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There are other terrors of the deep with such big teeth that they cannot shut their mouths. No doubt the sea holds yet other weird fish which no man has seen. In what ways is the Sea-horse so different from most other fish? 2. In what ways are the Sea-horse and Pipe-fish alike? 3. How does the Angler-fish catch its prey? 4. Mention a few strange facts about the deep-sea fish.
No, he prefers to carry his eggs in his pocket. To be more exact, there is a small pouch under his body, and there the eggs are kept until they hatch. Meanwhile, the Pipe-fish goes about his affairs in the pool as if nothing particular had happened. You will see more about this funny little fish when we come to our lesson on "The Fish of our Rock-pools."
In the pipe-fish family, too, the ardent evolutionist can trace a whole series of instructive and illustrative gradations in the development of this instinct and the corresponding pouch-like structure among the male fish.
Hence, in many places, various kinds of pipe-fish exhibit an extraordinary amount of imitative likeness to the sargasso or seaweed to whose tags they cling; and in the three most highly developed Australian species the likeness becomes so ridiculously close that it is with difficulty one can persuade oneself one is really and truly looking at a fish, and not at a piece of strangely animated and locomotive fucus.
When the little ones appear, he seems to think he has done his duty. So away, he swims, not staying, like the father Stickleback, to guard the youngsters. Again we see that the father, and not the mother, is the builder and nurse. That very strange creature, the Pipe-fish, has the most peculiar nursery of all. He uses no building material! No made-up nest of weed or sand for him!
When removed from the water, this queer pipe-fish proves in general outline somewhat to resemble the well-known hippocampus or sea-horse of the aquariums, whose dried remains, in a mummified state, form a standing wonder in many tiny domestic museums.
If you want a perfect model of domestic virtue, for example, where can you find it in higher perfection than in that exemplary and devoted father, the common great pipe-fish of the North Atlantic and the British Seas?
In a somewhat more advanced tropical kind, the ridges of the abdomen are slightly dilated, so as to form an open groove, which loosely holds the eggs, though its edges do not meet in the middle as in the great pipe-fish.
So curious a provision for the safety of the young in the pipe-fish may be compared to some extent, as I hinted above, with the pouch in which kangaroos and other marsupial animals carry their cubs after birth, till they have attained an age of complete independence.
On the other hand, just in proportion as any particular pipe-fish happens to display any chance resemblance in colour or appearance to the special seaweed in whose folds it lurks, to that extent will it be likely to escape detection, and to hand on its peculiarities to its future descendants.
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