Mouse fish

Hydrolagus colliei fish have a muzzle and mouth that looks like a rat, so it is called a rat or a rat-rat fish. However, its size is not as small as a mouse, but it is nearly 1m long.

The appearance of rat fish is easy to identify: The elongated fish, the long tail, the big head, the eyes and the nose are also big; snout cone; skin is reddish-brown with lighter spots; sleek skin without scales and shiny.

Rats are distributed in waters from California to Alaska. They are abundant in cold water areas, near the seabed near the shore at a depth of about 92-913m.

This fish has many strange characteristics that are different from other fish.

They have large nostrils, and suck water through the nose, not through the mouth like most other fish. As fish, but they are poor in swimming, they do not use their tails to swim but use their pectoral fins to move. That makes them charming in the water, making them easily discovered.

The main food of Hydrolagus colliei is crustaceans and small fish. In feeding, they are extremely lazy: they wait for their prey to come close to swallow, but rarely actively swim to catch prey.

Birth stories are also unique in the world of fish. Rats are egg-laying, inseminated. Eggs are laid after fertilization. The female lays out a bag of eggs, which has two eggs in the shell. The shell outside the egg looks like a small violin box, a kind of horn-like material. Long and pointed eggs can be plugged into sand or mud on the bottom of the sea, and stay there until they hatch. The length of time the mother is born with this egg bag lasts from 18-30 hours. After 4-6 days, the egg bag is still connected to the maternal body through a small cord. Finally, the egg bag is stuck to the seabed, or plugged into the mud. At the bottom of the sea, eggs take about a year to hatch.

Divers can be cautious to swim near the rat fish. Normally, this fish is not aggressive, always wants to keep a distance from people. However, they belong to the shark family, their thorns are poisonous, which can cause painful wounds. But when catching this type of fish, fishermen fear the jaw rather than fearing their back spines.

It is difficult for divers to approach them during the day, but when night falls, the rat fish often swim to places with strong light.

Mouse fish can be processed into specialty food. These fish are quite weak, they are easy to die when leaving the water. In the past, people also processed their liver into a slippery swimming oil used for machines.