bugdude
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World's Smallest Fish Discovered
Scientists from Europe and Singapore have discovered the world's tiniest fish and smallest known vertebrate, Paedocypris progenetica. Two
species of Paedocypris were found living in highly acidic peat wetlands on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and in the Malaysian part of Borneo. When
fully grown they are the size of a large mosquito. Photo below shows a male Paedocypris fish.
More photos and information at:
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/P/Paedocypris.html
http://budak.blogs.com/the_annotated_budak/2006/01/paedocypr...
Apologies for the off-topic post; just thought this was interesting.
[Edited on 01/01/06 by bugdude]
A man\'s reach should exceed his grasp - or what\'s a heaven for?
Robert Browning
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vandenberg
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Hard to filet
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jimqpublic
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Nah, that's nothing new. I've caught smaller. That's why all my fishing is now done at the grocery store.
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gringorio
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cool
that's really cool! thanks for posting it. 
gringorio
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Ken Bondy
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I hear they put up a helluva fight for their size.
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Al G
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Mood: Wondering what is next???
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Where do I get My lures and if your are at the bottom of the food chain, what the hell do they eat smaller fish???
Albert G
Remember, if you haven\'t got a smile on your face and laughter in your heart, then you are just a sour old fart!....
The most precious thing we have is life, yet it has absolutely no trade-in value.
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bugdude
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Habitat of Paedocypris - world's tiniest fish - in Sarawak, Malaysia. Note the dark tea colored water. These swamps do not harbor mosquitoes
because of the high acidity (ph of 3-4).
[Edited on 01/01/06 by bugdude]
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JESSE
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I wonder how several thousand of those taste in a ceviche?
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Ken Bondy
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JESSE probably very tasty but one decent-sized bowl of ceviche would likely wipe out the entire species
[Edited on 1-30-2006 by Ken Bondy]
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Dave
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I see those all the time. Restaurants in Puerto Nuevo call them medium lobsters. 
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gringorio
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Flap Over Fishes: Who's The Smallest Of Them All?
Flap Over Fishes: Who's The Smallest Of Them All? 
Source: http://www.washington.edu/
The authors of a paper in this week's Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Section B, who say their 7.9 mm-long fish from a peat swamp in
Southeast Asia is the smallest fish and vertebrate known, have failed to make note of work published last fall that describes sexually mature, male
anglerfishes measuring 6.2 mm to 7.4 mm in length.
This 46 mm (1.8 inch) female Photocorynus spiniceps has what looks like a small nub in the middle of her back. Actually, that's a 6.2 mm (less than a
quarter of an inch) long male, the world's smallest known, sexually mature vertebrate. (Photo Credit: T.W. Pietsch/University of Washington)
The 6.2 mm specimen is by far the smallest of any vertebrate, beating the recent claim by a full 1.7 mm, according to Ted Pietsch, a University of
Washington professor of aquatic and fisheries sciences, who has described the specimen.
Pietsch includes information about the tiny specimen, collected in the Philippines, in a review of what's known about reproduction in anglerfishes, so
called because they have bioluminescent lures growing from their heads that they wave or cause to blink in order to attract prey to their mouths. The
work appeared in the September issue of Ichthyological Research, published by the Ichthyological Society of Japan.
In the "Summary and Conclusions" section of that paper, Pietsch wrote of specimens of Photocorynus spiniceps, the smallest of which was 6.2 mm.
Pietsch has the histological evidence that it is a mature male.
The male is attached to the middle of the back of a 46 mm long female Photocorynus spiniceps because that is how they mate.
It's called sexual parasitism and in five of the 11 families of anglerfishes, the males are tiny compared to the females and fuse for life to their
mates by biting onto the sides, backs or bellies of a female. An attached male -- even two, three or up to eight, depending on the family --
essentially turns the female into a hermaphrodite, providing her body with everything she needs to reproduce. For the task, the 6.2 mm male, for
instance, has testes so huge they nearly fill his entire body cavity, crowding his other internal organs.
The female takes care of swimming, eating -- everything.
Anglerfishes live in deep water off both U.S. coasts and across the world's oceans. Home includes some of the most desolate stretches of the seafloor
on Earth. Scientists estimate that 80 percent of the females, many of which live 25 or 30 years, never encounter a male. So it makes sense that
anglerfish have evolved this strategy for reproducing, Pietsch says.
The sexually parasitic males don't have the lures typical of males of non-parasitic anglerfishes, instead their tiny bodies are dominated by nostrils
-- to detect females -- and large eyes to scrutinize the female's lure. The male makes certain the female is of his family before biting onto her.
The specimen Pietsch describes is borrowed from the vertebrate collection of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and his anglerfishes research is
funded by the National Science Foundation. Along with including information in his published work, Pietsch's findings about the specimen were
presented and illustrated at the Seventh Indo-Pacific Fish Conference in Taiwan last May.
"There are always difficulties in talking about the smallest -- would that be length, volume or weight -- the debate goes round and round," Pietsch
says. The co-authors of the paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Section B, two of whom Pietsch knows, call the fish they found
"the world's smallest vertebrate" and compare lengths.
They also compare numbers of vertebrae. On that count, Pietsch's Photocorynus spiniceps scores an 18 and Paedocypris progenetica, the subject of this
week's paper, scores 33 to 35.
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bugdude
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Wow. Interesting. Thanks for the post.
Here is a direct link to story above - for those that are interested:
http://www.uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=22209
A man\'s reach should exceed his grasp - or what\'s a heaven for?
Robert Browning
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Sharksbaja
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Unreal
GREAT STUFF.
Need we go elsewhere for knowledge? No!
DON\'T SQUINT! Give yer eyes a break!
Try holding down [control] key and toggle the [+ and -] keys
Viva Mulege!
Nomads\' Sunsets
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Capt. George
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Senor, seis mil tacos de pescado, por favor.....
\"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men\" Plato
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