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Odd-Fish Trufax VI
14th January 2009
Previous TruFax strips: [ I ] [ II ] [ III ] [ IV ] [ V ]
Time for another delve into the world of fishy facts with Professor Lovecraft's Fact file.
This time focussing on puffer fish such as Odd-Fish's very own Howard Philips.
There are many types of puffers and related species but one of them, the green spotted puffer Tetraodon nigroviridis has the shortest genetic sequence (genome) of any vertebrate so far sequenced.
Quite why this should be or what it means for the fish is unclear.
If you're interested, the longest known vertebrate genome is also a fish, the Marbled lungfish at 130 thousand million base pairs.
Most puffer fish and closely related species such as blowfish, balloon fish, toad fish and porcupine fish are highly toxic, carrying within their organs a poison called tetradotoxin (in saltwater species) or saxitoxin (in freshwater) which is so potent, second only to arrow-poison frog toxin, that the poison from a single fish can kill thirty adult humans - equivalent to a full grown Indian elephant!I'm still working towards the THING convention in March but things are going slowly. The playing cards I spent so long on designing have been delayed because the company I found to print them at a reasonable cost are no longer doing playing cards and I have been unwell over the last few weeks with coughs, colds, laryngitis and now a viral chest infection.
I'm still determined to get everything finished in time though, but it's bloody hard work and might be a close thing!
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