Flashlight Fish Pictures Showing This Fish that Produces Light to Attract Its Prey

The Flashlight Fish, Photoblepharon palpebratus, is a nocturnal fish of the Indo-Pacific with bioluminescent organs under its eyes that serve to attract prey and help it evade predators. It is purplish-brown to black, and usually appears in pairs.

Flashlight fish live in caves and crevices by day and rise to depths of 3-20 meters at night to feed. The bean-shaped photophores under their eyes contain bioluminescent bacteria, which live with the fish in a symbiotic relationship. The photophores glow in the dark, attracting zooplankton and small fish, on which the flashlight fish feed. The fish can reveal and extinguish the photophores by means of a membrane that extends up over the organ. When threatened by a predator, the flashlight fish quickly hides the photophores and flees, effectively disappearing from view of the attacker.

Other species of Flashlight Fish are found in large groups in the Indo-Pacific. They are visible from the surface at night in schools that can stretch for a kilometer or more. Fishermen are said to use them to help navigate narrow reef passages at night.

Other common names for Flashlight fish are Eyelight fish and Lanterneye fish. A closely related form found in the Red Sea has the scientific name Photobelpharon steinitzi.

Taxonomically, these fish are classified as Class Actinopterygii (ray-finned fishes), Order Beryciformes (sawbellies), Family Anomalopidae (lanterneye fishes), Genus Photoblepharon, Species Photoblepharon palpebratus.

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Picture of the flashlight fish, Photoblepharon palpebratus, bioluminescent, Southwest Pacific Ocean

Picture #: 024394

Stock photo of the flashlight fish, Photoblepharon palpebratus, bioluminescent, Southwest Pacific Ocean

Picture #: 024392

Image of a flashlight fish, Photoblepharon palpebratus, Indonesia

Picture #: 060902

Photo of the flashlight fish, Photoblepharon palpebratus, bioluminescent, Southwest Pacific Ocean

Picture #: 024393

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