Anglerfish are famous for attracting their prey with their luminous "bait". Their "fishing pole" is really part of a fin—at its tip is a small organ that contains millions of light-producing bacteria, which the animal uses to attract small animals to eat.
Anglerfishes are bony fish in the order
Lophiiformes.[1]
An anglerfish has a head of enormous size, broad, flat and depressed, with the remainder of the body appearing merely like an appendage. Anglerfish may grow to a length of 200 cm (6.5 feet); specimens of 90 cm (3 ft.) are common. Its maximum weight is 30 kg (66 US lbs).
Anglerfishes are, for the most part, deep-sea fish, though there are some families that have shallow-water representatives, including one, the frogfishes (family Antennariidae), that occurs only in shallow water. Examples of other anglerfish families that have some shallow water species are the goosefishes (family Lophiidae) and the batfishes (family Ogcocephalidae). These families also have deep water representatives. The deep-sea mid-water anglerfishes belong to the superfamily Ceratioidea.
The order was formerly known as Pediculati.
