New, Pink And Rare - Fish With Hands
A new specie has been found southern and eastern off the Australia shore. It is a fish with hands. It lives on the ocean floor and it uses hands to move instead of swimming like other fish. It is small, often strikingly colorful and decorative. Meet our new friend!
Only four specimens of the elusive four-inch (ten-centimeter) pink handfish have ever been found, and all of those were collected from areas around the city of Hobart (map), on the Australian island of Tasmania.
Though no one has spotted a living pink handfish since 1999, it's taken till now for scientists to formally identify it as a unique species.
The new-species determinations were made based on a number of factors, including number of vertebrae and fin rays, coloration, the presence of scales and spines, and proportional body measurements, according to review author Daniel Gledhill of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, or CSIRO. All of the world's 14 known species of handfish are found only in shallow, coastal waters off southeastern Australia, the review notes.
Even among the previously known species, the fish are poorly studied, the review authors add, and little is known about their biology or behavior.
Posted by Maya
on 12:56 AM.
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Pink And Rare - Fish With Hands,
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