Moonfish: chances of survival are less than 1% (11 photos)

The moon fish is amazing. There are more dangers in her life than most animal species on the planet could dream of.





It seems that even bacteria that die from any change environment, have a better chance of survival than sunfish!



Like other fish, the life of the moonfish begins with hatching. from caviar. A newborn fry the size of a grain of sand: it contains 2.5 millimeters in length and less than a gram in weight. It can be eaten by everyone. At a young moonfish has neither poison nor normal fins to escape. The only dubious defense of the oval-shaped baby is a few spikes sticking out in all directions.



I was born! And my chances of survival are less than 1%.

At this stage of life, moonfish die by the millions. baby you have to be very lucky just to survive. One is good - It is not difficult for him to get food. A fish of this size can eat plankton.



Small moons look like puffer fish. And it's not surprising - they are relatives. The sunfish belongs to the order Pufferfish, which include pufferfish and urchin fish.

Malek eats in three throats and rounds extremely quickly. Soon, one plankton is not enough for the moon fish, and it switches to larger prey: fry, shrimps and algae. The most moon-faced too Predators begin to be interested in larger, faster and smarter. Hundreds of thousands the fish will die at this stage. But those who survive will lose their thorns and get the strangest fins on the planet.



No longer a baby, but a teenager!

These fish do not have a tail or caudal fins. Their role perform the dorsal and anal fin, which are fused into a single lobe behind. And the movement is carried out due to the movement of the ventral fins, one of which crawled onto his back. The strangest thing is this addiction works. The cruising speed of an adult fish is as much as 4 km/ h. And in a day she swims up to 26 km! Remind me how many miles you walked today?



Well, isn't she a beauty?

If the moon fish managed to survive all the dangers, it turns into a sea pancake. Completely give up swimming and will go with the flow, only occasionally adjusting the trajectory of your route. AND this tactic works: for 15 months of observations, a moonfish weighing 26 kilo increased its mass by 15 times. She began to weigh 399 kilograms! AND this is not the limit. In the wild, there are fish weighing up to 1.5 tons.



And this is a record-breaking fish caught in 1910. She weighed 1,600 kilograms!

How is such a giant amorphous meat pancake not eaten? Oh more how they eat! Most predators are unable to eat such a colossus - it they're not up to it. The strong skin is reinforced with a layer of cartilage a thickness of a few centimeters. But sharks, killer whales and fur seals gladly otpapayut from fish-moon a piece. And in the literal sense: predators often bite off a piece of meat and swim away, letting the living remains drift further.



If a predator is trying to try on a giant tooth pancake, then it tries to bite in the area of u200bu200ba not so dense “tail”.

Another scourge is parasites. From one adult moonfish you can remove up to 40 types of pests - from fungi to crustaceans. To save themselves from this horde, pancakes regularly swim in for inspection in Coral reefs. Local cleaner fish are always happy to help get rid of from extra roommates.



Am I that tasteless? Took a bite and threw...

Another way to get rid of parasites is to get out on surface. It is in this position that the moon fish most often comes across. people's eyes. For a moon-faced pancake, this is such a sleep-hour. near the surface the fish gains strength, warms up and simultaneously gets rid of parasites. Seabirds sit right on the body and peck at any bullshit, like a giant plate!



- Welcome to our restaurant! Today's menu to choose from three kindsarthropods on the left side and seven species of worms on the right side.

But even so, hundreds of individuals die from parasites and predators. Or get tangled up in nets. Slow and slow-witted fish do not have and a ghostly chance to escape from human commercial fishing. But those whoever overcomes these trials will recoup the dead with a vengeance. For one sunset, the female moon fish lays up to 300 million eggs! And for the whole life, she can become the mother of 3 billion small moons! In nomination “The largest mother of many children” - the moon-fish takes the championship.



Due to the unusual appearance and posture, scientists have long believed that the moonfish is a single planktonic organism, and not a fish.

The law of large numbers guarantees that at least a couple of million fry will survive. They will become 6 million times heavier and give the beginning of a new generation of weak, slow, but incredibly active breeding moonfish!