Billy Raski, age 309 of Davis, Calf., for his question:
What is a stonefish?
This fellow lives in one of Mother Nature's fancy fish tanks. Vile find him in warm seas where the dainty corals look like painted gardens. Rainbow colored fish flit and glide through the blue green water among the stony coral fronds and branches. The stonefish, however, is one of the villains of this watery wonderland. For he is a deadly stinger. Luckily for us he is rather rare. We find him in a few places in the Indian Ocean, off northern Australia And some of the Pacific isles.
The stonefish is certainly a fish, but he is not made of stone. But lying on the bottom of a tidal pool, he does look like a stone. This may be too bad for a swimmer or bather who mistakes him for a rock and touches him. For down his rough back, the villain has a row of 13 poisonous spines. Each spine is fed by two small sacs which give off a bluish liquid.
When a spine is touched, even very lightly, the little sacs send up their poisonous fluid. It flows up two little grooves in the spine. If the spine has pierced the foot or hand of a swimmer., the poison is injected into the flesh. Stonefish poison is said to be one of the most painful wounds in. the world and there are cases where it has been fatal to human beings.
The stonefish„ however, does not lie there in wait for a careless swimmer. He is not there to spite the human race. All he wants is a nice fresh fish dinner. When a smaller fish swims by, the stonefish opens his ugly mouth and grabs with his mouthful of sharp pointed teeth. When a large, hungry fish enters the coral reef, the smaller fishes take refuge among the coral branches. But not the stonefish.
He stays right there, squatting on the ocean floor.
This is the sensible thing for him to do, for the stonefish is not a fast swimmer. What's more, if he stays still, the prowling enemy is not likely to notice him. If the big fish accidentally brushes against him, the stonefish will be protected by his poisonous prickles.
The stonefish belongs to 4 strange family of fishes, all of which have armored cheeks. His cousins include the zebra fish, the sea robin, the rosefish, the rockfish and the scorpion fish. All of them are found in coral seas and several of them are deadly stingers.
A large stonefish may be a foot long. He is a flat fish with wide, flat side fins and his ugly body is covered with warts. This is what gives him his stony appearance. The bony plates on his cheeks extend from his mouth back to his gills. He has little piggy eyes and his toothy mouth turns down at the corners. He does, in fact, look just like the villain he is.