The Black Swallower, most appropriately named, manages, at least now and then, to accomplish the rare feat of swallowing a morsel many times larger than itself. It is a fish of slender make; but after such a meal the slenderness disappears.
It seizes upon a fish, perhaps six or eight times as large as its own body, and “gradually climbs over it with its jaws”—a truly marvellous exploit! Its mouth and stomach stretch elastically during this process, till the whole of the large fish has passed inside the little fish, and a vast pouch hangs below, filled with the meal just taken. This bag is the distended stomach.
But the tale carries its own moral. The greediness of the fish—and apparently it is a case of individual greediness, though it springs from a family tendency—is punished as it deserves by death. As the swallowed “mouthful” decomposes, it loads the bag with gases, like an inflated balloon; and like a balloon the stomach acts, bearing the unhappy victim to the sea-surface, where it floats wrong way up. A sufficiently tragic ending!
A stout-built animal is the Wolf-fish, varying in length from three to seven feet; and in his ways a veritable “wild beast,” powerful and savage, with strong jaws, teeth fashioned like those of a tiger, a vicious temper, and a ferocious scowl. An abnormal appetite too is his, though hardly equal to that of the Black Swallower. In Maine these brutes have been known to attack fiercely human beings wading in the sea at low tide.
Sometimes the above is called also the “Sea Cat-fish;” but true Cat-fishes belong to quite another family; and they can hardly be described as more desirable acquaintances. With their solemn Grimalkin-like expression, their love of fighting, their sharp serrated spines, with which they can give most painful wounds, the Cat of the Ocean is not likely to be transformed into a domestic pet, for at least some time to come.
These two last quarrelsome creatures may lead us from “interesting” specimens of Fish-life to those which have been roughly classed above as “Fishes of Prey.”
Prominent among the latter stands the dreaded Shark. In common parlance we speak of a shark as a fish. Yet scientifically the description is incorrect. Sharks and Skates are now looked upon as apart from Fishes proper, being described rather as “Fish-like Vertebrates,”—not true fishes.
One very marked difference is found in the numbers of their young. With true fishes, as already shown, eggs are produced in enormous quantities. But with sharks and skates, only one or two or at most a very few young ones are brought into existence at a time, as with higher animals.
If among wild beasts of the Ocean cuttlefishes represent tigers, then perhaps we may say that sharks represent lions or panthers. But the reputed nobility of the lion is never found in sharks.
Fearsome creatures they are; often huge in size, long-shaped, flat-tailed, with cavernous mouths, cruel teeth, immense strength, and bloodthirsty dispositions. Cannibals too, since they feed largely on lesser fishes. To the bigger kinds a human being is merely a tasty morsel, which may be disposed of in two snaps and a couple of gulps.