#facts about fish

[respect-the-locals]

🐠 Daily Fish Fact: 🐠

Coelacanths were once known only from fossils and were thought to have gone extinct approximately 65 million years ago. Much to scientists' surprise, the first living coelacanth was discovered in 1938. Numerous characteristics are unique to this fish. Among them is the presence of a "rostral organ" in the snout that is part of the electrosensory system, and an intracranial joint or "hinge" in the skull that allows the anterior portion of the cranium to swing upwards, greatly enlarging the gape of the mouth.

[ivoryratdoggerythethird]

dazai making up a whole language with fyodor that no one else can understand is amazing but imagine him using codes that, very objectively speaking, you could crack, it's just that no normal person would ever make the insane leaps in logic that it requires. except for someone familiar with dazai's weird thinking patterns, that is.

i just love the idea of dazai's unhinged antics being dialed up to an eleven when he was in the port mafia, and oda being the only one who simply wouldn't bat an eye at it but chuuya was the only one who would actually get it.

like imagine ango at the end of the jailbreak, his boss saying he should allow himself to sigh and lean back and maybe indulge himself, pat him on the shoulder, tell him what he pulled off reading heart rates wasn't easy and he should be proud for being able to keep up with such a plan

but ango i-drank-with-teenage-dazai-and-also-had-the-records-for-every-soukoku-mission sakaguchi can only remember the time dazai was like using greek sign language through his breathing patterns to communicate from a submarine from beneath the pacific ocean or something, and chuuya could not fathom how no one else could understand him.

and that was the day mori signed off on skk being exclusive partners because every subordinate in the room was crying tears of blood by the time chuuya finished explaining which blood pressure level was warning them about a bomb, which blinking sequence was him conveying the vault password and which series of inhales was just him calling mori a bitch.

(ango also pointedly did not want to think about how smug dazai had looked after the mission when mori confirmed skk would only be each others' partners for efficiency and to maintain everyone else's sanity

or about how when he called chuuya to tell him about dazai's prison break scheme he could only get like 3 out of 276 steps into the plan before chuuya rolled his eyes, said "got it" then hung up and pulled the whole thing off without a hitch.)

[destiny-islanders]

adding injury to insult

[gaycrittercentral]

BEHOLD!! I made an entry to Skunkape's 2023 Holiday Contest! :'Dc I worked so fuckin hard on it hhhrhrhrhgdhsjglshgjdjfh and let me tell you, I do not at all hope to win but I do hope it makes Steve snicker. Just the thought that he'll be seeing it is wild. Hope it makes y'all snicker too ehehehe!!

[skywerse]

doodles from my big riptide doodle file I started a week ago

(part 1)

[doctorsiren]

he’s mad she ratted him out

[silusvesuius]

testing out drawing maormer 🪸🐚🪸 and a nelvas 🧣📜🩷 i'll ramble about maormer a bit in the tags

[bananafishdepression]

This is ur sign to start a petition for Banana Fish remake where the plot would be set in the 80s

[thatsbelievable]

[the-dragon-girl-27]

Flocking doodles

Maiasaura watching over her hatchlings

Sigilmassasaurus fighting for territory

Boreaspis swimmin round

Gigantopithecus yeeting another Gigantopithecus to assert dominance

[respect-the-locals]

🐠 Daily Fish Fact: 🐠

The Snowflake Moray Eel, along with other species of morays, have pharyngeal jaws, which are a second set of jaws located in the throat or pharynx. This species is an unconfirmed hermaphrodite, but there have been records that they are able to change sex during their lifetime. Snowflake morays are also scale-less, secreting a mucus over their skin that allows for easy maneuverability in and around holes in their environment.

[ms-scarletwings]

So it’s like a huge thing in Dredge that sometimes you pull up these lovecraftian type of mutant fish… like, they’re rarer and more valuable, albeit fucked up variants of the normal ones you catch. Kind of like shiny Pokémon if the shinies had many eyes where they shouldn’t or clumps of parasitic, Gigeresque cysts covering their malformed bodies.

Anyway the least disturbing and MOST funny one to me that I’ve encountered so far has to be this aberrant version of blackmouth salmon

Like, I’m sorry, devs?… that’s not some unholy divergence from the course of the natural order that’s just a normal ass chinook in the spawning season. No joke, they just casually rot alive exactly like that every single generation of fish.

Heads up: under this cut gets gross

Photos of real salmon during the spawn season that turn my stomach in a way this video game can only aspire to

In case you ever wondered, this is also the reason people don’t eat post-spawn adults.

Remember kids, as much as any of us try, it’s very hard to top the worldbuilding of the greatest horror author of all- Mother Nature.

[bethanythebogwitch]

Wet Beast Wednesday: parrotfish

Which fish hangs out on a mermaid pirate's shoulder and repeats what she says in a high-pitched voice? The parrotfish, of course. Or at least in fiction they should (certainly will in my D&D world). But even in real life, parrotfish are still pretty interesting.

(Image: a common parrotfish (Scarus psittacus) seen from the side in front of rocks and corals. It is a brightly-colored fish, mainly light blue but with patches and stripes of yellow and pink on the fins. Its mouth is open, revealing what appears to be a beak. End ID)

Parrotfish are fish famous for their mouths and eating habits. There are about 90 species known. While they were historically considered their own taxonomic family, they have since been reclassified a subset of the wrasse family and there is still some debate on how to classify them. Most species are on the smaller size, but a few can get very large. The largest species is the green humphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) at 1.5 meters (4.9 ft) and 75 kg (165 lbs) while the smallest species is the bluelip parrotfish (Cryptotomus roseus) reaching 13 cm (5 in). I could not find an average weight for the bluelips. What makes parrotfish really stand out visually is their colors and their mouths. Most species are very brightly colored, with distinct markings and males are usually more brightly colored than females. Their mouths are dominated by what appear to be beaks, which gave them their common name. These beaks are actually made of approximately 1,000 teeth arranged in 15 rows. As the teeth wear out, they drop off and are replaced by the row behind them. The teeth are made of fluorapatite, the second hardest biomineral int the world. To support their hardness, the fluorapatite crystals that make up the teeth are woven together in a structure very similar to chainmail, resulting in very hard teeth that measure in at a 5 on the Mohs scale of hardness. For reference, iron is a 4 and higher numbers are harder. The teeth can also handle 530 tons of pressure. You could put the weight of 200 black rhinos on a tooth and it would be fine. The beaks are powerful enough to bite through rock. Which is what they use it for, but more on that below. Another unusual feature of parrotfish is how they sleep. Some species make their own sleeping bags, which would be adorable if they weren't made of mucus. The mucus is produced using glands in the gills and looks like a transparent bubble. The fish sleeps in the mucus cocoon and when it wakes up, it eats the cocoon. There have been several proposed benefits of the cocoon. It contains chemicals that harm skin parasites while also providing a barrier that keeps new parasites from reaching the fish. It also likely blocks the fish's scent, helping it hide from predators.

(Image: a green humphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) swimming over yellow coral. It is large and mostly a uniform green color, except for the front of its head, which is pink. It has a large, fleshy lump on the top of its head. End ID)

(Image: a close-up of a parrotfish's beak. The top and bottom beaks are divided into two halves, left and right. The beak is bade of small, circular teeth that overlap each other. End ID)

(Image: another common parrotfish seen from the front. It is inside of a mucus cocoon, which appears as a transparent bubble around the fish. Bits of sand dot the cocoon's surface. End ID)

Parrotfish live worldwide, though the majority of species are found in the Indo-Pacific. They live in warm, shallow waters with lots of rocky reefs, especially coral reefs. They use those powerful teeth to eat and what they eat most is algae. There are three main types of feeding behavior: excavating, scraping, and browsing. Excavators bite into rocks to get their food, scrapers crape food off of the surface of the rocks, and browsers go after larger food sources like seagrass and sponges. Some of the larger parrotfish species also make coral a large part of their diet. When they eat, they naturally get rock in their mouths, moreso in excavators. Because their food clings to the rock, spitting the rocks out would deny them food. Instead, parrotfish use pharyngeal teeth set in their throats to grind the rock into sand, which then passes through the digestive tract. When it exists the digestive tract, it is in the form of fine grains of rock. Or to put it another way, parrotfish eat rock and poop sand. A single parrotfish can produce up to 40 kg (88lbs) of sand yearly, and bigger species can produce even more than that. The process of rock being broken down by living things is called bioerosion and parrotfish are one of the most famous sources of bioerosion. The sand they produce can serve as the basis for new growth of coral or other species and helps reinforce nearby islands. In places like Hawai'i, the Caribbean, and the Maldives, it's estimated that up to 80% of the famous white sand is produced by parrotfish and they serve as a major source of incoming earth to support the islands. This makes parrotfish ecosystem engineers. Their eating of algae is also majorly important to their ecosystems. Algae can overgrow and smother delicate ecosystems like coral reefs and seagrass beds and decaying algae draws oxygen out of the water. Parrotfish help the health of their environments by keeping the algae population at healthy levels. Parrotfish also eat seaweeds and sponges that grow much faster than coral and can smother coral reefs. Parrotfish are considered keystone species in many reefs, including the great barrier reef and their population dropping correlates with reduced health of reefs. Damaged reefs tent to have larger parrotfish populations and those populations drop as the reef recovers.

(Image: a group of many parrotfish feeding on coral. They are all the same species and are mostly blue, with yellow heads and stripes on the face. They appear to be biting the the coral. End ID)

Parrotfish are protogynous sequential hermaprodites. This means that all parrotfish are born female and can become male later in life. The transition is usually triggered when there are too many females or not enough males in a location, though in some species any fish that reaches a certain size will become male. Some parrotfish are solitary while others are social. In social species, the social groups consist of a large male and a harem of females that he protects and claims mating rights with. Other males will attempt to fight the male for dominance via headbutting and threat displays and occasionally one of his harem members will become male to challenge him. Males are usually more colorful than females, which they use to woo females, but also puts them at greater risk of predation. If the harem leader dies and is not replaces, one member of the harem will transition to male and replace him. Many species perform courtship dances during nights of the full moon. In non-social species, males will perform displays and fight with each other to attract females. In social species, the dominant male will mate with his harem while smaller males without harems will try to sneakily woo claimed females or sneak in and mate without being noticed. Parrotfish are broadcast spawners. The female releases her eggs into the water and the males releases sperm to fertilize them. The eggs will drift on the current until settling, after which the larvae will hatch. As with most fish species, only a very few of the larvae will reach adulthood.

(Image: a Mediterranean parrotfish (Sparisoma cretense). It is mostly bright red, but with a yellow patch above the tail and a yellow stripe around the eye that runs down to the belly. A large patch behind the eye is blue. End ID)

Thankfully, most parrotfish species are not particularly endangered. The largest threat to them comes from habitat loss as pollution and climate change harms coral reefs. Reintroducing parrotfish to damaged reefs helps them recover. All species are edible, though there is no commercial fishery for them. While parrotfish are capable of delivering powerful bites, there are few reports of humans getting bit. That being said, I found one case where someone had skin on his penis bitten off by a parrotfish. And yes, that link has pictures. Enjoy.

(Image: a blue parrotfish (Scarus coeruleus) looking at the camera. It is a blue fish with darker patches around the eye. Its snout is bulbous and the beak points downward. End ID).

[lilybug-02]

If you would like to talk about fish facts may I request a fun fish fact? :)

The Dwarf Seahorse has a hunting success over 90 percent!

It's head shape creates a “no wake zone” in the water, meaning they don't disturb water around them, allowing for the seahorse to successfully ambush its prey of choice, a type of plankton called the copepod. (This research was done here in Texas!)

Look at this little man. A proud hunter!

The dwarf seahorse is the third smallest seahorse species in the world. It is found in seagrass beds in the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Coast of Florida, and the Caribbean.

Have a cool video of a seahorse hunting

[nightingaleinberkleysquare]

[odd-chips]

Second chunk of the [Weretober] prompts of Tim (and by extension Ratman) getting turned into a bunch of different animal guys!

Seriously, how does he keep doing this? This is bananas, like stop it, man. This is going to be terrible for his back. :/

(Prompts #8-14 in order: Kangaroo -> Otter -> Hebridean Sheep -> Deep Sea -> Serpent -> Antlers-> Quokka + Bonus Sketches under cut)

When drawing Kangaratman, I was thinking somehow Tim would get roped into underground fighting for money, and it reminded me how much I LOOOVE the specific scenario of "werecreature gets put into a fight/cage match/etc". Doubly so when the human's not much of a fighter. >:]!! So I wanted to draw more:

Later my friend made me realize Tim's whole ass would be hanging out after he turned back and it made me laugh HOILKJFD (BTW this is a tumblr exclusive sketch, twitter did NOT get it, you're welcome):

And finally some bonus Snim (Snake Tim) thumbnails! I had a hard time deciding on the pose because honestly I liked them all: