Welcome back to my blog on the fantastic Pufferfish. This blog post is going to focus on the pufferfish anatomy, so let’s dive straight in! By now, I think your memory has been refreshed on one of the most famous Pufferfish, Ms. Puff from SpongeBob. The middle-age boating instructor Ms. Puff would puff of any time SpongeBob did anything that stressed her out, so yes, this was quite often.  Being that SpongeBob is an animated cartoon, it is very shocking how accurate it is on puffer fish’s ability to protect themselves. Pufferfish have the capability to puff up to more than twice their size when threatened; this defense mechanism makes them unappealing to predators.  Some pufferfish anatomy can have spikes protruding off of their body to protect them self from predators (Seattle aquarium 2013). They can do this by rapidly ingesting water into their stomach. With a large surface area, their stomach expands and ceases all digestive functioning (Practical Fishkeeping 2020).  Now let me explain how they are able to expand their stomachs so much and what happens to their other organs? The stomach of the Pufferfish is folded initially onto itself, allowing it to fit into such a small space. Once the fish puffs up, their stomach fills in gaps of the body cavity, the back and even behind their head, to enlarge. To do this, the Pufferfish lacks a few structures that a lot of other animals do have, such as a pelvis and ribs.

Below  is an video provided from (Practical Fishkeeping 2020) of a Pufferfish fully expanded.

https://youtu.be/WCsFl7HaUtE

Works cited

1. https://www.seattleaquarium.org/blog/why-do-pufferfish-puff
2. https://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/fishkeeping-answers/how-do-pufferfish-inflate/