Halieutaea indica
species of fish
Halieutaea indica, the Indian batfish, Indian handfish or Indian seabat, is a species of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Ogcocephalidae, the deep sea batfishes. The Indian batfish has a wide Indo-West Pacific distribution.
Taxonomy
Halieutaea indica was first formally described in 1910 by the British naturalists Nelson Annandale and James Travis Jenkins with the type locality given as the Bay of Bengal off the coast of Orissa in India. The genus Halieutaea is the sister group to the other two clades, the Indo-Pacific clade and the Eastern Pacific and Western Atlantic clade, of the family Ogcocephalidae. The family Ogcocephalidae is classified in the monotypic suborder Ogcocephaloidei within the order Lophiiformes, the anglerfishes in the 5th edition of Fishes of the World.
Etymology
Halieutaea indica has the genus name Halieutaea which is Greek for "angler" or "fishermam", a reference to the habit of these fishes of resting on the bottom and using their lures to attract prey towards them. The specific name, indica, means "Indian", referring to the type locality.
Description
Halieutaea indica has a disc shaped body which is circular and which is almost equally wide as it is long. The snout may just extend past the edge of the disc. There are 2 paddle shaped paddles of teeth on the tongue.
“Halieutaea indica” enters the record as species of fish. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Halieutaea, indica and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Halieutaea indica” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Halieutaea, indica and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1943936. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1910.
Scientific names, classifications and consensus can change while older terminology persists in catalogues and historical literature. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Halieutaea indica” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.