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Sailfish — printable fact sheet
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Sailfish
Istiophorus platypterus
Istiophorus platypterus is routinely called the fastest fish in the sea at 110 km/h, and that figure is almost certainly wrong. It comes from a 1940s experiment in which a hooked sailfish stripped line off a reel, a method that measures the fish's panic and the drag of the gear,…
Did you know?
- Despite their incredible speed, sailfish usually rely on stealth and teamwork rather than pure speed to capture prey.
- The colour changes during a hunt happen in under a second and are controlled by hormones and by direct nervous signalling to chromatophores, and a sailfish that lights up seems to be signalling an imminent strike, which reduces collisions with its own kind. Sailfish rarely kill a sardine outright with the bill; most attacks injure, and the fish then swallows the wounded prey whole. A sailfish's sail is highly vascularised and may also serve to dump or absorb heat, since the species raises the temperature of its brain and eyes above ambient.
What I learned
Draw the sailfish
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