I created this page after seeing a sticker that looked familiar... it had an oarfish, this long, silvery deep-sea fish with red fins, a beautiful crest, and a very interesting caption: "AFTER SEEING THIS, YOU'LL SEE PISTRIX EVERYWHERE".
Of course, I didn't think anything special about that sticker at the time: there are a lot of weird stickers where I live. I mean, I like fish, but just having a picture of a fish somewhere doesn't make me obsessed. Actually, well, I have to be sincere with you: the regalecus, or oarfish, is one of the most important animals my team is looking for, but we just call it regaleque, regalecus, oarfish, not "pistrix". What was that word?
But then something... strange started happening. I started seeing this creature, the pistrix, everywhere, literally. For those of you who ended up on this page after seeing one, I want to first clarify what this entity called "pistrix" is.
The pistrix (from the Latin pistrix -ĭcis and pistris or pristis (Greek πίστρις or πρίστις) in Greek and Roman mythology is a legendary sea monster with a serpent's tail. A very long fish, crested in red, like the oarfish.
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| The constellation Cetus illustrated by Johann Bayer in the 17th century. |
A name that may seem generic, therefore, the pistrix as a precursor of sea monsters, as a primordial crested serpent... fascinating... but that's not all.
As you know, there are many other sea monsters, creatures like Nessie, which many trace to the plesiosaur, or the gigantic, monstrous Leviathan, more similar in size and body-type to the whale.
No, the pistrix (pistrices? The plural can be pistrices, I think) are creatures that can be traced back to a specific animal: the oarfish. And this fish, probably the longest bony fish in the world, has a mystical aura all its own, even without becoming a monster.
The family name, Regalecidae, derives from the Latin regalis, which obviously means "royal."
They call it the "doomsday fish." In Japanese, it's known as "the messenger from the palace of the sea god." We don't know much about this fish.
No, really, we know almost nothing. What are its habits? How does it reproduce? Why does it often swim upright in the water like a knife, with its head up and its tail down? Why do they autotomize so often (that is, they autonomously lose parts of their body, shortening themselves from the tail, sometimes even by meters) and how do they survive such a process? Almost all known oarfish, and certainly all adult ones, have lost some part of their body.
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| United States Navy SEAL candidates holding a 23-foot (7.0 m) giant oarfish, in September 1996 |
We don't know the maximum length these animals can reach. We can't breed them in captivity at all: although their eggs were hatched in one experiment, the larvae didn't survive after just a couple of days.
We can't even keep the adults alive.
They live all over the world, widespread in all seas, including the Mediterranean, but we see them very rarely. And when we do see them, oh... when we see them often, things happen.
In 2005, more than six of these "doomsday fish," which inhabit the deep sea, washed ashore on various beaches around the world, in May and June. Popular tradition holds that this is a sign of a great misfortune that is about to come, probably an earthquake. Scientists (and I'm a scientist myself, so I understand there's a big difference between causality and correlation) reassured the public, saying that there was no connection between those findings and the Earthquakes.
Then, on July 29th, the earth shook: magnitude 8.8, the sixth largest earthquake ever recorded.
Sea serpents are impressive animals. Beautiful. Mysterious.
And they gave rise to pistrix, sea monsters, all over the world.
All cultures have their silvery sea monsters, with blood-red fins, everywhere around the globe. Their pistrix.
On March 3, 1860, what everyone described as a sea serpent landed on a beach in Bermuda: it was 16 feet (4.9 m) long. We have a drawing of that creature: it was an oarfish.
Sea serpents have inspired nagas, dragons, sea serpents, deities, angels. And we still know nothing about them. So next time you look around, ask yourself... how has the pistrix changed my life? How has it impacted what I love? And why, now... do I see them everywhere?
What? You don't believe that oarfish are in the collective unconscious of humanity? Want some examples? Here are just a few.
- In Pokémon, Gyarados and Milotic are both inspired from the Regalecus: Milotic embodies its extreme rarity, its gleaming body, and its beauty, while Gyarados represents the "wrath" of natural forces that can destroy entire coastal cities, as in the legendary version of this creature, which brings earthquakes with it. They're monsters (pocket monsters!) inspired by oarfish, that makes them both pistrix.
- In the Basilica of Aquileia, the Regalecus is depicted in connection with the legend of Jonah. The "Immense Pistrix" (or in Italian, "la Pistrice immensa", a creature both powerful and good-natured, seems to be the fish at the center of this biblical phenomenon.
- Have you ever seen the Reaper Leviathan in the video game Subnautica? Inspired by the Regalecus... and since it's a sea monster inspired by one of these fish, we can safely classify it as a pistrix.
Naga (ナーガ Nāga) is a gigantic, incredibly long, monster-oarfish in the videogame The Ocean Hunter. It is the second and final sub boss in Tartarus Deep. Beautiful, and scary, and oh very, very much a pistrix.
Naga - In the very popular video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the oarfish it is one of the catchable fish. Why? That's a deep sea fish, you couldn't... you couldn't catch it so easily. Why are they made common in such a mainstream videogame? Despite it not being a real "pistrix", but just an oarfish, it's nevertheless fascinating.
In Animal Crossing
[The list is always expanding! I just need the time to write all the freakin' pistrix I encounter every day! What does this mean? What does this MEAN?!]
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