126 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



PUFFER-FISHES AND SOME INTER- 

 ESTING USES OF THEIR SKINS 

 By E. W. Gudger 

 American Museum of Natural History 



THE puffers are fishes inhabiting tropical 

 and warm temperate seas, and sometimes 

 drifting beyond these limits in warm cur- 

 rents. The Gulf Stream, for instance, carries 

 them as far north as Woods Hole, .Massa- 

 chusetts, while along the North Carolina coast 

 they are very abundant; the writer not infre- 

 quently taking a dozen at one haul of the seine 

 in the harbor of Beaufort. 



The puffers are short-bodied fishes devoid of 

 scales, or rather having these transformed into 

 spines strong or weak, and are especially notable 

 for having the skin over the belly loose and very 

 distensible. The fish by inflating the abdomen 

 with air or water may more than double its 

 volume, and become a veritable balloon; whence 

 the names puffer, globe-fish, balloon-fish. When 

 thus inflated the fish becomes more or less 

 globular in shape with the fins and tail form 

 ing mere protrusions. If filled with air, the 

 fishes float at the surface belly up like so many 

 small balloons, for poor swimmers at the best, 

 they arc now entirely at the mercy of the wind 

 and tide, having practically no power of loco- 

 motion whatever. I have taken scores, almost 

 hundred of puffers at Beaufort in the seine, and 

 in the great majority of cases they came ashore 

 more or less inflated. If filled' with air the 

 fisher boys are sometimes cruel enough to jump 

 on them to hear them explode. 



The puffers may readily be caused to inflate 

 their abdomens by fear, by driving them against 

 some obstacle like the net, and especially by 

 scratching them on the belly. I have often 

 taken advantage of this latter characteristic to 





■iw 



«— BUR-FISH 

 Chilomyeterus spinosus 



cause them to swell up, in order to display them 

 to visitors in the aquarium of the United States 

 Bureau of Fisheries laboratory at Beaufort, 

 North Carolina. The air or water is taken into 

 the stomach or into a sac lying in the body 

 cavity external to the stomach, the opening into 

 this being in the throat. This opening has a 

 valve-like structure which readily admits air or 

 water but refuses exit unless at the will of the 

 fish. Air or water is swallowed in a gulping 

 fashion, the abdomen becoming more and more 

 tense like a football bladder attached to a pump 

 or being blown up by a strong-lunged boy. When 

 the water is allowed to escape it comes in inter- 

 mittent spurts at first, later in a stream, and 

 finally declines to a mere trickle. 



In this connection reference may be made to 

 an interesting modification of this habit in the 

 common swell-toad of our southern coast, Chilo- 

 myeterus spinosus. Dr. Townsend,' Director 

 of the New York Aquarium, has noted that this 

 fish in the exhibition tanks there, will some- 

 times come to the surface and sticking out its 

 mouth will squirt a small stream of water into 

 the air. This habit, however, was noted for 

 Diodon by Arthur Adams so long ago as 1848.- 

 The trick of inflation is a great means of pro- 

 tection to the puffers. An enemy fish would 

 certainly be greatly astonished and even dis- 

 concerted to have a puffer in a few moments 

 swell up to twice its size. Moreover, the rotund 

 shape of the distended fish is a protection 



■ Townsend, C. H. Water-throwing Habit of 

 Fishes in the New York Aquarium., Bull. X. Y. 

 Zool. Soc., April, 1909, p. 488. 



J Adams, Arthur. Notes on the Natural History 

 of the Islands [of the East Indies] in Sir Edward 

 Belcher, Narrative of the Voyage of H. M. S. Sama- 

 rang in the years, 1843-46, Employed in Surveying 

 the Islands of the Eastern Archipelago. Vol. II, i848. 



