Red Lip Batfish
Red lip batfish (scientific name: Ogcocephalus darwini): Known for its ‘fiery red lips’. Body length can reach 25cm, body flattened, short and stubby tail. Head is flattened and wide, flat-shaped. Mouth is short, red, with a snout spine. Eyes are large. When batfish mature, their dorsal fins turn into a spiny projection, scientists speculate that it has a function of trapping prey. It is special that it has four ‘legs’, with a large head, using pectoral fins to ‘walk’ on the seabed. As an adult, its dorsal fin will grow into a head-like thorn projection to lure prey. Its appearance is really special.
Due to its poor swimming ability, this peculiar fish species mostly crawls on the seabed. Its main food consists of shrimp, mollusks, small fish, crabs and worms. It lives in the waters of the Galapagos Islands.
The red lip batfish’s body length can reach 25cm, body flattened, short and stubby tail. Head is flattened and wide, flat-shaped. Mouth is short, red, with a snout spine. Eyes are large. Mouth is small, subprobranchial, horizontal. The red lips are extremely prominent from between the eyes, like a horn-like beak, which makes it look incredibly bizarre. The upper and lower jaws are equipped with a tuft of hairy teeth, with gill rakers and palatal teeth. The body is similar to that of a boxfish. The gill slits are small and located on the inner side of the base of the pectoral fins behind the dorsal fin. There are 2 gills. The first gill arch has no gill filaments. There are no false gills. The body is generally scaleless, densely covered with small, granular bone protrusions or spikes. The first dorsal fin fin spine forms an undeveloped snout tentacle, often hidden in the snout groove; the second dorsal fin is large or small, with 3 unbranched fin rays, a certain distance from the gill slits, located in the posterior of the tail; the pelvic fin is located below the posterior of the dorsal fin; the pectoral fins have 3 fin ray bases, forming false arms; the ventral fins are throat-positioned; the caudal fin is posterior truncated.
The red lip batfish’s body color is pale brown, with gray on its back and white on its belly. There is usually a dark brown stripe from the top of the head, extending along the back to the tail. The nose and horn are brown. It has bright, almost fluorescent red lips. The scales are gray-brown and relatively smooth. There is a layer of fine, small scales hidden on the side of the body.
The red lip batfish is shorter in circumdiameter than fish of the same species, the number of fin rays in the pectoral fins is higher. The number of lateral scales, the scales of the young are usually 4-9 pieces, 6-9 pieces on the cheeks. There are about 19-20 vertebrae.
It is often found on beaches or the seabed. Although it is considered a shallow-water species, it sometimes appears in deep water. It is usually found at a water depth of 3-76 meters, and also appears at about 120 meters deep coral reef edges. It can crawl on the seabed using its arm-like pectoral fins and small abdominal fins, and also uses its snout tentacles to trap prey, feeding on small fish and benthic invertebrates. It mainly lives in the surrounding waters of the Galapagos Islands. Its pectoral fins and abdominal fins are like limb appendages. When the batfish begins to swim, its quirky appearance may affect its speed. However, despite its slightly clumsy swimming, it can use its fins to walk on the seabed.
Batfish is one of the many fish species that effectively inhibits seaweed growth, its ability to eat seaweed is no less than that of parrotfish and scorpionfish, and it can even remove large kelp.
