The Life of Animals | Puffer Fish | The puffer's unique and distinctive natural defenses help compensate for its slow Locomotion. The puffer's excellent eyesight, combined with this speed burst, is the first and most Important defense against predators. Its backup defense mechanism, used if successfully pursued, is to fill its extremely elastic stomach with water (or water outside the water) until it is much larger and almost spherical in shape.
Even if They are not visible the puffer is not inflated, all puffers have pointed spines, so a hungry predator may find Itself Suddenly facing an unpalatable, pointy ball rather than a slow, tasty fish. Predators the which do not Heed this warning (or WHO are "lucky" enough to catch the puffer Suddenly, before or During inflation) may die from choking, and predators That do manage to swallow the puffer may find Their stomachs full of tetrodotoxin, making puffers an unpleasant, possibly lethal, choice of prey.
Not necessarily all puffers are poisonous Takifugu oblongus, for example, is a fugu puffer That Is not poisonous, and toxin levels in fish varies That Wildly events are. A puffer's neurotoxin is not necessarily as toxic to other animals as it is to Humans, and puffers are routinely Eaten by some species of fish, Such as lizardfish and tiger sharks. Also, Japanese Farmers have grown nonpoisonous fish puffers by controlling Their diets. Puffers are Able to Their eyes move independently, and many species can change the color or intensity of Their patterns in response to environmental changes.
Many marine puffers have a pelagic, or open-ocean, life stage. Occurs after spawning females to males SLOWLY push the water surface or join females already present. The eggs are spherical and buoyant. Hatching Occurs after roughly four hours. Brackish water puffers may breed in bays in a similar manner to marine species, or may breed more similarly to the freshwater species, in cases where They have moved far enough upriver. Reproduction in freshwater species varies quite a bit. The dwarf puffers following court males with females, possibly displaying the crests and keels unique to this subgroup of species.
This has been observed in captivity, and They are the only commonly captive-spawned puffer species. Target-group puffers have also been spawned in aquariums, and follow a similar courting behavior, minus the crest / keel display. T. nigroviridis, the green-spotted puffer, has recently been artificially spawned under captive conditions. Puffer poisoning usually results from consumption of incorrectly prepared puffer soup, fugu chiri, or occasionally from raw puffer meat, sashimi fugu. Puffer's (tetrodotoxin) deadens the tongue and lips, and induces dizziness and vomiting, Followed by numbness and prickling over the body, rapid heart rate, Decreased blood pressure, and muscle paralysis Puffers are not believed to Produce toxins themselves, as Kept in fish tanks or fish farms are totally free of either toxin. Saxitoxin, the paralytic shellfish cause of poisoning and red tide, can also be found in Certain puffers.
