Scrawled butterflyfish facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Scrawled butterflyfish |
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| Conservation status | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Genus: |
Chaetodon
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| Species: |
meyeri
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| Synonyms | |
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Holacanthus flavoniger Lacépède, 1802 |
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The scrawled butterflyfish (Chaetodon meyeri) is a beautiful fish that lives in the ocean. It's also known as Meyer's butterflyfish or the maypole butterflyfish. This fish is a type of butterflyfish, and it belongs to a group called Chaetodontidae. You can find it swimming in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean.
Contents
What Does the Scrawled Butterflyfish Look Like?
This butterflyfish has a cool look! Its body is usually whitish or bluish-white. It has special black lines that curve and go diagonally across its sides. There's also a black bar with a yellow edge that goes right through its eye. Another similar bar is on its snout, near its mouth.
Like other fish, it has fins. Its dorsal fin (on its back) has 12 to 13 strong spines and 23 to 25 soft rays. Its anal fin (on its belly) has 3 spines and 18 to 20 soft rays. The scrawled butterflyfish can grow up to 20 centimetres (7.9 in) long.
Where Do Scrawled Butterflyfish Live?
The scrawled butterflyfish lives across a huge area, from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. You can find them along the eastern coast of Africa, from Somalia all the way down to Durban. They swim east across the oceans to places like the Line Islands and Hawaii.
Their home range also goes north to the Ryukyu Islands in Japan. South, you can find them near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, New Caledonia, and Tonga. Sometimes, a few fish might wander far away. They have been seen in the eastern Pacific Ocean, near the Galapagos Islands and the Revillagigedo Islands of Mexico.
Habitat and Life Cycle
Scrawled butterflyfish like to live in clear lagoons and coral reefs. They are usually found in waters that are not too deep, from about 2 and 25 metres (6.6 and 82.0 ft) down. They love areas that have lots of coral.
Young scrawled butterflyfish usually live alone. They hide among the branches of corals for safety. As they grow up, adult fish often live in pairs. These pairs usually stay within their own special area on the reef.
These fish lay eggs to have babies, which means they are oviparous. The male and female fish stay together when they breed. Scrawled butterflyfish are very picky eaters. They only eat coral, but they don't eat the hard coral itself. Instead, they feed on the slimy mucus that corals produce.
How the Scrawled Butterflyfish Got Its Name
The scrawled butterflyfish was first officially described in 1801. Two German scientists, Marcus Elieser Bloch and Johann Gottlob Theaenus Schneider, gave it its scientific name. They found the first example of this fish on Ambon Island in Indonesia.
The "meyeri" part of its name likely honors someone named Meyer. The fish was found in a collection called "Meyer’s Museum" in the Netherlands. This Meyer might have been Johan Frederik Meijer, who worked on Ambon Island and had a collection of natural history items.
The scrawled butterflyfish is related to other butterflyfish, like the mailed butterflyfish and the ornate butterflyfish. They are all part of a smaller group within the larger Chaetodon family.
