Mola mola (scientific name: mola mola), also known as sunfish, mambo fish, head fish, is a collective name for the three species of ocean fish in the family molidae of the family molidae. It is found in tropical and subtropical oceans, and is also found in temperate or boreal oceans. There are shadows of sunfish activity along the coast of China.
The sunfish is a large oceanic fish with a maximum body length of 3.0 to 5.5 m and a weight of 1400 to 3500 kg. Swimming alone or in pairs, sometimes more than ten tails in groups, small individual fish are more active, often jump out of the water, large individual fish slow movement, often lying on the water, or dorsal fin exposed to the water, can also dive into more than 100 meters deep water. Feeds on seaweeds, molluscs, jellyfish, planktonic crustaceans and small fish. The amount of eggs in the womb is extremely large, up to 300 million, which is the largest number of eggs in fish. The juveniles are covered with nodular spinous processes that fade with age and become ovoid in their bodies
The sunfish is one of the largest and most peculiarly shaped fish in the world.
The body is sub-rounded, flattened and high on the sides. The tail is short and has no tail handle. The head is high and flattened, and the head height is 1.8 to 2.0 times the length of the head. The kiss is round and blunt. The eye is small, superior lateral, the eye septum is wide and protruding, the head length is 1.9 to 2.1 times the eye septum, and the eye septum is 3.5 to 3.9 times the diameter of the eye. The nostrils are 2 on each side, very small, located directly in front of the eye, closer to the eye than the snout. Small mouth, anterior position. The upper and lower jaws each have a beak-like tooth plate with no central slit. Lip thickness. Each gill cap is buried under the skin. The gill foramen are small, superiorly lateral, and located in front of the base of the pectoral fin. Both the body and fins are coarse, with spiny or granular protrusions. No sidelines. The dorsal fin is 1 tall, slightly sickle-shaped, with a body length of 2.6 to 2.7 times the height of the dorsal fin, a dorsal fin height of 1.4 to 1.5 times the length of the head, and the dorsal fin is located at the back of the body. The fin is the same shape as the dorsal fin, starting later than the beginning of the dorsal fin, and the body length is 2.5 to 2.8 times the height of the fin, and the fin is 1.3 to 1.5 times the head length. The dorsal fin is extended with the posterior fin of the fin and is connected at the posterior end of the body, forming a rudder fin similar to the caudal fin, without a true caudal fin. The rudder fin has a wavy edge with 12 to 16 fins and a small bone plate at the rear end of the 8 to 9 fins in the middle. The pectoral fins are short, rounded, flat and horizontal at the base, and not vertical. No ventral fins, no belt bones. The dorsal sides of the body are greyish brown, the ventral surface is silvery gray, and the fins are grayish brown.
The sunfish is generally flattened, with two bright eyes and a small mouth on its head, a tall and long dorsal and fin on its back and abdomen, and a tail fin with a lace-like tail fin at the end of the body. The appearance of the body is oval and flattened, resembling a large saucer. The body is short and thick on both sides, with a small head and a small mouth, and the tail fin is also degenerated without a tail stalk, which is very short; there is no ventral fin, but the dorsal and fins are well developed and relatively high. It is greyish-brown on the side of the body and silvery gray on the ventral side. The sunfish looked as if it had been cut in half with a knife. Therefore, its common name is also called head fish. The mouth is small, the eyes are small; the scales are specialized into a rough epidermis. The body is greyish brown with a silvery gray belly; the pectoral fin is short, without ventral and caudal fins, and the dorsal fin and fin are tall and opposite. In the family of sunfish, the body shapes of the members are not exactly the same. There is a kind of sunfish with a long and pointed tail that looks like it is dragging a spear, so people call it "speartail sunfish"; there is another kind of sunfish with a slender body, which everyone calls "long sunfish".
The sunfish is a giant relative of the pufferfish family and is the heaviest of all polybony fish, weighing up to 3,000 kg. As early as the 1930s, Guge, a ichthyologist at the American Museum of Natural History, studied sunfish and declared that the giant sunfish was the growth champion of the animal kingdom. Their juveniles are only 0.25 cm long, while when they reach adulthood they can reach 3 m long, gaining 60 million times more weight than juveniles. Although the sunfish can weigh up to 2 and a half tons, it is mild and approachable.
In the 19th century, fishermen's children would play with thick sunfish skins wrapped in rope into elastic balls. There can be more than 40 different parasites on the skin of the sunfish, and even the parasites on them have parasites.
Sunfish is a mid-ocean, surface fish, with the Kuroshio migratory shore, carnivorous, jellyfish, zooplankton-based, but also eat crustaceans, stings, and seaweed, sunfish swimming speed is slower, when the weather is better, it will be the dorsal fin exposed to the water style sail with the water drifting, basking in the sun to improve body temperature; When the weather is bad, it will float flat on the water, paddle and control the direction with the dorsal and fins, and use the dorsal fin to dorsault in the sea and dive to the bottom of the sea.
Sunfish docile temperament, it lives in the tropical ocean, the body is often attached to many luminous animals, it swims, the body of the luminous animals will emit light, from a distance like a round of bright moon, so there is a "moon fish" reputation. The top-heavy body of the sunfish is ideal for diving, and it often dives into the deep sea to catch deep-sea fish and shrimp for food. Living on the surface of the ocean, they can dive to depths below 600 meters, sometimes as many as twenty times a day.
Its body is flat like a pomfret, using a flat body to lie leisurely on the surface of the sea, by swallowing air to reduce its own proportions, if encountered by enemies, it will dive into the depths, use the flat body to split a waterway and escape. When the weather is good, sometimes you can see these fish as if sleeping on the surface of the sea, lying flat on one side, floating with the waves, and unfamiliar people will think that they are dead. The adult sunfish, generally large individuals, can reach 2 meters to 3 meters long, weigh more than 200 kilograms. However, although the meat of this fish looks snow white and delicate, and the liver contains useful fat, the fly in the ointment is that the cooked fish tastes bad and even annoying. The sunfish emits a strange light that, at night, all parts of its body sparkle, mistaking it for fire or some kind of glowing object. After studying and analyzing it, some people believe that it is due to the slight swing of its body and fins, causing a layer of luminous insects in the water to emit light. At night at sea, its shining surface looks like the moon reflected on the surface of the sea, so people call it "moon fish". It is also because it often flips its body upside down and lies on the surface of the sea to swim with the wind, people call it a sunfish.
There are several medical experiments that show that the sunfish can secrete a strange substance to improve the surrounding environment, which can be used to treat the injuries of the surrounding fish, and scientists have not found the cause of this strange phenomenon, but it is understandable that the sunfish can indeed be counted as the doctor in the fish.
The sunfish are clumsy and not good at swimming, and are often eaten by other fish and sea animals in the ocean. The reason why it is not extinct is that it has strong fertility, a female can lay about 25 million to 300 million eggs at a time, but due to some natural factors, only about 30 can survive until the breeding season, but this does not prevent it from being called one of the most productive fish in the ocean.
The sunfish is the spawning champion among vertebrates, and a female fish about 1.4 meters long can lay 300 million eggs at a time, several orders of magnitude higher than normal fish, killing a variety of terrestrial vertebrates in a second, not to mention homo sapiens who row one or two eggs at a time. The number of eggs is so large that the tiny size of a single egg is self-evident. This widespread and thin-harvested reproduction method inevitably leads to a low survival rate – but even if the success rate of developing from fertilized eggs to adult fish is less than one in a million, such a huge number of eggs is enough to ensure the continuation of these "sea monster" races.
The breeding process of the sunfish is also very interesting. When the reproductive season comes, the male fish choose an ideal site on the seabed, dig out the sediment with the pectoral fin and tail, and build a concave "laying bed" to lure the female into the "laying bed" to spawn. After the female lays her eggs, she grows away. At this time, the male fish quickly sperm on the eggs, and from then on, they assume the responsibility of egg protection and child-rearing until the juveniles grow up.
However, because some of the eggs cannot be fertilized and die, some of the eggs and hatched juveniles will be eaten by ferocious fish, and the newly hatched small fish are very fragile, a storm will come, and the waves will also kill some of the juveniles. After all kinds of disasters, there are not many people who can grow into big fish in the end. Therefore, although the sunfish spawn a lot, due to some natural factors, the sunfish in the ocean are very few and very rare: only about 30 of the 300 million eggs produced by a sunfish survive until the breeding season.
Sunfish belong to the order tetraodontiformes with pufferfish, pufferfish, and horse-faced pufferfish, and have many things in common, including teeth often healing to form beak-like plates, and the maxilla is connected or healed to the foremaxilla. But unlike pufferfish, the sunfish doesn't have a maw or airbag, so it's impossible to bulge its body into a ball like a pufferfish — it's fun if you can. But when we turn our eyes to the infancy of the sunfish, we will find out how different they look when they are young and when they grow up.
The newly hatched sunfish is only about 2 mm, but it is large in size, with a primitive tail fin and a large pectoral fin. Before they reached 10 mm, they had spines on their bodies that looked like miniature versions of pufferfish and box pufferfish. By the time the fry reached 35 mm, the spines were less pronounced. At this point their bodies gradually thickened and became more compact, and the original tail fin gradually disappeared, and the round false tail fin, or rudder fin, was replaced. Later, the sunfish grew into the shape we often see, and the thorns disappeared - as a "sea monster" must erase the marks that showed their affinity with other fish.
Different from the personality of "normal" and "sea monster", the growth history of the sunfish is a history of blood and tears of bullying: in childhood, because of the lack of maternal love, the individual is too small, even if it gathers in groups, it is often infested by various predatory fish, tuna, loach, etc. Regard them as a good meal; although it has a terrible size in adulthood, it lacks sufficient self-defense ability and escape skills, so killer whales, sharks and other large marine carnivores will not let them go, and sea lions even sometimes hunt molas for fun. Fortunately, the two-legged terrestrial omnivores did not take much interest in these "sea monsters", so they were still able to survive in the sun.
The sunfish has a high economic value, and in addition to scientific research and ornamentation, it is also a valuable edible fish. Its fleshy and less skinned fish meat is about 1/10 of the body weight, but its meat is delicious, white, high nutritional value, and the protein content is higher than that of the famous pomfret and striped fish. The intestines of the sunfish are also very expensive, and the famous Taiwanese dish "Miaolong Soup" is used as a staple food that is both crisp and fragrant. In addition, fish skin is also very useful, the raw materials for boiling gelatin or fish oil can be used as lubricants for precision instruments and machinery. Cod liver can be made of cod liver oil and edible hydrogenated oil.