirely Incorrect

The angler fish is perhaps the most unattractive of all the fish in the sea. So when someone tells you that there are other fish in the sea, just hope they don't mean this ugly guy:

Just look at him! That underbite is precambrian. . . Nonetheless there are still angler fish, which means that despite their looks, they can find a date. The way that they do this is through a peculiar evolutionary mechanism involving their face lantern. In the deepest extents of the ocean, when a male angler fish senses a nearby lady angler fish, he begins to strobe his face lantern in an expression of virility. The lady fish will then match the strobing frequency in order to signal her returned interest. I'll let your parents explain what happens after that.

In the case that a second male angler is competing for the interest of the lady angler, the males enter into a face lantern strobe-off. The anglers attempt to overpowers the opponent's light source, and assert their own light over the darkness of the depths. The competition ends when the lady angler chooses her preferred mate.

As a final curiosity, it's interesting to note that all traces of epilepsy have been completely eliminated from anglerfish DNA.

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