Fish and Dolphins: Acting Strange or Being Normal?

By Stephen D. Dialessi and Diane M. Serpa

I believe that less is truly more. In cartoon fashion or with an err of comedy, this book tells short stories of small lively worlds. As you buy the ticket and take the ride into the unknown, you will learn about unique fish and fun aquatic mammals. Together, we will discover strange ideas about our freshwater and sea creature friends that cente

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Dialessi
• Release date: Oct 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9780578389219

Book preview

Introduction

When I was a first-year graduate student at Antioch University New England, the professor who taught the Community Ecology class said something unusual on the last day of classes. He addressed the students with an air of encouragement and said, When you get out there, you will need to crack a life in this world!

I thought, Huh? How can I ‘crack’ a life?

Later, I realized his remark was meant to prepare me and my fellow students for starting a life after school, but my imagination took over. I saw a fish wriggling out of and emerging from its egg, ready to tackle the challenges of the world.

After graduate school, I worked in several places, but I enjoyed working at an aquarium the most. Once I had cracked a life, I asked a lot of other kinds of questions, which may have been annoying to some, but pertinent to my work, such as:

What do scientists know about the first fish in existence and fish today?

What do they still need to know?

What pieces of the puzzle are missing?

Why do fish do what they do?

I found all of these questions perplexing, but they led to a single most important one. As an aquarium manager, I heard people ask, What is that fish doing?

The first living animals with backbone-like structures appeared millions of years ago in swirly rivers and rippling high seas. They were small, jitter-free swimmers! Free spirits! Some were swimming eggheads and others were swimming tails, with a basket-like shape. These basket cases were known as chordates. If you were sitting on the sandy bottom of a flowing river or in the salty sea looking up at these prehistoric creatures, you’d find yourself surrounded by fast, fun, and bubbly life. You’d watch as tiny baskets of joy propelled themselves as if part of an underwater fireworks display. Even if you could not make heads or tails out of the forms you were seeing, from their nonstop movement, you’d discover a vibe of delight!

The biggest rat—or fish—race the planet Earth had ever known had begun! A cascade of new aquatic life shot through ancient frothy rivers and oceans, all trying to find their own niche. A flutter of life was engaged in a chaotic dance! It was nature’s playground! There were strange snake-like fish called lamprey and hagfish, which existed five hundred million years ago. If you’ve been to a carnival, you might have seen something called a freak show—a collection of odd looking people or animals. Those early lampreys and hagfish would have fit right in at a freak show. They were scary looking, jawless, vampire-like beings.

Following these bloodsuckers by one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty million years, evolving fish were taking root as ancient eating machines. These creatures, the ancestors of sharks, are known to scientists as hybodus, cladodus and xenacanthus. Early archaic forms of sharks were made of cartilage, and they had a large brain case and jaw. They began developing some specialized features we see on modern sharks, like their improved jaw structure for handling large prey, which the great white sharks, tiger sharks and lemon sharks all possess.

One hundred million years later, a creature that looked like a pancake with eyes, joined the race. These plate-like critters were named stingrays. Some stingrays had sharp or pointy barbs, like on a barbed wire fence. Other rays were built without a barb or stinger. Rays flourished as they formed new shapes and sizes during the time of the Jurassic period from 201 million years ago to 145 million years ago. Some were shaped like guitars, discs, diamonds, and even a saw.

The Earth kept changing over time. A super landmass called Pangea broke up like a jigsaw puzzle 175 million years ago and it formed the continents we know today. Fish kept changing, too.

Other more specialized forms of rays followed through the Jurassic to the Cretaceous period, one hundred million years ago including guitar rays. Then at about fifty million years ago during the Eocene epoch, rays were even found roaming rivers in the Americas.

In this book about quirky fish, and some dolphins, you will get a front row seat in the theatre for a standup comedy show. You can become part of the show—just by reading. You will feel the spirit of fish and their beauty. This story will lead you into the previously unknown worlds of some very strange fish and a special breed of mammal—the dolphin. You’ll have fun as you learn their ways.

The world’s oceans and rivers today are crawling with weird fish that act in odd and interesting ways. As you travel on the adventure in this book, watch for information that is amazing and delightful! Curiosity is a great thing! You may spy with your little eye some curious things fish do. For example, they may appear to be playing or having fun with kin (their relatives). You may see competition for resources, a sassy nature some fish have, or cooperative behavior being displayed. The world of fish behavior can appear as peculiar. Some fish appear to be seen as being itchy, happy, spacey, sad, and even stir crazy! I do not claim to be an expert in what fish do, but I do offer a unique way of describing ideas about fish and mammals from an aquarium manager’s perspective. I am qualified to write about fish behaviors and I can give you a fun and incredible experience from my years of service in the aquarium industry.

If you enjoy visiting aquariums, zoos, nature centers, or are just plain interested in fish, this book is for you. It is designed around the wacky world of fish behavior. It is not written in a cookbook form, or as a step-by-step manual on how to know what fresh and saltwater creatures