The Puffer Forum

Hi people,

just curious is there different types of porcupine puffer? because after looking at some pics and videos. i realise there are 2 types that differ in color. 1 is the usual brown with patches, the other type is very yellow looking. Are they both easily available?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzXcml3v ... re=related (yellow 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6msgQFXOhrk (the brown 1)

Thank You =)

fish base reports 49 different "Diodon" species. I am sure some of those are double entries but that is still a lot.

Check these out:
http://www.fishbase.org and search under "Genus"

Allomycterus (3 entries)
Chilomycterus (17 entries)
Cyclichthys (8 entries)
Tragulichthys (1 entry)

As you can see some entries are double and even triple entries, but that is a lot of different spiky little guys out there

Even if you limit to D. hystrix and D. holocanthus, both species are circumpolar. Local non-trivial variations all but have to occur for non-pelagic schooling, not strong swimming fish. It is no surprise that there are many duplicate erroneous names. I mean really - If Linnaeus could not clearly differentiate those two species, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Thanks for the link.

But the list is really overwhelming, i did not expect to see there are so many different kind of species. Too overwhelming. Thought there would be some simpler answer to the brown and yellow porcupine puffer. And i was quite puzzled after reading a book that state porcupine fish and puffer are different. But they categorise porcupine puffer under porcupine fish. And i happen to chance upon this interesting fish, common porcupine fish. Is this consider puffer or porcupine?

http://australianmuseum.net.au/Uploads/ ... -4_big.jpg

Porcupine puffers are under the family diodontidae. Puffers are under the family tetraodontidae. Both are under the order tetraodontiformes.

They're relatively closely related and both are the only fish to experience true puffing so they are both puffers. Porcs just aren't the "true" puffers.