Rough-head whiptail
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| iRough-head whiptail | ||||||||||||||
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| Caelorinchus aspercephalus Waite, 1911 |
The rough-head whiptail or oblique banded rattail, Caelorinchus aspercephalus, is a rattail of the genus Caelorinchus, found around New Zealand including islands to New Zealand's south, at depths of between 30 and 300 m. Its length is between 15 to 35 cm.
The rough-head whiptail has the usual greatly elongated pointed tail of the rattails, as well as large eyes and a bluntly-pointed snout. The scales have rows of short spines, rather than long spines as in many other rattails, hence the skin is relatively smooth to the touch. The first dorsal fin is high, and there is a small chin barbel. There is a photophore on the belly immediately in front of the anus that may serve as a source of indirect lighting, illuminating the bottom beneath the fish without shining in its eyes and ruining dim light vision.
Body colour is greyish, often with indistinct darker oblique bars.
It feeds on deep-sea decapod crustaceans, gastropods, polychaetes, and shrimps, which it grubs for in the soft bottom sediments.
[edit] References
- "Caelorinchus aspercephalus". FishBase. Ed. Ranier Froese and Daniel Pauly. April 2006 version. N.p.: FishBase, 2006.
- Tony Ayling & Geoffrey Cox, Collins Guide to the Sea Fishes of New Zealand, (William Collins Publishers Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand 1982) ISBN 0-00-216987-8
