Why do cardinal fish spit light? The reason is simple.

Did you know that there is a fish that spits light ? Apparently. This is the cardinal fish. Why do cardinal fish spit light? The reason is very simple.

There are sea creatures that behave very strangely. For example, there is a ‘strange’ species of jellyfish that can sting humans and catch its prey without touching them, or the red-lipped batfish that uses its fins as ‘legs’ to walk.

But the cardinal fish breathes fire… fire?

This may lead us to think of fire-breathing dragons. And because of that, some think that the fish spit light to defend themselves or even attack.

But this is not so.

Actually the light that these fish spit is not theirs.

Why do cardinal fish spit light?

This curious phenomenon occurs when a cardinal fish eats a crustacean, to defend itself and avoid being devoured it emits a strong light that scares the fish, which spits it out instantly. The beam of light comes out of its mouth, and it seems that the fish is spitting out light.

Thus the crustacean saves its life.

What would happen if the fish swallowed the crustacean even though it had emitted its light? Well, this would make the fish easy prey for its predators, since it would be shining everywhere, as if it had a huge neon sign with the word “eat me”. In the very dark places where the cardinal fish lives, this would be the end of it.

After spitting out the crustacean, the fish decides to walk away and go to a darker place.

The light emitted by the crustacean is produced when two chemical compounds come together, luciferin and luciferase. Light is thought to be blue because it is the color of the visible spectrum that travels the furthest through water waves.

Something else on our curious planet

This reminded me of the kick of the cleaner shrimp, it is so strong that it emits light . In fact, his kick can break the glass of an aquarium.

Speaking of light, we have the puffer fish that has a flashlight on its head . One was recently found on the beach in California. This is very rare, as they live in the deep sea.

At Curious Planet we regularly publish the discovery of many strange sea creatures, such as the strange sea creature found in Antarctica . Also here you have 95 curious facts about animals that you did not know.