The Guinness Book of World Records has an entry for biggest male-female difference: the deep-sea angler fish, also known as the giant sea devil. #deepsea
Females of the largest species, Krøyer's deep sea angler fish, Ceratias holboelli, reach 1.2 m (3.9 ft) in length. Males, by contrast, are much smaller, reaching 14 cm (5.5 in)
The female is about 500,000 times heavier than the male.
The males are parasitic. When a male anglerfish finds a mate, he bites her, digs in, attaches himself permanently and starts living off her blood
How do different types of deep-sea life find mates in such a large and sparsely populated area?
The densities of deep-sea organisms are extremely low, at least an order of magnitude lower than shallow water, and decline exponentially with depth. Confounded with the large habitat area this makes the probability of finding a mate extremely low.
Organisms can counteract this through multiple strategies. One of the more interesting strategies, displayed by our friends the angler fish, is Sexual Parasitism.
The extermely small male, once he finds a female, attaches for life forever to become a sperm bump on the side of the female.
Related please see this wonderful cartoon from the @Oatmeal “How the male angler fish gets completely screwed” theoatmeal.com/comics/angler
@Oatmeal And becaause you can’t get too much anglerfish today. Here is some amazing video from @MBARI_News
@Oatmeal @MBARI_News And for the here is a link for the first video ever of the male-female pair of deep-sea anglerfish
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