robin's marine bio infodump zone

day 27: community 🍽️

It is Precisely just because they prey on fish! A fish is a highly active vertebrate that evolved for lightning fast movement and reflexes through deep, heavy water, so more than half of a fish’s body is a dense hunk of proportionately high-powered, dense muscle all the way through! Look how little space is devoted to organs in even just an anchovy, muscle and bone fills ALL the remaining space:

That’s muscle for escaping sharks and dolphins! Muscle that can fight currents stronger than hurricane winds! But a jellyfish evolved for an extreme conservation of resources: just barely enough tissue to hold it together, which allows it to grow and multiply on barely a sliver the resources it takes to make a vertebrate, a high efficiency approach to building, growing, and multiplying a living body that has allowed jellyfish to keep thriving in the harshest conditions and through global extinction events.

oh man. im glad i can finally share this creature with the world.

this question was pretty hard 4 me because i love many many animals but i decided to highlight my true #1 fave this beautiful animal is called a longhorned cowfish. ive been a fan of this fish for many many years and it is my dream pet!!!!!!!!! (someday i will get one... someday...-) sum fun factz cowfish actually start off their life as just little cubes, which is so so adorable. as they get older they adorn their horns!!! said horns can grow back after being bitten/attacked by a predator!! cool regenerative stuff :P

YES

There are five species of cowshark: Broadnose sevengill, Bluntnose sixgill, Sharpnose sevengill, Bigeyed sixgill, and the Atlantic sixgill.

My favorite fact about these adorable little sharks is that they have more gills than most sharks do (which is why its mentioned in their name). Most sharks have five gill slits! They also don't have the notably large dorsal fin synonymous with sharks.