One Of The Weirdest Fish I Have Seen Yet...

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I was reading an article on the bbc the other day on the water to land evolution of prehistoric fish when it mentioned paddlefish;

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6683261.stm

These fish have to be some of the weirdest fish i have seen yet! In a weird way, they kinda remind me of elephant nose fish...To see pics of paddlefish, check these out;

http/www.tnaqua.org/Newsroom/HighRes/Paddlefish2.JPG

http/www.chattanoogafun.com/photolibrary.../paddlefish.jpg

http/wwwaux.cerc.cr.usgs.gov/MICRA/Paddl...%20headdown.jpg

To me it kinda looks like a basking shark crossed with a spoonbill bird (pic: http/www.irishbirdimages.com/pages/galle...s/spoonbill.jpg ). Isn't this one of the weirdest looking fish ever ? I wonder what the spoon-like nose thing is for...

 

[The-Wolf]

the paddle or more correctly the rostrum is covered with electroreceptors. This is essentially a highly sensitive antenna used to gather information about the surrounding environment through changing electrical fields. This electric sense is used by American paddlefish to locate prey. This system is so sensitive that juveniles can locate single zooplankton from up to 9 cm away by sensing the miniscule electrical pulses given off by the animal’s muscle contractions.
it is also used to detect certain chemical triggers in the water that would indicate it is time to migrate,
although this has not been scientifly proven yet.

 

[gilaesther]

Before I read The Wolf's post, I was thinking that the paddle might be useful for defense. Theoretically, it could be used both ways.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Interesting...I wonder how unchanged this fish has been throughout its evolution considering how prehistoric its family line is? I wonder if the body shape we are familiar with today with paddlefish was evolved steadily over a long period of time, or over long but many phases of periods of time, or over a relatively short phase of its evolution...? It always interests me to see relics from the past like fish like this, like a glimpse into a world of a by gone age of evolutions history .

 

[Yetti]

My neighbor always goes fishing, and he occasionally catches one of these. From what he had experienced, he said that these fish are very strong and hard to reel in, the biggest one that he had caught was about 1.5 meters long, and he releases them because he is scared to eat them =).