Atlantic Stargazer

• It has a lure on the floor of its mouth: a fleshy, worm-like appendage that it waves clear of the sand to draw small fish right up to its jaws.
• It has two venomous spines behind the gill covers that inflict very painful wounds, and electric organs derived from the eye muscles with which it delivers weak shocks.
• Its eyes, set on the top of the head, let it watch the whole water column while it stays buried.
• Its eyes sit on top of its head, gazing at the sky — hence the Spanish name miracielo, the sky-watcher: it is the face of an animal that spends its life buried, looking upwards.
• It fishes with a rod. From the floor of its mouth grows a fleshy filament that it waves like a worm to draw small fish within reach of its jaws.
• It combines three unusual defences at once: venomous spines above the pectoral fins, electric organs behind the eyes capable of delivering a discharge, and the camouflage of burying itself.
• Its attack is explosive: it sucks in its prey in milliseconds by snapping open its enormous vertical mouth.
• It has been in the Mediterranean since ancient times and already appears in classical texts, where it was credited with powers of divination because of its skyward gaze.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (fish)

Habitat and environment

Sandy and muddy bottoms of the Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic, from 15 to 400 m

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Uranoscopus scaber