Description
The snubnosed eel has a long, stout body that is strongly compressed posterior of the vent. The head is thick and cylindrical, with a short, blunt snout. The mouth is distinctive, consisting of a tiny horizontal slit surrounded by strongly plicate lips. The jaws are short and strong, with the premaxillaries and maxillaries fused into a single piece. The jaws are equipped with a single row of small, rounded, close-set teeth; the vomerine teeth are absent. The eyes are small and round; the anterior pair of nostrils are short tubes and the posterior pair are slit-like. The gill openings are small and located below the pectoral fins, which are small and triangular. The dorsal, caudal, and anal fins are merged, the dorsal fin base originating over the tip of the pectoral fins and the anal fin originating behind the vent. The scales are similar in appearance to those of Anguilla and are arranged in a right-angle basketweave pattern. The coloration is gray to grayish brown, becoming darker at the fin margins and along the lateral line. This species attains a length of 61 cm (24 in).
Read more about this topic: Snubnosed Eel
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“God damnit, why must all those journalists be such sticklers for detail? Why, they’d hold you to an accurate description of the first time you ever made love, expecting you to remember the color of the room and the shape of the windows.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)