Mention the largest fish in the sea, presumably the first reaction is the whale, after all, this is the deepest impression of everyone", because its length is more than 33 meters, the weight can reach more than 180 tons, but maybe you in the first grade of the child will immediately remind you, the whale is not a fish, it is just a marine mammal, to be precise, it is only the largest animal! It is estimated that many friends may be confused, the biggest is what kind of fish?
First, what kind of fish is the biggest?
In fact, it is similar to the largest animals, such as the blue whale can be said to be a "harmless animal" animal in the ocean, because its large animals are not in its diet, and the blue whale preys on krill and small fish and a very small number of squid, so divers carry a camera around the blue whale and there is no risk of being eaten by it, the only thing to be careful about is not to be hurt by its tail fin!
The largest fish in the ocean is also a toothless fish, it is the whale shark, although its name has both whales and sharks, but it is a very gentle fish! The whale shark is a marine animal of the cartilaginous fish order Baleen sharks, the only shark in the genus Whale shark in the family Cetaceanaceae, with a length of up to 8-12 meters and a maximum weight of 21 tons!
Don't look at its blood basin mouth, in fact, the mouth of the filter-feeding fish that feeds on plankton and small fish and shrimp needs to be larger, otherwise a "small net pocket" is too inefficient! Whale sharks are mainly distributed in tropical and temperate seas, and many sea areas in China can be seen in summer and autumn!
The Philippines has the highest distribution density of whale sharks in the world, and whale sharks gather in the shallow coastal area of Sosogon in the Philippines from January to May every year. There are even some whale shark watching diving activities in the local area, so interested friends can try it!
Pictured above is another type of filter-feeding fish - the gill raker of the manta ray, which is the magic weapon on which the filter-feeding fish depends for its survival, the whale shark opens its mouth up to 1.2 meters when it is preying, inhales a large mouthful of water, and then closes it, filtering the water from the gill raker! This type of filtration is a variation of gill rakers, and the gills of whale sharks can prevent objects above 2-3 mm from passing, swallowing the remaining plankton, algae, and krill, and even small animals such as sardines and anchovies!
The largest bony fish is the cute sunfish pictured above, the average length of the sunfish can reach 2.5 meters, width of 1.8 meters, but it can grow to 4.3 meters× 3 meters of big man, the maximum weight of up to 2.3 tons!
Second, the largest freshwater fish?
The largest freshwater fish found in wikipedia is the Mekong giant catfish, and the official record of the largest freshwater fish is a Mekong giant catfish caught in northern Thailand in 2005, which is 2.7 meters long and about 300 kg!
The largest freshwater fish is unofficially recorded as a squid in Heilongjiang, China, where in 2003 local farmers caught a wild poach that was 3.5 meters long and weighed 830 catties
Third, the largest fish in geological history
The largest fish ever seen in the history of the earth is the legendary megalodon shark, which lived in the Early Pleistocene period from 15 million to 2.5 million years ago, and according to the partial vertebral fossils found, it is the most bite force species that has appeared in the history of the earth, and paleontologists speculate that its bite force is more than 20 tons, far more than the Tyrannosaurus rex! It is more than 20 meters long and weighs up to 70 tons! However, no complete fossils have been found so far, so the above is only in the speculation stage!
Megalodon and Tyrannosaurus rex size comparison, in front of the megalodon shark, Tyrannosaurus rex is just a lunch!
The picture above is a fossil of the tooth of the megalodon shark, from which it is inferred that the megalodon could hunt any kind of marine life in the Early Pleistocene, and in the ocean at that time, the megalodon had no natural enemies, and the only thing that could be compared to it was the Melville whale of its same period!
However, like the megalodon shark, the fossil sample is seriously missing, the current sample is only a skull, and scientists speculate that melville whale is about 17 meters long and weighs more than 65 tons!