stonefish
Fish that wear disguises
A lumpy chunk of rock, covered with patches of small seaweed, lies half
buried in the mud of the sea bottom. A small fish, swimming nearby,
moves lazily toward the rock, almost touching it. Suddenly, as quick as
the wink of an eye, a big mouth opens up in the \”rock” and the little
fish is gulped in!
The rock isn’t a rock at all. It’s a stonefish —a fish that’s
\”disguised” as a rock! And its disguise is so good that a stonefish
probably never goes hungry—its food comes right to it! Looking like a
piece of rock helps the stonefish get its food. It also protects the
stonefish from creatures that might eat it.
A number of kinds of fish have \”disguises” that protect them, or help
them get food, or both. The fish called the leafy seadragon looks almost
exactly like a clump of seaweed. And the trumpetfish has a long, slender
body that is hard to see when the fish hangs head down among some coral.
Of course, these fish don’t know they’re disguised as rocks, seaweed,
or coral. It is simply the way their bodies are shaped and colored. Over
many millions of years, nature has disguised them in these ways.
trumpetfish
