Too Creepy to Blink
Behold the stargazer. A very beautiful name for a fairly ordinary-looking lumpy-grumpy fish.
But this fairly ordinary lumpy-grumpy fish turns into something altogether different when it gets hungry.
A hungry stargazer buries itself backwards and becomes . . . duh duh DUH! The creepiest sand demon in the sea. Image almost walking on that face by accident!
So why do they bury themselves? Stargazers are ambush predators, which means they are not only creepy but also very patient.
First, stargazers bury themselves backwards in the sand with just their bulging eyes and mouths sticking out. Then they wait, gazing up upwards, staring at the stars (and hence their name) waiting for a fish to swim by. As soon as the fish is wthin range, faster than a blink, the stargazer lunges upwards and vacuums the unsuspecting fish into its mouth.
Who knows how long they have to stay there, waiting and starring and being creepy. They also have venom and the ability to electrocute their victims. Yikes!
And, as if that weren’t enough, to make themselves even creepier, some species of stargazers have fake worm lures they can wiggle around to entice their victims closer.
I’m sure you have lots of questions, like “Where do stargazers live so I can avoid that entire part of the world?” or “Why does its lure look like Dracula’s tongue?” These are good and important questions.
But the first question that popped into my mind was “Don’t their eyeballs get horribly itchy from all that sand?”
And then I wondered, “Do fish blink?”
In all those minutes/hours/days that stargazers wait with sandy eyeballs, do they ever blink to clean their eyes?
The answer is no. Fish don’t blink.* But it’s more than that: fish don’t blink because fish don’t have eyelids. Crazy, right?!
Eyelids and blinking are an adaptation to life on land and in the air. Land animals use their eyelids to blink because air can be dry, dusty, and filled with germs. Every time we blink, we wash and moisturise our eyes. Fish don’t blink because their entire bodies, including their eyeballs, are coated in mucous. Plus, they live in water, which means their eyes are always well-washed and moist.
* Of course, there’s an exception to the “fish don’t blink” rule. You should know right now, for every fishy rule, there’s a fishy exception. And this fishy exception is the mudskipper, a weird little fish which spends most of its days out of the water. The mudskipper blinks but not as you’d expect. It “blinks” by blooping its eyeballs in and out of its head. I have a video below, if you’re curious about the bloob.
(Are you also thinking, “Really Evolution?! Do you really have to be so weird? Couldn’t you have just given mudskippers eyelids?)
But to get back to my original question: do fish eyes ever get itchy? Does all that sand annoy the stargazer as it waits and waits and waits? Maybe. Probably. Who know? It could be why stargazers always look very much less than happy.
And finally, one last sandy tidbit: what seems to be the stargazer’s teeth aren’t actually teeth. They are bits of bristly skin that scientists believe are there to prevent sand from falling into their mouths. Hmm . . . How well do you think that works??
Want to know more?
Here’s some reading:
The Voracious Fish That Looks Like a Pug and Stings Like a Bee : https://www.wired.com/2016/01/absurd-creature-of-the-week-the-voracious-fish-that-looks-like-a-pug-and-stings-like-a-bee/
And some videos: