Animal Crossing Fish - Explained #30
Brought to you by a marine biologist who’s gotta tell you guys…fish ID can be really hard…
Fish I’ve Covered: Click Here
Today’s fish was requested by @pandoramusicbox09. If you’d like to see a fish covered, send me an ask! :) If you request a fish we’ve already done, I’ll send you the link to the article and then feel free to keep requesting!
Today we will be covering the Zebra Turkeyfish, a fish with a funny name that really doesn’t belong to it….and I just…don’t know what happened…
Now, this fish is available during the warmer months and that makes sense. Most of us would at least recognize this fish to be a type of lionfish, a very charismatic (and sometimes troublesome) group of fish within the spiky, venomous, no-nonsense Family Scorpaenidae, the scorpion fish. Lionfish in particular are mostly tropical/subtropical species native to the Indo-Pacific, so they prefer warmer waters. But again, this particular animal isn’t what ACNH (or any AC game) says it is.
Going through the ID process for this fish was a little more convoluted than I’m used to. I like to give ACNH the benefit of the doubt, but as we’ve seen when covering the Killifish, sometimes they get it wrong. And that might be a localization issue for the Killifish, but I really don’t understand why they didn’t just call this thing “lionfish” and call it a day like they did with so many other fish. This animal is just NOT the animal commonly called the zebra turkeyfish (Dendrochirus zebra) , which looks like this:
Seems close, but even you, a non-marine biologist, can see that’s just not right. The zebra turkeyfish is part of a genus of fish known at “dwarf lionfish” and they really are small and they really are different from what we recognize as true lionfish, the genus Pterois. Both groups are called “turkeyfish” in different parts of the world, probably because their fan-like fins look like the fanned tails of pissed off male turkeys. Totally appropriate. Instead, I’m pretty sure the animal represented in ACNH here is the luna lionfish, Pterois lunulata:
It was kind of tough to settle on this one, but in the end, I’m fairly certain this is correct. First of all, it has the free fin rays of the pectoral fins and the caudal (tail) and the anal fin are not dotted or striped like we see in other species I might have thought this was (such as Pterois miles or Pterois volitans). So, there ya go, mystery solved.
Now, lionfish, whether it’s the luna or another one, are very interesting fish and they are striking fish. They’re absolutely beautiful and thus, people like to keep them as pets. You, uh…know where I’m going with this, right? See, the two species I might have thought this was up above are the two species associated with one of the worst cases of invasive species in the world. Lionfish are native to the Indo-Pacific, but whether by accident or on purpose, mostly Pterois volitans, the red lionfish, were released onto the coral reefs of North America (around the Caribbean) and it’s been havoc ever since.
In their natural environment, lionfish are mesopredators, but in a place without predators that know how to deal with them, they have proved to be insatiable, eating whatever fits in their big mouths. This has devastated many reefs of the Mesoamerican Reef System. Lionfish use their big pectoral fins to mesmerize prey before gobbling them up whole and they protect themselves with venomous spines, as is the scorpaenid way. Their stings are pretty painful, but if you can remove them carefully, lionfish is a delicious fish to eat (saying this from experience - ate them in Belize). The luna lionfish is the same way, known at minokasago in Japan and regularly harvested as a food fish.
And there you have it. Fascinating stuff, no?
xxtc-96xx
