Blowfish's Oceanopedia by Blowfish

Author:Blowfish
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

Location, location, location: anus

Finding a home these days is hard – after all, there’s so much you have to consider before making a commitment. What are the local schools like? Are there good transport links? Is it somebody’s anus? Yes, that’s right: not at the top of everyone’s shopping list, perhaps, but for one ocean inhabitant this is a key concern. Meet your new neighbour: the pearlfish.

Of the many species of pearlfish, a few, such as the silver pearlfish, have unusual tastes in housing: they like to make their home inside the anus of a sea cucumber. Luckily for the sea cucumber, they are not particular long fish – only about 18 centimetres – and they are extremely slender. The juveniles are believed to hunt out suitable ‘homes’ so that they have a safe place to metamorphose into a full adult. The adults are then quite protective of their homes, and fights have been known to break out between pearlfish at times of a housing shortage. During the night, the pearlfish leaves the safety of its capacious cucumber home and forages in the surrounding area for shrimps, smaller fish and molluscs. It then returns to its preferred cucumber before dawn, assuming it can find it. Certain species of pearlfish are rather troublesome guests, as they are thought to feed on their hosts from the inside, consuming their gonads and other internal structures.

You might not expect a sea cucumber’s anus to be an ideal home, but in fact these animals breathe out of their anus, so it is actually a good place for regular water flow. There is, however, a problem with the toxicity of sea cucumbers, which is potent enough to stop most fish from even attempting to eat one. However, the anus-dwelling pearlfish have immunity to these toxins thanks to a thick mucus they excrete onto their skin. The mucus also has the added bonus that it provides useful lubrication if the fish wants to slip out of the house . . .

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