What Is A Cowfish
Longhorn cowfish are usually around 10 centimetres 4 inches in length.
What is a cowfish. They are a resident of the indo pacific region and can grow up to 50 cm long. They can also be found near rocky areas sand flats or grass beds. Cowfish definition any of several marine fishes having hornlike projections over the eyes especially a trunkfish lactophrys guadricornus found in the warm waters of the atlantic ocean.
They are omnivorous feeding upon benthic algae various microorganisms and foraminiferans. Cowfish secrete their toxin in a slimy mucus that oozes from specialized skin cells all over the body and disperses into the surrounding water. A longhorn cowfish scientific name lactoria cornuta is a unique looking boxy yellow fish with two long horns emerging from the front of its head as alluded to by its common name.
Called also cuckold coffer fish trunkfish how to pronounce cowfish. Fish in the family are known variously as boxfishes cofferfishes cowfishes and trunkfishes. Surfactants are compounds that lower the surface tension between two liquids or between a liquid and a solid meaning they make.
When under severe stress it emits a poisonous substance called ostracitoxin. A marine plectognath fish ostracoin quadricorne and allied species having two projections like horns in front. Adults are reef fish often solitary and territorial and live around sand or rubble bottom up to a depth of 50 m.
Their scientific name is ostraciidae although they may additionally be called trunkfish boxfish or cofferfish. Boxfish also called trunkfish or cowfish any of a small group of shallow water marine fishes of the family ostraciontidae or ostraciidae distinguished by a hard boxlike protective carapace covering most of the body. The cowfish is becoming increasingly popular as a pet.
Most of these fish are found in harems of one male and several females. The longhorn cowfish also called the horned boxfish is a species of boxfish from the family ostraciidae recognizable by its long horns that protrude from the front of its head rather like those of a cow or bull. Cowfish are omnivorous bottom feeders consuming both algae and crustaceans and sampling polyps on occasion.
As a member of the unique fish group tetraodontiformes this fish shares more similarities with pufferfish and sunfish than with other more typical fish types. It contains about 23 extant species in 6 extant genera. Redirected from cowfish ostraciidae is a family of squared bony fish belonging to the order tetraodontiformes closely related to the pufferfishes and filefishes.
The longhorn cowfish is a variety of boxfish from the ostraciidi family it is recognisable by its long horns that protrude from the front of its head rather like those of a cow or bull. It lives in warmer ocean waters of the indo pacific region and eats a varied diet. The members of the family found along the bottom in warm and tropical seas throughout the world are considered good to eat and are often dried as curios.
The poison is a surfactant called pahutoxin also known as ostracitoxin.
