The ocean sunfish or common mola is one of the heaviest known bony fishes in the world. Adults typically weigh between 247 and 1,000 kg. Females of the species can produce more eggs than any other known vertebrate, up to 300,000,000 at a time.
About Ocean sunfish in brief
The ocean sunfish or common mola is one of the heaviest known bony fishes in the world. Adults typically weigh between 247 and 1,000 kg. It resembles a fish head with a tail, and its main body is flattened laterally. Females of the species can produce more eggs than any other known vertebrate, up to 300,000,000 at a time. Sunfish fry resemble miniature pufferfish, with large pectoral fins, a tail fin, and body spines uncharacteristic of adult sunfish. Adult sunfish are vulnerable to few natural predators, but sea lions, killer whales, and sharks will consume them. The fish is considered a delicacy in some parts of the world, including Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. In the EU, regulations ban the sale of fish and fishery products derived from the family Molidae. The genus Mola belongs to the order Tetraodontiformes, which also includes puffer fish, porcupinefish, and filefish. It is now placed in its own genus, Mola, with three species: Mola mola, Molas tecta and Mola alexandrini. The family is unrelated to the freshwater sunfish in the family Centrarchidae which are unrelated to MolidAE. The species is native to tropical and temperate waters around the world and was originally classified as Tetraodon mola. The name mola means’millstone’, which the fish resembles because of its gray color, rough texture, and rounded body.
In Polish, it is named samogłów, meaning ‘head alone’, because it has no true tail. In Swedish, Danish and Norwegian it is also known as klumpfisk, in Dutch klompvis, in Finnish möhkäkala, all of which meaning ‘lump fish’ The Chinese translation of its academic name is fān chē yú 翻車魚, ‘toppled wheel fish’, which is a reference to its rounded head. The common name’sunfish’ without qualifier is used to describe the marine familyMolidae as well as the freshwater Sunfish in Europe and the U.S. It shares many traits common to members of the order, including the four fused teeth that give the order its name. The dorsal fin and anal fin are lengthened, often making the fish as tall as it is long. The head is truncated, giving it a long oval shape when it is seen to 3 to 3.5 meters long. It has small and fan-shaped pectal fins, which are small andFan-shaped, while the dorsal fin is small and Fan-shaped while the anal fin and the anal fins are long, making it look like a spiky spiky fish more than they resemble adult molas. The sunfish is a generalist predators that consumes largely small fishes, fish larvae, squid, and crustaceans. Sea jellies and salps make up only 15% of a sunfish’s diet.
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This page is based on the article Ocean sunfish published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
