SMBC Comics Forum

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 12:52 am**

So today I was bored, so I went and got a cheap pair of shoes and painted anglerfish on them. I think they came out pretty well. I drew the females on the front, and the males on the back (females shown below).

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 1:04 am**

Octopi are unquestionably the coolest animal, but anglerfish are awesome too.

Edit: Also, may we see the males?

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 1:57 am**

Are those the tops or the bottoms of the shoes?

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 2:25 am**

mountainmage wrote:Are those the tops or the bottoms of the shoes?

Tops. I'll try to get better pictures uploaded.

ChooChooTrain wrote:Also, may we see the males?

Here you go: (male wolftrap (left) and male whipnose (right))

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 2:38 am**

Tee hee! That male whipnose just looks so jolly!
What kind of paint is that?

So, I looked up Anglerfish on Wikipedia, and I found this little gem:

At birth, male ceratioids are already equipped with extremely well developed olfactory organs that detect scents in the water. When it is mature, the male's digestive system degenerates, making him incapable of feeding independently, which necessitates his quickly finding a female anglerfish to prevent his death. The sensitive olfactory organs help the male to detect the pheromones that signal the proximity of a female anglerfish. When he finds a female, he bites into her skin, and releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. The male then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of gonads, which releases sperm in response to hormones in the female's bloodstream indicating egg release. This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready to spawn, she has a mate immediately available.

Fortunately, I have a response already prepared for just this sort of thing.
(Huh! Maybe I am a prude, after all.)

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 2:51 am**

No, I agree. That's pretty odd.

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 3:04 am**

That's why the males are on the back of the shoes. They are inferior parasites. In case you're wondering, Ceratioid (a subgroup of the order Lophiiformes) is the general term for deep sea anglerfish. They are quite a few shallow water anglerfish species, but ceratioids are the deep-sea ultra-creepy looking ones.

Edit: Also, in case you're interested, these are the two pictures that I based the females off of. I also used a few diagrams, because sometimes in those pictures, the fish get really scrunchy and distended because they've been preserved in formalin and ethanol.

Here's a better pic of the wolftrap seadevil shoe:

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 3:40 am**

OK...that part about fusing and gonads and such...
I feel like this...

But that has to be right up there among the most awesome and f*cked up nature facts I now know...

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 3:45 am**

Neglected Shoe wrote:That's why the males are on the back of the shoes. They are inferior parasites.

Sexist!

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 3:49 am**

mountainmage wrote:
Neglected Shoe wrote:That's why the males are on the back of the shoes. They are inferior parasites.

Edit: But they're also adorable!
Sexist!

See, I'm not sexist!

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 3:58 am**

You should post some pictures of the real things, so we can compare the two.

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 5:08 pm**

mountainmage wrote:You should post some pictures of the real things, so we can compare the two.

Neglected Shoe wrote:Edit: Also, in case you're interested, these are the two pictures that I based the females off of. I also used a few diagrams, because sometimes in those pictures, the fish get really scrunchy and distended because they've been preserved in formalin and ethanol.

I wasn't sure if you had seen this, as it was an edit to one of my posts.

The more and more I compare the fish to the shoes, the more disappointed I am with the flaws I can see. I tried to make them stylized and simple so I could actually draw them (I don't claim to be an artist), but the body shapes didn't come out exactly right. Oh well, I still think they are pretty cool.

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 5:11 pm**

Okay, but what about pictures of the males?

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 5:14 pm**

Edminster wrote:Okay, but what about pictures of the males?

That's... rich, when we know your background and if we decide to take it out of context.

Also, if we are to believe oldrac's quote, they must be somewhere on the ladies' stomachs.

Posted: **Thu Mar 19, 2009 7:53 pm**

I did mean pictures of the male fishes. Also, I'm sure someone has a picture of them pre-gonadal phase.

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