Imagine if you can a man weighing 150 pounds sitting down to a table and eating a 300-pound hog at one meal and, what is more, swallowing it whole. Angler fish regularly and successfully (thanks to the stretching powers of their stomachs) swallow objects that are larger than their own bodies. Their voracious appetite, however, sometimes makes them overly ambitious.
Specimens have been found floating helplessly at the water’s surface with fish in their stomachs which were more than twice their own size. However, appetite alone is not to blame. Their teeth are so arranged that once they have seized a victim they cannot turn it loose. The angler must finish any meal it begins or endure being dragged through the water by its prey.
Some species of deep sea fish, smaller than the anglers, equal or even exceed the angler in swallowing ability. These fish, which include the black or great swallower and the so-called widemouths, customarily swallow fish larger than they are and are reported to have successfully downed fish three times their own size.