Armored Pike: Even Crocodiles Don’t Mess with It, and Its Armor Can’t Be Pierced with a Knife (10 photos)

The Mississippi gar came to us from a previous era. Just imagine: Tyrannosaurus rex had not yet been born, Antarctica had not yet crawled to the South Pole, and this fish was already terrorizing tropical waters around the world! This monster survived the extinction of dinosaurs, total climate change, and even people. It seems to me that it is generally impossible to destroy it.





This pike would rather eat Yemelya than fulfill someone's wishes.

The terminator fish's current homeland is the murky waters of the southern North American basins. But 100 million years ago, the garfish terrorized waterfowl all over the world: paleontologists find its remains in Europe, Africa, and India. The monster has hardly changed since the antediluvian times of the early Cretaceous period. Why change anything if you are impeccably perfect?



A strange world. Reptiles used to be bipeds. Now they are bald primates. What nonsense!

Three meters of powerful body. A menacing mouth with a palisade of sharp teeth. Weight 100-150 kg. Adult fish are not afraid even of alligators. Together with reptiles, they keep the inhabitants of the muddy waters of the Mississippi in fear. Even people cannot knock the gar off the Olympus of the food pyramid!





The mouth of the fish is so reminiscent of the mouth of an alligator that the second name of the species is the alligator pike.

If the scales of other fish are light chain mail, then the scales of the gar are tank armor. The scales, like shards on a roof, fit tightly together without a single gap and are covered with a layer of ganoin - mineralized tissue, stronger than reinforced concrete! Such strength was achieved due to the unique structure of the tissue. It consists of 96% apatite crystals, and the spaces between them are filled with proteins with a small content of metals - iron, copper and aluminum. The enamel of our teeth, by the way, is structured almost the same way.



Visual structure of the scales of the gar.

But do not think that powerful armor turned the fish into a clumsy blockhead. The armor remains strong, but light. It does not hinder movement. One powerful jerk, and the garfish squeezes its gaping victim in its powerful jaws. Not only fish are affected: birds, turtles, mammals - anyone can become a snack!



To be fair, despite its menacing appearance and status as an alpha predator, not a single person has been harmed by the garfish!

Such scales are called ganoid. They are found not only in garfish, but also in some other fish: pike, sturgeon and paddlefish. But only in our heroes are they so thick that they cannot be pierced with a knife blow! Sparks fly out from blows to the armor, as if you were hitting a stone or a piece of iron with a knife. The armor of the armored pike is so strong that locals never hunted them with harpoons or spears - it's just pointless.



And you thought we were joking here? It really does throw sparks!

And since the armored pike cannot be defeated with weapons, it means that they themselves should be made into weapons! Before the arrival of Europeans on the mainland, sharpened ganoid scales were actively used as arrowheads, darts and spears. Of course, they were inferior to steel in practicality, but to produce them, you did not need to go into mines and extract iron.



I always knew that fish bones are weapons!

However, the demand for scales did not particularly affect the population of the species. It is foolish to expect that people will so easily cope with a fish that nature itself could not destroy in more than 100 million years! It seems that in its biological arsenal it has a remedy against any threat.



This fish is not caught commercially. Only the most hardcore sport fishermen fish for it!

The dry season is coming, and all the water bodies are drying up? No problem, the garfish goes to the river delta, moves from fresh water to brackish water. Not enough oxygen in the muddy warm swamp? No problem! The garfish swallows atmospheric air. Through a special valve, it gets into an air bubble permeated with blood vessels. From there, oxygen is absorbed into the body almost the same way as in us - from the lungs! No one touches even newborn garfish! The female can lay up to 150,000 eggs, but none of them will be eaten - the clutch is poisonous.



The most vulnerable form of the gar. No longer poisonous, but not yet dangerous.

However, it is worth recognizing that modern humanity was able to win the battle with the ancient fish. A significant part of the historical range of the Mississippi gar turned out to be unsuitable for life due to the destruction of the habitat. But the fish gracefully got out of the situation. They colonized China! Today, the gar live in seven provinces of the Celestial Empire and the authorities are unable to drive them out.



We take the fish out of the river before it colonizes anything else.

What can I say, even death takes the gar reluctantly! The average lifespan of a fish is somewhere between 50 and 75 years, with some individuals living up to 95 years! It seems that even the Reaper with his scythe has trouble penetrating their armor...