#elopomorpha

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Eel larvae are almost completely transparent.

📽: HRF U/W Production

—

Leptocephalus (meaning "slim head") is the flat and transparent larva of the eel, marine eels, and other members of the superorder Elopomorpha.

[wtfearth123]

Leptocephalus is the flat and transparent larva of the eel, marine eels, and other members of the superorder Elopomorpha. Leptocephali all have laterally compressed bodies that contain transparent jelly-like substances on the inside of the body and a thin layer of muscle with visible myomeres on the outside.

[rattyexplores]

Two large aquatic animals, Long-finned eel and Sooty Grunter. Found around on the river shore feeding on food people had thrown to them.

Anguilla reinhardtii (top) Hephaestus fuliginosus (bottom)

18/05/22

[animalids]

Whitemargin moray eel (Gymnothorax albimarginatus)

Photo by Karsten Kretz

[dynamicoceans]

Snipe Eel

The snipe eel's upper and lower jaws are extremely long and curve away from each other at the tips. This means that they don't meet when the eel closes its mouth. These curved jaws help the eel to catch its food. The jaws are covered with tiny hooked teeth that help capture tiny shrimp and other crustaceans. As the eel swims along with its mouth open, tiny backward-pointing teeth snag the antenna of the shrimp. 

The males differ from the females in that as they grow older, their jaws shorten and they lose their teeth. Because of this difference, researchers originally thought that the males and females were actually from different species.

Video Source

[animalids]

Snowflake moray eel (Echidna nebulosa) 

Photo by Loh Kok Sheng

[animalids]

Reptilian snake eel (Brachysomophis henshawi)

Photo by zsispeo

[todropscience]

The marine eels and other members of the superorder  Elopomorpha have a leptocephalus larval stage, which are flat and transparent. This group is quite diverse, containing 801 species in 24 orders, 24 families and 156 genera (super diverse). 

Leptocephali have compressed bodies that contain jelly-like substances on the inside, with a thin layer of muscle with visible myomeres on the outside, a simple tube as a gut, dorsal and anal fins, but they lack pelvic fins. They also don’t have any red blood cells (most likely is respiration by passive diffusion), which they only begin produce when the change into the juvenile glass eel stage. Appears to feed on marine snow, tiny free-floating particles in the ocean.

This large size leptocephalus must be a species of Muraenidae (moray eels), and probably the larva of a long thin ribbon eel, which is metamorphosing, and is entering shallow water to finish metamorphosis into a young eel, in Bali, Indonesia.

Video: Filmed by Barry Haythorne and Rob Rutgers, HRF U/W Production