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The porcupine fish (as Diodon antennatus) is mentioned in Charles Darwin's famous account of his trip around the world, The Voyage of the Beagle. He noted how the fish can swim quite well when inflated, though the altered buoyancy requires them to do so upside down.
The Black-blotched porcupinefish is a medium-sized fish which grows up to 65 cm (26 in), but the average size most likely to be observed is 45 cm (18 in). [1] Its body is elongated with a spherical head with big round protruding eyes and a large mouth that is rarely closed.
The long-spine porcupine fish is an omnivore that feeds on mollusks, sea urchins, hermit crabs, snails, and crabs during its active phase at night. [5] They use their beak combined with plates on the roof of their mouths to crush their prey such as mollusks and sea urchins that would otherwise be indigestible.
A porcupine's colouring aids in part of its defence as most of the predators are nocturnal and colour-blind. A porcupine's markings are black and white. The dark body and coarse hair of the porcupine are dark brown/black and when quills are raised, present a white strip down its back mimicking the look of a skunk.
Like true pufferfishes of the related family Tetraodontidae, porcupinefishes can inflate themselves. Once inflated, a porcupinefish's erected spines stand perpendicular to the skin, whereupon they then pose a major difficulty to their predators: a large porcupinefish that is fully inflated can choke a shark to death.
It is distinguished from the porcupinefish by the shorter, less sharply pointed, and immovable spines which cover the somewhat spherical body. It can inflate its body by taking either air or water into a ventral extension of the stomach.
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The spot-fin porcupinefish is a medium-sized fish which grows up to 91 cm, but the average size mostly observed is 40 cm. [2] Its body is elongated with a spherical head with big round protruding eyes, and a large mouth which is rarely closed.