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Home › Sea Wildlife › Marine Species › Vertebrates › Frogfishes

Fun Facts about Frog Fish Species

[Phylum: Chordata] [Class: Actinopterygii] [Order: Lophiiformes] [Family: Antennariidae]

Frogfish live among the rocky coral reefs of most tropical and subtropical seas (excluding the Mediterranean Sea), especially the Red Sea and the three major oceans (e.g. Pacific, Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean).

This section contains fun facts and interesting information about frogfishes, including where they thrive best, what they eat, and how they reproduce.

Frogfish vs. Anglerfish: Are Frogfish Anglers

The anglerfish family (Antennariidae) contains about fifty (50) different species of frogfishes. Thus, they are related to each other.

As a consequence of that, most of the frogfish families have a built-in appendage that they use like a "fishing rod".

So, it's fair to say that a frogfish is an angler because it has a long pole (instead of a first dorsal fin spine) tipped with fleshy bait that it uses to lure its prey.

The modified fin entices unsuspecting prey (e.g. nudibranch species) to get close enough for the frogfish to strike and suck it into its mouth.

Fun Fact: Some types of frogfish can eat much larger prey because they are able to expand their mouth cavity up to twelve (12) times the normal resting size.

Frogfish Habitat and Distribution

The preferred depth range varies according to different frogfish types. Still, depths between three (3) and thirty (30) metres tend to suit their sedentary lifestyle where they spend most time resting on the seafloor.

They are common in tropical and subtropical shallow waters. They also favour regions that contain some complex structures to enhance their camouflage efficiency, such as coral reef formations, sponge gardens, seagrass beds, and rocky outcrops.

The warm waters of the Indo-Pacific region have the highest diversity, especially Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and the Great Barrier Reef.

Frog Fish Behaviour and Characteristics

Frogfishes have various forms of camouflage to help protect them from their primary predators (e.g. scorpion fish and moray eels).

As a result, many have small thorn-like spinules and most of the species display variable body colouration, used to help them blend in with their natural surroundings. Even so, most frogfish are white, yellow, red, or black.

In fact, they can also modify their colours in only a few days when needed, to mimic the structures that surround them, such as sea sponges and stones.

Here's the thing:

This process, known as aggressive mimicry, is a defensive mechanism that they use to intimidate predators. Thus, they change their body colour to become almost invisible by blending in with things in the background.

Plus, like the pufferfish, some frogfish species can suck in water to inflate themselves when they feel threatened.

Frogfish Size

They prefer to live in water with temperatures above 20° Celsius (68° Fahrenheit). Even though males tend to be significantly smaller than the females, the average size of a frogfish is around ten (10) centimetres (4 inches).

Some species are less than three centimetres long (1 inch).

Others, such as the giant frogfish, can grow to forty five (45) centimetres (up to 17 inches in overall body length).

Most frog fish have a stocky spindle-covered body and these carnivorous bottom-dwellers are idle in nature.

Put another way, they are typical examples of sedentary vertebrate animals that make very little movement until they're hunting for food.

What Do Frogfish Eat?

Even though frogfish can glide through the water, most of them can use their pectoral fins to walk across the sea floor. As a result, their swimming energy tends to be more noticeable when they hunt for food.

Frog fish are typical carnivores that feed on a variety of marine invertebrates, especially crustaceans, and small fishes.

Types of Frogfish Species

How Do Frogfish Reproduce?

Female frogfish are not overly friendly towards other frogfish. In fact they live quite solitary lives except when it's time to mate. During courtship, the female frogfish quite literally releases her charms to attract the male species.

Frogfish Courtship Ritual and Mating Process

Shortly before the mating cycle begins, the female will alert mating males that she is ready to produce her eggs.

She releases a strongly-scented pheromone into the water current that attracts one, or sometimes several, excited male frogfishes into the action and the frogfish mating process begins.

The whole affair is quite messy compared to other fish spawning frenzies. In fact, the males battle aggressively with each other - often for a few tiresome days of competitive fighting courtship - to win the prize of a female's affection.

In other words:

The males physically (and audibly) bump and tail-snap each other trying to intimidate the weakest frogfish into surrender.

As you might expect, the victorious male is tired, undernourished, and battered from the battle. But his mating duties remain unfinished.

Frogfish will complete the mating process by a somewhat inefficient method of reproduction known as broadcast spawning.

Simply put...

The male and female swim close together and she releases the encapsulated eggs into a cloud of sperm from the male.

Sperm-saturated eggs are fertilised and then drift in the current to find safety in the reef. The main advantage of broadcast spawning is the fast fertilisation of huge amounts of eggs that quickly find a resting place away from hungry cannibal fish and predator creatures on the reef.

A female can lay tens of thousands - often more than 50,000 - of minute eggs (around 0.03 inches in size) and the male will fertilise them.

It takes around five days for the juvenile frogfish to hatch. Facts suggest that the success rate for frogfish mating is very low - even though females may mate several times a month.

Frogfish Predators and Threats

For the most part, the frogfish life cycle is a lengthy one with some species living for more than twenty (20) years in their natural environment. But, frogfish care for beginner aquarists has several issues to be aware of.

So for example, if you start keeping frogfish in an aquarium you should be mindful not to mix them with clownfish, damselfish, and wrasses because they may attack your frogfish pet.

Frogfish Facts: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species assessed most of the saltwater frogfish phylum in 2009 and cited almost all of them as "Least Concern" (LC).

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