Zanzibar butterflyfish facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Zanzibar butterflyfish |
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| Conservation status | |
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| Genus: |
Chaetodon
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| Species: |
zanzibarensis
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The Zanzibar butterflyfish (scientific name: Chaetodon zanzibarensis) is a beautiful marine fish. It's a type of butterflyfish, known for its bright colors and graceful swimming. You can find this fish in the western Indian Ocean, from the coast of Africa all the way to islands like Madagascar and the Seychelles. It gets its name from the island of Zanzibar in Tanzania.
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What Does the Zanzibar Butterflyfish Look Like?
The Zanzibar butterflyfish is one of the smaller butterflyfish species. It usually grows to be about 12 cm (5 in) long. Its body is mostly bright yellow. It has a big black spot on its upper side, which sometimes has a white or blue edge. There's also a black stripe that goes vertically through its eye. If you look closely, you might see many faint, slightly curved dark lines on its sides.
This fish has special fins that help it swim. Its dorsal fin (on its back) has 13 to 14 strong spines and 15 to 17 soft rays. The anal fin (on its belly) has 3 spines and 15 to 17 soft rays.
Where Do Zanzibar Butterflyfish Live?
These colorful fish live in the warm, tropical waters of the western Indian Ocean. You can find them in many places, including the Chagos Archipelago, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa, and Tanzania.
They love to hang out in lagoons and on the outer slopes of coral reefs. They usually swim at depths from 1 to 40 m (3 to 131 ft) below the surface.
What Do Zanzibar Butterflyfish Eat?
The Zanzibar butterflyfish is a picky eater! It mainly eats the soft parts, called polyps, of stony corals. They especially like Acropora corals. Sometimes, they might also snack on the tentacles of other small sea creatures like feather duster worms and Christmas tree worms.
These little worms and corals are very quick to hide when they sense danger. But the Zanzibar butterflyfish is super agile! It uses its pectoral fins (the ones on its sides) to twist, turn, and even hover still in the water. Then, it darts forward quickly to nip off a bite of its prey before the animal can pull its soft parts back into its shell or coral.
Scientists studied these fish in the Chagos Archipelago. They found that on reefs with lots of coral, fish that eat coral, like the Zanzibar butterflyfish, were very common. Even though these fish depend a lot on corals and are more affected if corals get damaged, they seem to handle small problems better than fish that eat many different things.
Is the Zanzibar Butterflyfish Safe?
Because the Zanzibar butterflyfish mostly eats coral, it could be affected if coral reefs are damaged or disappear. However, the part of the Indian Ocean where these fish live hasn't been as badly affected by coral loss from climate change as some other areas of the world.
Some Zanzibar butterflyfish are caught for people's aquariums, but this doesn't seem to be a big problem for the species as a whole. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has looked at the species and decided it is of "least concern". This means they are not currently worried about it becoming endangered.
