Tetraodontidae

Stars and stripes puffer

Arothron hispidus

Twin nasal tentacles above a field of white spots

• Blue
• Brown
• White
• Yellow
• Tropical
• Nearshore
• Globally widespread
• Marine fish
• Globular or blocky
• Medium
• Tropical fish

Decorated in an eye-catching celestial livery of spots and concentric stripes, the stars and stripes puffer is a heavy-set, resilient tetraodontid flourishing across tropical inshore marine habitats worldwide. Its robust, oval body displays an olive-brown or greenish-grey dorsal mantle densely sprinkled with small white starry dots, while the white sides and belly are marked with bold, sweeping dark horizontal stripes that encircle the gill slits. Large, expressive brown eyes are surrounded by pale rings, set above powerful beak-like dental plates formed by four fused jaw teeth. Ranging throughout the tropical Indo-Pacific and eastern Pacific from the Red Sea and South Africa to Panama and the Galápagos Islands, it frequents shallow coastal lagoons, rocky reefs, sandy flats, and mangrove estuaries down to fifty meters depth. An industrious omnivorous forager, it crushes calcareous coralline algae, sea urchins, tubeworms, corals, and bivalves. When threatened, it inflates its distensible stomach with water to transform into an unswallowable spiky globe, protected internally by lethal tetrodotoxin. Maximum recorded total length reaches fifty centimetres.

Sources: Australian Museum — Stars and Stripes Puffer, Arothron hispidus