Ratfish!

Spotted Ratfish from Andrew Murgatroyd on Vimeo.

You’ve spotted the spotted ratfish (Hydrolagus colliei)! This curious creature is a distant relative of sharks, with whom the ratfish shares a skeleton made of cartilage! Although sharks can have thousands of teeth in their lifetime, the ratfish has only 6 teeth in it’s downturned mouth. It uses these teeth to chomp and crush clams and crabs it finds on the seafloor. The spine on the ratfish’s dorsal fin can deliver a poisonous sting to predators, and that shimmering stripe along it’s side is called the lateral line and it is used as an electroreceptor to detect prey!