Happy Little Mayor

Eva smirked: "What piranha? Don't you know? This is Oceania lungfish, one of the most endangered species in Oceania. How could they appear here?"

"Lung fish?" Wang Bo asked. "Is that the kind of fish with lungs? The kind of fish that can live without water for a long time?"

He has heard of this fish, but has not seen it in China. It was born hundreds of millions of years ago and is a freshwater fish similar to coelacanth.

Although the name is fish, in fact, it is similar to amphibians in many aspects. For example, in terms of soft tissue structure, development, physiology, and behavior, many traits are close to living amphibians and different from other living fish.

Eva nodded with a smile and introduced them: "Yes, that's what they are. This is a special fish that can breathe with gills when in the water, but it has a special fish bream that keeps it out of the water. Breathe the air."

"This Oceania lungfish is very rare now. It is said that there are only less than a thousand in Australia, and all of them are under protection. I did not expect that there are still such fish in New Zealand."

Little Rory wept with buns and asked, "Aren't they piranhas? They bit me."

Eva kissed her with a small hand and said, "It was you who provoked them first, Daier, don't think that freshwater fish is not aggressive, and lung fish have special teeth, like two rows of thick plates with their teeth pointed forward. Can be used to smash carapace of underwater animals for food. "

Wang Bo hehe laughed: "Do you know what this is called Daier? This makes lung fish anxious and bites."

Looking at Loli's sullenness, Eva combed her hair and said softly, "Did you know this fish is fun? Most of them live in the northern desert of Australia. When the dry season comes, the pond where they live will change. Into mud pits, at which point they will burrow in the mud pits and start secreting a slime that can harden into a protective film similar to a cocoon. "

"The mucus can maintain a certain humidity and allow air to enter. At the same time, it uses its muscles and fats as nutrients to support its life, and reduces its metabolic rate to one-sixth of the original, less than about 2 %. Then, do you know what they will do? "

After hearing her explain this knowledge, Little Loli became interested and asked curiously, "What are you doing?"

Eva shrugged. "Think about what I told you, such as umbrella lizards, what do they do in summer?"

"Xia Mian!" Xiao Loli said happily.

Eva smiled and said, "Yes, they will do magical sleep, isn't it fun?"

"Can they live without water?"

"Live a long time, I read the news and said that in remote Tunisian villages in Africa, lung fish have been found to dig holes in the mud to avoid drought, and have been made into mud bricks. It depends on the rain to nourish the mud. The water vapor in the bricks came to survive. After 4 years, the rain and time continued to erode, the mud bricks were destroyed, and the lung fish escaped during a heavy rain. "Eva told some stories.

Wang Bo did not believe: "This is false, right, this kind of fish cannot really live in mud bricks for four years."

Eva shook her head and smiled, "Who knows, we haven't seen it on the spot, but they are indeed the most surviving fish after leaving the water, and even they can't stay in the water all the time and have to get out every so often Breathe air on the surface. "

Indeed, Wang Bo and Xiao Loli waited for a while on the shore, and two lung fish crawled into the grass next to the stream.

These fish have very strong ventral fins. It is no wonder that they are a bit like reptiles. When they are crawling on land, they are completely in the shape of reptiles.

"We should call the New Zealand Species Protection Agency, these lung fish are an amazing discovery," Eva said.

Wang Bo shook his head: "Telling them may not be a good thing, what would they do? Take the lung fish, change them to an environment, and then? These lung fish may not like those environments, and may eventually die."

Eva laughed: "How come, they are experts in lung fish research, they will only replace them with a better environment, a more suitable environment for survival."

Wang Bo still shook his head and said, "If the facts are as optimistic as you said, why are these lung fish almost extinct in New Zealand? I think they live well here, and look, how fat they are."

Indeed, because of the nourishment of the Lingquan spring water, these lung fishes are called plump and plump, with swollen bodies and shiny fish scales. When they climbed ashore, they were even shone by the sun and pleated.

"I think it ’s better to stay here, maybe they belong here, where they might have hibernated before, and now that they have a suitable living environment, they wake up, just like the African lung fish that escaped from mud bricks same."

"That's a Douz lungfish," Eva corrected. "But you make sense, if they like it, then live in this place. Maybe they can multiply in the future. Our river can become A holy place to watch lung fish. But we have to protect them, in case who gets caught and eaten? "

"Can the lung fish be eaten?" Little Rory asked curiously.

"Of course, look at them like eels. They have no bones, only tender fish. In fact, they are found on the dining table. This is another story, do you want to hear?" Eva asked.

Little loli chick nodded like a peck of rice: "Listen."

"It was a long time ago, in the 19th century, because the meat of this lung fish is pink, the indigenous people of Oceania often catch it as a kind of salmon after catching it. Salmon is a great food fish. Is that right? So lung fish has also become a meal of the people. "

"One day later, when the curator of the Australian Museum, Creft, suddenly noticed that the salmon on the plate had a lung, he had dissected and studied the fish, only to discover that they were not salmon, and It is a completely new species. "

"But they are really delicious. Craft still eats them later, of course there were a lot of Oceania lungfish at that time."

Listening to Eva telling a story to Little Rory, Wang Bo exclaimed: "You know so much."

Eva said with a smile: "It's nothing, I'm a teacher. Of course, I need to know a lot of knowledge, otherwise the children asked me, wouldn't it be an awkward thing?"

Little Loli wandered along the stream and ran back and said, "Come on, sister, I found some lung fish again."

Wang Bo followed, and at a place in Repulse Bay, some fish that resembled lung fishes were swimming at the bottom of the river. These fishes were more than ten centimeters long and brown-yellow. The fish whiskers are not so developed. (To be continued.)