Kristina Hayes, age 15, of Ontario, Canada, for her question:
Is there really a cowfish?
There is a sea horse and a sea bat, a sea fox and a sea hound, a sea robin and a sea raven. All of them are fishes named for land dwelling animals. Among this group of mixed up characters we would surely expect to find one named for the gentle cow. And so there is. He is called the cowfish. His relatives include a weird and wonderful assortment of oddities called the trunkfishes.
If you come face to face with a cowfish, through the glass walls of an aquarium, you would recognize him in a moment. He stares from a pair of round cowlike eyes. He has a stubby cowlike face with a pair of horns on top of his head. Certainly, his head reminds you of a puppy sized seagoing cow. But since he is a genuine fish, he has fins for swimming instead of legs for walking.
The cowfish belongs in a very remarkable group called the trunkfishes. The trunk refers to the bony boxes that cover almost all of their bodies. This sturdy armor is made from closely knit six sided plates. The small round mouth, with sharp teeth and crushing jaws, is free to move. So is the tail section, with its fan shaped fin. The rest of the body is sealed inside the rigid, boxy trunk.
Most of the trunkfishes enjoy life in warm and tropical seas, though the cowfish may live farther north. Their bony outfits come in odd shapes, often six sided, with a flat section at the bottom. Their armor tends to make them slow and clumsy, which may explain why they prefer to live in the lower levels of shallow water.
Usually, their armor plating is dotted, spotted and bedecked with eye catching color schemes. However, they do not attract attention in their natural environments. Many live in coral reefs, where their vivid coloring blends with the rainbow tinted surroundings.
The cowfishes are at home along both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The American types are found along shores from Massachusetts all the way south to Rio de Janeiro. Most of our native cowfish have horns on their heads, though some do not. All of them wear startling decors, usually in patterns of contrasting yellow or blue and white. Some are yellow with bold white polka dots. Others wear blotches and wavy ribbons of blue on a yellow background.
The female cowfish lays batches of tiny eggs that measure about 32 to an inch. They float to the surface where they hatch in two or three days. The hatchlings are little round larvas that do not resemble their parents. They hide among the waterweeds, where they look like tiny angel faces with big wide eyes, puffer cheeks and mini mini mouths. Some people call them dingleberries.
The tough coated trunkfishes dine on tough chewy food. Those that live along reefs bite off bits of rock and digest the little coral animals inside. The cowfish often spouts jets of water to stir up the sandy sea floor. This reveals an assortment of small mollusks, worms and crustaceans which he grabs and devours.