The world’s smallest known fish can measure as little as 7.9mm |
Researchers have found one of the smallest known fish on record in the peat swamps of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Individuals of the Paedocypris genus can be just 7.9mm long at maturity, scientists write in a journal published by the UK’s Royal Society.
But they warn long-term prospects for the fish are poor, because of rapid destruction of Indonesian peat swamps.
The fish have to survive in pools of acid water in a tropical forest swamp.
“This is one of the strangest fish that I’ve seen in my whole career,” said Ralf Britz, a zoologist at the Natural History Museum in London, UK.
“It’s tiny, it lives in acid and it has these bizarre grasping fins. I hope we’ll have time to find out more about them before their habitat disappears completely.”
The new fish was discovered by Maurice Kottelat (from Switzerland) and Tan Heok Hui from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research in Singapore, while working with colleagues from Indonesia and with Kai-Erik Witte from the Max Planck Institute in Germany.
Ralf Britz helped analyse the animal’s skeleton and the complex structure of the pelvic fin.
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