SOME QUEER FISH.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4729, 25 July 1924, Page 3

SOME QUEER FISH.

+ INTERESTING INFORMATION. SUSPICIOUS DISEASES. (By F. Mitchell Hedges, in the “Daily Mail.”) During years of exploring and deepsea research work in the I have had come under my notice much rernai kable data little known to the public A great deal of what lies beneath the Seven Seas is as yet a closed book. The most universal misconception 1 know is that a shark turns on its back or side when on the point of seizing its prey. I have observed hundreds of sharks feed. They dash straight forward at immense speed, the nose rises just before striking and discloses the teeth fully bared. These are ordinarily enclosed in sheaths, corresponding to the rows of teeth, and —much like the claws of a ca t —are extended at will. Sharks have t’o teeth at birth. An extraordinary creature lives in certain rivers of Queensland— a stumpy fish which has an actual lung as well as gills, the reason being that the waters of these rivers run low in Jhe summer, and the lung has developed to help them to breathe. In* several countries of South America there are fish of the same family with two lungs as well as gills ; the rivers in which they live dry up entirely in the summer, and the gills, the prime function of which i|S to breathe in water, are then useless to the fish, so they burrow in the mud and breathe through their lungs until the wet season comes.

There is a fish which has solved the problem of travelling long distances without the exertion of swimming—this is a pilot fish. It is strange-look-ing, elongated, and striped. The top of the head is a powerful flat, ribbed sucker with which it attaches itself to large fish, preferably sharks. Sometimes when fishing I have hooked one, which has at once adhered to the bottom of the boat, from which it has been impossible to remove it until the return to the beach.

In tropical waters there are large crabs that annex empty. mollusc shells ; they are truly hideous, with long, hairy legs and claws. When they outgrow their own homqs they crawl along the sea-bed, and when they encounter an unsuspecting conch projecting from its shell in the act of feeding it is swiftly seized, killed, and slowly devoured, the process of consumption taking two or three days. The crab afterwards changes its residence from its uncomfortably small home to the larger shell.

An interesting crab is one which does not live in the water at all; It occupies empty shells washed up by the sea, living apparently quite contentedly in its shell home, in spite of the fact that the heat of the tropical sun is so terrific that one cannot touch with naked feet the sand on which it is unconcernedly running about.

It would seem that certain welldefined diseases from which human beings suffer pasg. down through all

stages of life . Among the sand sharks of Panama Bay ichthyoid tuberculosis is very prevalent, while Spanish mackerel and —to a lesser degree—corbina suffer from trichina, the appearance of .this disgusting white worm being very similar to that so well known >n swine.

The vertebrae of sharlqs (more commonly in the shovel-nose) are subject to osteoma, a calcified growth of cellular structure. This pathological mass, which in a large shark occasionally grows to a length of four feet, by producing local rigidity of the spinal column, undoubtedly causes partial paralysis, and probably by the destruction of the nerve ganglia fish insanity may result. On several occasions, not only with sharks but also in tarpon and red schnapper, an autopsy has disclosed a rcpuslive-looking fibroid growth, which really appeared malignant. One cannot assert it was cancer, but its appearance was highly suspicious.

Fish have other uses than to provide food: here are two examples. The towns in British Honduras have no other source of water supply than rain water, which is collected in large vats as it pours from the roofs in the rainy season. Mosquitoes can only breed in water, and these reservoirs quickly become alive with larvae. It was discovered that a certain species of liisb when introduced into these rain-water tanks ate the larvae voraciously. Previous to this these vats were the breeding ground for millions of mosquitoes—now they are entirely cleared by the introduction of these small fish.