All rights reserved. The Asian arowana, also known as the dragon fish, is believed by the Chinese to bring good luck and prosperity due to its red color and coin-like scales. One woman risked terrorists, headhunters, and the 'fish mafia' to see an Asian arowana in the wild. Traveling to 15 countries, she braved headhunters and civil war to follow the trail of a fish that is often transported under armed guard. When National Geographic caught up with her by phone at her home in New York, she explained how a well-meaning conservation effort to protect the arowana paradoxically increased its attractiveness to collectors; how her search for the arowana took over her life; and why putting a fish in a tank is part of our innate desire to connect with other species. At the center of your story is a fish most of us aren't familiar with. Tell us about the arowana—aka the dragon fish—and why it has become so valuable. It is a tropical freshwater fish from Southeast Asia that grows three feet long in the wild. That resemblance has spawned the belief that the fish brings good luck and prosperity, which is why it has become a highly sought-after aquarium fish. When I attended the Aquarama International Fish Competition , which is a bit like the Westminster dog show for fish, these 10 rare, albino arowana showed up with a police motorcade, protected by armed guards, to prevent anyone adding poison to the tanks.


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By Ruby Prosser Scully. Deep-sea fish have evolved transparent teeth which, along with their black bodies, make them invisible to prey. While dragonfish are only the size of a pencil, they are fearsome predators at the top of the food chain. Their thin, eel-like bodies support a huge black mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth, that can widen to swallow prey half their size.
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Unassuming dragonfish lurk in the twilight zone, more than 1, feet under the surface of the ocean. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Matter, scientists demonstrated another layer of complexity to the dragonfish : the thin, jagged teeth of the species Aristostomias scintillans are made of nanoscale-size crystal particles. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The new findings have intrigued both marine biologists and material scientists. And for material scientists, understanding the details of dragonfish teeth could help lead to new synthetic materials that are both strong and transparent, said Emanuela Del Gado, a material physicist at Georgetown University, in Washington D.
Dragonfish , also called sea moth , any of about five species of small marine fishes comprising the family Pegasidae and the order Pegasiformes. Dragonfish are found in warm Indo-Pacific waters. The armour is fused on the head and body but not on the tail, which is thus flexible. The pectoral fins are large, horizontal, and winglike; the pelvic fins consist of a few fingerlike rays. The mouth is small and toothless and is placed below an elongated, bony snout. Little is known about the natural history of the dragonfish. Their relationships to other fish groups are also in doubt. One of the best known dragonfish is Pegasus volitans, a blue-eyed, brown or deep-red fish found from India to Australia. Article Media.