Inflated Fear: How Big Are Deep-Sea Monsters Really (11 photos)
No matter how much people try to scare themselves, all these deep-sea fanged monsters are absolutely safe for people. Here are the most hyped sea monsters, see for yourself - is it worth being afraid of them at all? 
1. Long-horned saber-tooth
This looks like a real sea demon: huge teeth sticking out of its mouth, an evil look and even a suitable name. It seems ready to tear apart anyone who dares to go down to a depth of 3,000 to 5,000 meters. Hold him, seven! 
When you wake up at 2:00 in the morning and don't understand what's going on.
But don't panic: saber-toothed fish only grow up to 16 centimeters from their scary snout to the tip of their tail. If you suddenly find yourself at depth, you'll have to try to spot the fish in the impenetrable darkness of the abyss! But a saber-toothed fish will be terribly scared of a person. 
No wonder photographers say that the angle is everything!
2. Chauliod, or viper fish
The teeth of the Chauliod are so huge that they cannot completely close their mouths - otherwise they will pierce their own skull! The giant mouth opens almost like a saber-toothed tiger: 90-100°. Thanks to this arsenal, the viper fish eats prey half the size of itself! 
Use toothpaste *your brand name*, and your teeth will be as healthy as mine!
It sounds really epic, but the trouble is that chauliods are the size of a herring - no more than 30 cm. And the average size varies from 10 to 15 cm. So only a human finger can be swallowed by a viper fish. 
This is one you definitely shouldn't put your fingers in!
3. Black dragon, or idiacanthus
A deep-sea venom eel. The fish looks like a long black whip, with a large mouth with a bunch of teeth and a fishing rod-bait at the front end, and long spikes at the back. It could have become a real legend if it weren't so small - adults grow only up to 40 centimeters in length, half of which is the tail. 
When you watch videos until 3am, knowing that your alarm is set for 6am.
And it's only the females that are so big, the males only grow to 7 centimeters. Their entire life is limited to mating. So no, black dragonesses don't sink ships, don't eat people, and generally rarely show themselves. 
Wow, who's so scary!
4. Deep-sea anglerfish, or sea devil
It needs no introduction - this is the most hyped deep-sea fish. The suborder of deep-sea anglerfishes includes more than 120 species. And all of them are equally terrible! A wide mouth with a bunch of huge pin-teeth, long spiky fins - an ideal candidate for the role of a monster from the black depths of the ocean. In addition, the largest species - the Greenland ceratia - grows up to 1.2 meters in length! Hooray, finally a real underwater horror! Well, can we start to be afraid already? No, wait, we have a discrepancy here. 
Only females grow to such sizes. The maximum length of a male is only 5 cm!
Not every species of sea devil strives to dive as far as possible: the largest species live in the coastal zone - at a depth of 200 to 1000 meters. The logic is simple: the lower you go, the less food there will be. The deepest representatives of the suborder, which live at a depth of 3000 meters, are as tiny as other local inhabitants. For example, the black anglerfish, which excited the Internet at the beginning of the year, grows to only 15 centimeters. 
— Darling, have I gained too much weight? — No, darling. You are my baby!
5. Giant squid
Probably the only truly gigantic inhabitant of the deep. The cephalopod monster grows up to 13 meters in length and weighs up to 300 kilograms. The entourage is added by long tentacles, eyes the size of a plate, a powerful beak, like a cockatoo. It was he who was accused of attacks on ships and sailors, it was he who was the prototype of the creepy stories about the Kraken. 
Fear has big eyes. And the giant squid has even bigger eyes! The mollusk has the largest eyes on the planet: their size reaches 25 cm in diameter! This is larger than a human head.
The secret of the size is in the effect of deep-sea gigantism. Most often, invertebrates that live below 1000 meters fall under it: giant isopods, crustaceans, mollusks - having sunk to the bottom, they become several times larger than their relatives from the surface. Why this happens is not exactly known. Scientists suggest that the increase in size is an adaptation to the cold waters of the black abyss, the absence of predators and a small amount of oxygen. 
People themselves seek out encounters with giant squids. Because the species rarely rises from the depths - only dead carcasses are washed ashore.
But even so, the big guy is not our enemy. Yes, the giant squid is a predator, but it has no need for human flesh. Our ships are also of no interest to it. The mollusk feeds on small fish and its own kind, hiding in the darkness from sperm whales and the rest of the world.
