Smallest Backboned Creature is a tiny fish
January 26th, 2006 by Fishing admin
Tiny Fish is Smallest Backboned Creature
Relative of the carp measures just 7.9mm
The Paedocypris progenetica is found in peat swamps on the Indonesian island of Sumatra
A tiny fish discovered in Indonesia holds the record for the smallest backboned creature known.
Paedocypris progenetica is a relative of the carp but measures just 7.9mm.
Scientists found the fish in highly acidic peat swamps on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
Dr Ralf Britz, a zoologist at the Natural History Museum in London, said: “This is one of the strangest fish that I’ve seen in my whole career.
“It’s tiny, it lives in acid, and it has these bizarre grasping fins. I hope we’ll have time to find out more about them before their habitat disappears completely.”
Paedocypris was discovered by an international team led by Tan Heok Hui and Maurice Kottelat, from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research in Singapore.
Experts at the Natural History Museum analysed the fish’s skeleton and the complex structure of its pelvic fins.
The adult is transparent, giving the appearance of a fish larva. It lives in dark, tea-coloured waters with an acidity of pH3 - at least 100 times more acid than rainwater.
The swamps were once thought to harbour very few animals, but recent research has uncovered a wide range of creatures there that occur nowhere else.
Forest fires damaged the peat swamps in 1997, and they are also threatened by logging, urbanisation and agriculture.
Several populations of Paedocypris have already been lost, say the researchers.
The fish is just 1mm smaller than the previous holder of the smallest vertebrate record, an 8mm species of Indo-Pacific goby.
Britain’s smallest fish is the marine Guillet’s goby, Lebetus guilleti, which measures 24mm.