Puffer fish are found in the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii to Japan. The fish of this species inflates its body like a balloon when it senses danger. For this, they absorb a lot of water in their body.
These fishes have small spines on their body. As the body swells, these spines stand up.
Toads, Tobies and Fugu also belong to this species.
Puffer fish is very popular in many parts of the world and especially in Japan. But the heart, intestines and blood of these fishes are very poisonous. There is a risk of paralysis due to the poison of this fish entering the human body.
There are reports of many people dying from eating this fish in Japan.
The shark is the only aquatic animal that is not affected by the puffer's venom.
General features
The tetraodontiforms make up about 5 percent of the tropical marine fishes of the world. Most species range in size from about 8 to 60 cm (3 to 24 inches) in length, but one, the mola, or ocean sunfish (Mola mola), reaches more than 3 metres (10 feet). They are often strikingly patterned or gaudily coloured. With the exception of the relatively deepwater Triacanthodidae and Triodontidae, the members of this order are usually found in waters less than about 65 metres (200 feet) in depth and are especially prominent around coral or rocky reefs and on open sand and grass flats.
Many species, especially puffer fishes, have poisonous flesh, at least during certain seasons of the year, but most of the highly poisonous substance responsible for the numerous annual fatalities in Indo-Pacific regions is contained in the viscera. The flesh of the poisonous species can be safely eaten only when the freshly caught specimen has been carefully cleaned and washed in the exacting manner of fugu (or puffer fish) chefs in Japan. The majority of tetraodontiforms are palatable, and in numerous tropical regions the flesh of various triggerfishes and trunkfishes is highly esteemed.
Other than as food in tropical coastal areas, humans make little direct use of tetraodontiforms, except for collecting the dried bodies of the hard-cased boxfishes and the spine-studded inflated puffers as curios. In fact, the order Tetraodontiformes contains so many strangely specialized species that the group has intrigued humankind from early times; 1st-century Roman author Pliny the Younger, for example, discussed puffer fishes and ocean sunfishes in his Natural History. While most adult tetraodontiforms have thick, spiny skins or other defensive mechanisms that protect them from most predacious fishes, the relatively defenseless young are eaten in great quantities by certain game fishes—dolphin, marlin and other billfishes, tunas, and various jacks. The tiger pufferfish, Takifugu rubripes, has been discovered to have one of the smallest known vertebrate genomes and thus serves as an important experimental biological organism.
Natural history
As one would suspect from their usually well-developed and massive dentition, with many having the teeth fused together in a parrotlike beak, most tetraodontiforms feed on hard-shelled crustaceans, mollusks, and echinoderms. But some with massive, crushing jaws and teeth, such as the ocean sunfishes, often feed extensively on such soft-bodied invertebrates as jellyfishes (medusae).
Some, such as boxfishes, blow a jet of water out of their mouths onto sand bottoms to expose burrowing invertebrates; others (such as some triggerfishes) specialize in eating spiny sea urchins or even clams and oysters. A few species, especially the long-snouted Triacanthodidae, have reduced or even rudimentary teeth, some apparently feeding on the scales of other bottom fishes. Other species probably feed on soft-bodied invertebrates, probing with the snout into holes in the bottom or into recesses in outcroppings to obtain food unavailable to less-specialized fishes. Although many species have specialized feeding habits, the order as a whole can be considered as comprising opportunistic predators on invertebrates.
