ratfish

Many species have a long tapering tail, given them an alternative name of ratfish.

The spotted ratfish can be found in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean.

However, if they feel their territory has been invaded, the ratfish is able to inflict a mildly toxic wound.

The probably oldest vertebrate brain known today belonged to a ratfish that lived around 300 million years ago (Pradel et al., 2009).

The ratfish is not typically eaten by humans and is not commercially caught.

Unlike most of its relatives which are entirely restricted to deep waters, the spotted ratfish has been held in public aquaria.

Vernacular names for this fish include mousefish, ratfish, sandfish and sand eel.

Spotted ratfish can most commonly be found living near the bottom of sand, mud or rocky reefs of the ocean floor.

Studies on ratfish have looked at the strain on fan-shaped muscles that have a twisted tendon.

Interesting species sometimes displayed include the spotted ratfish, Humboldt squid, basket star, spot prawn, and red octopus.

Both sexes eat a variety of prey, including pelagic, deep water squid, Pacific hake, sharks, rays, and ratfish.

Exceptions include the members of the genus Callorhinchus, the rabbit fish and the spotted ratfish, which locally/periodically can be found at relatively shallow depths.

Besides crabs and clams, the spotted ratfish also feeds on shrimp, worms, small fish, small crustaceans, and sea stars.

A rare albino Puget Sound ratfish was discovered near Whidbey Island, Washington.

Nearly every other hook had something on it, most of them edible, though there was the occasional ratfish, a brilliantly colored fish which is as poisonous as it is frightening in appearance.

Among the strange creatures the scientists plan to display in the aquarium's new deep sea exhibit, scheduled to open in March, are mushroom corals, predatory tunicates, sea whips, spider crabs, filetail cat sharks, ratfish, feather stars, and ellpouts.

In the holocephalan species Chimaera monstrosa (ratfish), he described, in the basal midline of the diencephalon, a previously unknown ependymal structure adjacent to the rostral part of the optic chiasma referred to as the 'organon vasculare praeopticum'.

The deeper excavations produced the first complete fossil Bradyodont (broadtoothed) Ratfish to be found in Britain and for the fist time it was possible to see how five separately named fossil fragments previously supposed to belong to five different creatures actually fitted together like a jigsaw to form one.

Other than the species previously mentioned, he also studied the nervous systems of corals, sea urchins, spirunculids, Limulus, Aplysia, starfish, rattlesnakes, rays, sharks, porpoises, sea lions, cuttlefish, catfish, sloths, manatees, salamanders, frogs, turtles, hagfish, crayfish, tuna, ratfish, bats, crabs, octopodes, snakes, rats and humans.