The aptocyclus, or “rattling fish”, is a close relative of Elephantichthys in Arctic waters. It also seems to be a haphazard conglomeration of vital organs stuffed in a bag. The fish actually rattle inside when the skin is not filled with water. All fish of this family live at the bottom of fairly shallow water, firmly attached to flat stones by disk-like suckers. Although they have the power of locomotion they seldom use it, remaining stationary on the bottom and waiting for their food to come to them.
Most fish have a tail fin, usually forked, with which they propel themselves, but the rat fish has a body tapering down to a long, pointed extension that looks like a rodent’s tail. They are dwellers in deep waters all over the world. Some are quite fantastic. One, Macruroides inflaticeps, consists essentially of a head and a tail without any apparent intermediate body; it looks like an enormous tadpole.
Pearl fish are minute animals that are sometimes found inside oysters and clams entirely encrusted with mother-of-pearl. They actually become large pearls shaped like fish. These small, nearly transparent creatures sometimes back into the open shell of an oyster or clam that snaps once the fish are inside. When this happens the creature perishes but sets up an irritation that leads to the pearl secretion over it.
Love Life Among the Spiders
There is love and courtship among spiders, as among birds and mammals, but with a unique—and fatal—difference. An observer thus describes a courtship scene in the Cambridge Natural History:
“When some inches from her he stood still. She eyed him eagerly, changing her position from time to time. He, raising his whole body on the other side, leaned so far over he was in danger of losing his balance which he only maintained by sidling rapidly toward the lower side. Again and again he circled from side to side, she gazing toward him in a softer mode and evidently admiring the grace of his antics. This was repeated until we had counted 107 circles made by the ardent little male. He approached nearer and nearer and when almost within reach whirled madly around and around her. She joined him in the giddy dance. Again he fell back and resumed his semi-circular motion. She, all excitement, lowered her head and raised her body so that it was almost vertical. Both drew nearer. She moved slowly under him, he crawling over her head. Thus the mating was accomplished.
“A few minutes later, however, the female had eaten her ardent lover.”
The Lace Weavers
For 300,000,000 years tiny animals have been weaving delicate lace. They weave constantly, rapidly and in lovely, open mesh patterns. They make a stiff stable lace. Their own limestone entombed bodies are the threads. Night and day, millenium after millenium, they weave and weave, for the curse of weaving is forever upon them. Through time they have covered hundreds of square miles with white and green veils. For the most part these are fragile and short-lived, but in a few cases they have been preserved untorn through the ages.
These lace weavers are the bryozoa, or moss animalcules—one of the oldest, most abundant and least known forms of animal life. They have much the same habits as the corals, but the two limestone secreting creatures are not even remotely related. The weavers are far higher in the scale of evolution than the island builders. Their family associations long have been in dispute. They have been associated with the rotifers and mollusks and even with some unknown ancestral form leading to the vertebrates. Now, however, it is believed that their nearest relatives are the nearly extinct brachiopods, or lampshells.