Posted by In January 2016 some tourists on holiday in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, found a strange black animal that looked like a fish with two legs. The photos posted by Te Papa museum in Wellington went around the world. Expert Andrew Stewart identified it as a striated frogfish (Antennarius striatus), a species rare in those waters, but without its usual stripes: a completely black specimen.
An unusual find in the Bay of Islands, an area in the north of New Zealand and a popular tourist destination: a curious animal that really looks like a fish with legs, two little legs, one on each side of its body.
The discovery
It was found in early January 2016 by Claudia Howse, her mother Glenys and Claudia’s boyfriend, James Beuvink, on a week-long boat holiday in the Bay of Islands. On the last day, while they were snorkeling in Pipi Bay, the children in the group had put some seaweed in the live bait tank. When Glenys emptied it, she found the strange little animal inside.
Glenys tried to keep it alive to send it to an aquarium, but unfortunately it died shortly after. The family froze it and sent it to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington to be identified.
The museum posted the photos on Facebook on January 10, writing that the “weird creature” was likely a species of frogfish, but that they could not say for sure without examining it closely. Within days the specimen became world-famous as “the walking fish”, and some even wondered whether it was really a fish or an amphibian.
What animal is it?
On January 19, 2016 ichthyologist Andrew Stewart, the museum’s fish collection manager, thawed the specimen and examined it. It was just over 10 centimeters long. It was an Antennarius striatus, known as the striated or hairy frogfish.
Frogfish are known for having the fastest bite of any vertebrate. And, like the Australian handfish Brachionichthys hirsutus, they use their pectoral fins to move along the seabed as if they were real legs.
But something did not add up: the color. These fish usually have brown and black stripes, while the specimen found by the Howse family was completely black. Stewart said he had been studying fish for more than 33 years, but had never seen a striated frogfish without stripes.
And that is not all. According to Stewart these fish are very rare in northern New Zealand waters, which are at the limit of the temperatures they can tolerate: the last time a specimen had been sent to the museum was in 2008.
So, no new species and no mysterious amphibian, but a truly rare fish with a never-before-seen coloring, which got the whole world talking.
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- NZ Herald / Northern Advocate, Strange creature identified, it’s a frogfish
- IFLScience, Creepy black fish with legs identified
- Daily Dot
- Mental Floss, New Zealand family finds black fish with legs
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