50 Fun Facts About Pufferfish

Which extremely stretchy body part does a pufferfish fill with water to swell into a ball?

Its stomach is so elastic that a pufferfish can gulp enough water to become several times its normal size. Lifted out of the sea, it gulps air instead.

What do male white-spotted pufferfish off Japan spend about a week sculpting on the seabed to attract a mate?

A sand circle about two metres wide, with ridges and a maze-like centre, is the male's courtship display. He is only about 10 cm long and never uses the same one twice.

Pufferfish poison is often said to be up to 1,200 times more deadly than which infamous poison?

Cyanide is the usual yardstick, and the toxin in a pufferfish leaves it far behind. Doctors have no antidote: they can only keep a victim breathing until it wears off.

Which sea mammals have been filmed gently passing a pufferfish around, apparently to get a buzz from its toxin?

Dolphins were filmed handling a pufferfish with great care and sharing it among the group, then seeming to drift in a trance-like state.

What does Mrs. Puff, the pufferfish in SpongeBob SquarePants, teach at her school in Bikini Bottom?

Boating is her subject, and SpongeBob keeps failing her driving test. She inflates like a car's airbag whenever he crashes.

Which Simpsons character is told he has a day to live after eating pufferfish at a sushi restaurant?

Homer gets the bad news in a season two episode after an apprentice chef slices the fish. He spends the day working through a list of last wishes, then wakes up alive.

Which animated film features Bloat, a pufferfish who lives in a dentist's fish tank in Sydney?

Finding Nemo makes Bloat a member of the Tank Gang, the aquarium fish who help the young clownfish plan his escape. Brad Garrett provides the voice.

Pufferfish poison was famously claimed to be an ingredient in Haitian powders said to turn people into what?

Zombies were the claim: a Harvard researcher argued in the 1980s that the toxin could leave a victim paralysed yet alive. Later lab tests found little or none of it in the powders.

A pufferfish's teeth are fused together into what tough structure, used to crack open clams and mussels?

A beak is the result, and in a fish tank it can grow too long. Keepers of pet puffers feed them shelled foods such as snails to keep it worn down.

What is the Japanese name for pufferfish, a pricey delicacy that only specially licensed chefs may prepare?

Fugu chefs in Japan have needed a licence since 1958. They earn it through an apprenticeship of two or three years and an exam that most applicants fail.

The scientific name of the pufferfish family comes from ancient Greek words that mean what?

Four teeth is the meaning: each jaw carries two tooth plates joined along a seam down the middle, so a puffer seems to have two above and two below.

Which pufferfish organ, prized for its flavour, has been banned from restaurant menus across Japan since 1984?

The liver is thought to be the tastiest part of the fish and is also the most poisonous. Saga Prefecture has asked to serve liver from its poison-free farmed fish, and food-safety officials have said no.

What was the profession of Bandō Mitsugorō VIII, a Living National Treasure killed by pufferfish in 1975?

Kabuki actor Bandō claimed he could resist the poison and ordered several portions of the most toxic organ at a Kyoto restaurant. He died about eight hours later.

Which British explorer fell ill in 1774 after tasting a fish thought to be a pufferfish in New Caledonia?

James Cook and two naturalists on his second voyage ate only a little, because they had spent so long drawing the fish. All three fell ill, and all recovered.

Pufferfish do not make their own poison: which tiny organisms in their food are thought to produce it?

Bacteria living in the animals a puffer eats are the likely source. That is why farmed fish raised on a controlled diet can be completely free of poison.

What is the name of the powerful nerve poison found in most pufferfish, for which there is no known antidote?

Tetrodotoxin is named after the order of fish that puffers belong to, and a Japanese scientist first isolated it in 1909. Chemists usually shorten it to TTX.

Which sea creature, small enough to sit in a hand, delivers the same deadly nerve toxin as pufferfish in its bite?

Blue-ringed octopus venom was given a name of its own until chemists showed in 1978 that it was the puffer's poison. It was the first animal found to use that poison as a venom.

Which huge, flat-bodied sea fish, able to weigh over a tonne, is a close relative of the pufferfish?

Ocean sunfish belong to the same order, and their newly hatched young look like tiny spiky puffers. A female can release up to 300 million eggs at a time.

The Mbu, a giant pufferfish that can grow more than two feet long, lives in which African river?

Congo River waters are home to the Mbu, one of about 35 puffer species that never go to sea. It can reach 67 cm, so very few home aquariums are big enough for one.

Which vegetable gives its name to the dwarf pufferfish, a popular aquarium pet barely an inch long?

Pea puffers reach only about 3.5 cm and, unlike most of their relatives, live in large groups in the wild. They come from the rivers of south-west India.

Which pair of body parts can a pufferfish move independently, each one pointing in a different direction?

Its eyes swivel separately, much like a chameleon's, letting the fish watch for danger on both sides at once. Many puffers can also change the strength of their colours.

Which bones are missing from a pufferfish's skeleton, leaving its body free to balloon outwards?

Ribs would get in the way of inflating, so puffers have none. They also lack a pelvis and the pair of pelvic fins found on most fish.

Biologists think pufferfish evolved their famous inflating trick to make up for being poor at what?

Swimming fast is beyond them: a puffer paddles along with its small fins, which makes it nimble yet slow, and an easy target for anything quicker.

Which famous sea predators are among the few animals that can eat a toxic pufferfish and usually survive?

Sharks, along with lizardfish, routinely eat puffers because the poison is far less harmful to them than it is to people.

The toxic silver-cheeked toadfish, a pufferfish, invaded the Mediterranean Sea through which waterway?

Suez Canal waters let the fish swim north from the Red Sea, and it has since spread as far as Malta and the Adriatic. Deaths from eating it have been reported in Egypt, Israel and Turkey.

In 2002 a Japanese pufferfish became the first vertebrate after which species to have its genome published?

Humans came first, then the puffer, picked because its genome is among the smallest of any animal with a backbone. With far less filler between them, its genes were easier to spot.

Which big cat gives its name to the most prized and most poisonous pufferfish served in Japanese restaurants?

Tiger puffers are so valuable that they have been overfished, and the species is now listed as Near Threatened. Most of those on the menu are raised on farms.

Which Japanese figure is said to be forbidden, by a centuries-old ban, from ever eating pufferfish?

The emperor has never eaten the dish, according to a Tokyo pufferfish chef. Everyone else in Japan may, provided a licensed chef has removed the poisonous parts.

The Chinese characters used to write pufferfish literally mean river plus which farm animal?

Pig completes the name, making the fish a river pig. It was already prized in Song-dynasty China as one of the three delicacies of the Yangtze.

In Japan, the dried and inflated bodies of pufferfish are traditionally made into which decorative objects?

Lanterns can be made from the preserved bodies, and a giant lantern shaped like the fish was the landmark sign of Zubora-ya, a restaurant in Osaka's Shinsekai district.

Darius Rucker's 1990s rock band is called Hootie & the what, borrowing another common name for the pufferfish?

Blowfish was the nickname of a college friend of the singer who had big, puffy cheeks. Hootie was another friend, whose round glasses made him look like an owl.

In Minecraft, brewing a pufferfish into an Awkward Potion creates a potion with which useful effect?

Water Breathing is the reward for brewing it. Eating the fish raw is a much worse idea, because it hits the player with Poison, Hunger and Nausea all at once.

Many pufferfish wear bright colours instead of hiding: what are those bold patterns thought to be for?

Warning off enemies is the idea: a hunter that has learned the pattern means poison leaves the fish alone. Drabber species rely on blending into the seabed instead.

What happens to the poison in a pufferfish when the fish is thoroughly cooked?

It keeps its full strength, because heat barely affects the poison. Only cutting away the dangerous organs makes the fish safe to serve, which is why chefs train for years.

Doctors have tested the nerve-blocking poison from pufferfish in clinical trials as a treatment for what?

Cancer pain is the target: in tiny doses the poison stops pain signals travelling along nerves, and trials found it helped without adding serious side effects.

Pufferfish poison paralyses nerves by blocking the channels that carry which charged particle into cells?

Sodium must flow into a nerve cell for it to fire, so blocking those channels silences the nerve. Puffers are immune because their own channels are built slightly differently.

Which close cousins of pufferfish look similar but wear large spines that are visible all the time?

Porcupinefish keep their long spines on show, while a puffer's are thin and stay hidden until it inflates. Both families swell up by swallowing water.

Which harmless reef fish has evolved to look almost identical to the toxic saddled pufferfish?

A filefish copies the puffer's dark saddle markings so closely that the two are sometimes found together in the same schools. Hunters that avoid one avoid both.

Where does the grass pufferfish of East Asia fling itself at high tide in order to breed?

Onto the beach is the answer: crowds of grass puffers ride a wave ashore, spawn on land, then wriggle back into the sea. No other puffer is known to do it.

By one widely quoted estimate, a single pufferfish holds enough poison to kill about how many adult people?

30 is the figure usually given, although the dose varies a great deal from one fish, species and season to the next.

While pufferfish poison paralyses the muscles, victims are known to remain in which state of mind?

Fully conscious victims can hear and think yet cannot move or speak. Those who get through the first 24 hours usually make a complete recovery.

In Japan, which drink is served with a smoked pufferfish fin steeping in the cup for flavour?

Sake takes on a smoky, fishy flavour from the fin, and the drink has a name of its own, hire-zake.

Which spiky Pokémon that attacks with poison is based on a spiny cousin of the pufferfish?

Qwilfish is modelled on the puffer's spiny relatives, and its name blends quill and fish. In the games it gulps water and then fires toxic spines at attackers.

Which Japanese port, home to the country's largest pufferfish market, is nicknamed the home of the fish?

Shimonoseki, at the westernmost point of Honshu, lands more of the fish than anywhere else in Japan and holds a festival in its honour every February.

Which security-focused computer operating system has a pufferfish named Puffy as its mascot?

OpenBSD first used a daemon with a halo before settling on Puffy, who now stars in the artwork and songs made for most new versions.

Which North American amphibian defends itself with the same nerve poison found in pufferfish?

Rough-skinned newt skin can carry enough poison to kill several adult people, yet garter snakes living alongside the newts have evolved resistance and eat them anyway.

Which rulers of Japan banned the eating of pufferfish in Edo and the lands under their influence?

The Tokugawa shoguns, who ruled from 1603 to 1868, banned the dish around Edo, and it returned as their power faded. In western Japan, far from their reach, cooks went on finding safe ways to serve the fish.

Recent genetic studies suggest the closest living relatives of the pufferfish order are which group of fish?

Anglerfishes, famous for the fishing-rod lure on their heads, turn out to be the sister group of puffers and their kin, even though the two look nothing alike.

Under which appetising name is the northern pufferfish, a safe-to-eat American species, sometimes sold?

Sea squab made a spiky little fish sound fit for the dinner table, and Americans ate plenty of it during wartime rationing. Its flesh is safe, so it needs no specialist chef.

Which early symptom do diners typically notice around the mouth after eating slightly toxic pufferfish?

Numb lips and a deadened tongue come first, followed by dizziness and then prickling over the whole body as the poison reaches more nerves.