Guardian Nature School Team Contact Blog Project Noah Facebook Project Noah Twitter

A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife

Join Project Noah!
nature school apple icon

Project Noah Nature School visit nature school

Scrawled cowfish

Acanthostracion quadricornis

Description:

The scrawled cowfish, belongs to the Ostraciidae family and is closely related to boxfish and trunkfish. They range in size from 8-15 inches, with a maximum length of 18 inches, and can be found at depths between 6 and 80 feet. It has distinctive features such as a scrawled pattern of bluish markings covering its body; a blue line runs from snout to anal fin and it has a sharp spine above each eye. This latter point distinguishes cowfish from trunkfish. Overall it is coloured blue-green to yellow cast. However, it may darken, pale and change color. Significantly it has two sharp spines in front of anal fin. The scrawled cowfish lives in a wide range of habitats including grass beds. However it is wary. If disturbed it may remain motionless apparently relying on camouflage.

Habitat:

It is common to occasional in Florida and Bahamas; occasional to uncommon in the Caribbean. It may occur in the Gulf of Mexico, north to Massachusetts, Bermuda and south to Brazil.

Notes:

I found this fish in a little bay around the keys of Miami, it has beautifull shiny blue and yellow colours, enjoy..

Species ID Suggestions



Sign in to suggest organism ID

1 Comment

PablitoSuomenFracas
PablitoSuomenFracas 12 years ago

thx

Florida, USA

Spotted on Jan 3, 2012
Submitted on Feb 28, 2012

Related Spottings

Honeycomb Cowfish Scrawled Cowfish Honeycomb Cowfish Honeycomb cowfish

Nearby Spottings

Spotting Black Spinytail Iguana juvenile Caribbean Starfish Spotting

Reference

Noah Guardians
Noah Sponsors
join Project Noah Team

Join the Project Noah Team