1332 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



PUFFER DISTENDED WITH WATER 



them about like toy balloons, too big to be swal- 

 lowed, and on which they could get no hold 

 whatever. 



When young puffers are fully inflated with 

 air, they are almost incapable of movement, 

 and appear like small globes with the tem- 

 porarily useless fins protruding at different 

 angles. 



The air or water tightly filling the abdomen 

 or the oesophagal sac is kept there by a valve 

 in the throat and can be discharged instantly. 

 Some of the puffers, such as the spiny spe- 

 cies so common along our coast, are thickly 

 covered with stout spines which become rigidly 

 erected when the fish is inflated. This species 

 is often called sea porcupine. The spines are 

 modified scales and in some species are quite 

 long and sharp. 



Puffers which have been frightened near the 

 surface and are inflated with air are easily 

 driven by the wind and often drift ashore to 

 be thrown on the beach by the waves and even 

 rolled along the sands by the wind. 



When taken from the water, puffers begin 

 to inflate at once, making distinct sucking- 

 sounds until the utmost distention is attained. 

 Inflated puffers placed in preserving fluid some- 

 times die fully inflated. They often die inflated 

 on the sea shore and are dried by the sun and 

 wind. It is a common practice with the Jap- 

 anese to make lanterns of inflated and dried 

 puffers by cutting out the back as shown in 

 the accompanying photograph of a puffer "lan- 

 tern" in the New York Aquarium. A candle 



suspended by a wire serves 

 as a light which shows as 

 brightly through the 

 stretched skin of the fish as 

 through a piece of oiled pa- 

 per. 



In the tanks of the Aqua- 

 rium the puffers are rather 

 sluggish fishes, moving 

 chieflj^ by their fins rather 

 than by any forceful action 

 of their chunky bodies. 



There are three species 

 which are common in our 

 New York waters ; the spiny 

 puffer {Chilomycterus 

 schoepfi) referred to above, 

 the common puffer or swell 

 fish (Spheroides maculatus), 

 and the smooth puffer (La- 

 gocephalus laevigatus) . The 

 last reaches a length of 

 twenty inches, while the 

 others are seldom more than eight or ten inches 

 long. They feed on young oysters, scallops, 

 mussels, razor clams, limpets and other mollusks, 

 as well as small crabs, shrimps, barnacles, sea 

 urchins, ascidians, worms and sea weeds. All 

 puffers have hard, parrot-like beaks, well adapt- 

 ed for crushing crabs and mollusks. The flesh 

 of some tropical puffers is poisonous at times, 

 probably acquired from their molluscous food. 

 A Japanese species is said to be so poisonous 

 that its gall was formerly used to poison arrows. 



Not the least interesting thing about puffers 

 is the fact that some species live only in large 



rf^ 



LANTERN MADE FROM A LARGE PUFFER 



