Softpedia >News >Oddiverse
Softpedia Homepage   

Rare Arctic Monster Fished Out of Canadian Waters

Scientists determined that the mysterious animal is a “long-nosed chimaera”

Nov 21, 2013 09:07 GMT  ·  By
Scientists determined that the mysterious animal is a “long-nosed chimaera”
   Scientists determined that the mysterious animal is a “long-nosed chimaera”

With all the weird animals appearing all over the world lately, Canada has its own rare creature to exhibit, a gray gelatinous horned fish called “Rhinochimaeridae” or commonly known as a “long-nosed chimaera.”

The weird creature was caught in northern Canada, close to the Nunavut coast by a fishing boat. At first, it was mistaken for a goblin shark, but it was lately correctly identified by a researcher from a Canadian University.

The arctic mystery belongs to a specific family of fishes called chimaera, a fish family recognized after their specific cartilage skeletons.

This particular kind of fish is really rare and only one was previously documented in the Hudson Strait, so no wonder it was mistaken for another type of fish. These fishes live in deep waters, below 2,000 – 3,000 feet (1,000 – 2,000 meters) and are incredibly difficult to catch.

“It is believed that they have existed in the oceans for more than 350 million years. Potentially, if we fish deeper […] we could find that there's actually quite a lot of them there. We don't know,” Nigel Hussey, a researcher from the Ocean Tracking Network told CBC News.

The unicorn-resembling creature is actually related both to sharks and stingrays and has a mildly poisonous whip-like tail and a long horn-like nose. The usual length of this kind of creatures is around 3 feet (1 meter) long and features an incredible array of sharp scary teeth and numerous sensory nerve endings that help the animal find its food in the deep waters.

“We think this species is a knifenose chimaera (Rhinochimaera atlantica). There is another species which they call the longnose so we don't wish for confusion,” Hussey told the Huffington Post. The creature's name comes from the Greek language and it translates into the “nose-monster.”

But the “long-nosed monster” is not the only weird creature of the sea to make the headlines, weird animals such as the frilled shark, which looks like a Disney movie character, or the vampire squid hypnotizing its prey also caught people's attention. Who knows what else is hidden in the depths of our oceans.