Trivia question for Jul-27-2011

Carter was at a loss when trying to decide what to feature today so he ended up with this one.  Lets see how many of you know much about these guys.  These are flat-bodied, bottom-dwelling fish with both eyes on one side of its face.  They are able to change its skin color and patterns to match its background and hide from enemies.

They feed at night, drifting inshore with the tide to snap up burrow-dwelling shellfish and worms.  They have an acute sense of smell, and uses it to track down prey in the often murky water of its habitat.  They live in coastal waters, as well as lower reaches of rivers, from Arctic Scandinavia south through Europe to North Africa.

So here are Carter’s questions:  Tell us what kind of fish this is and tell us what percentage of these fish are ‘right-eyed’ and what percentage are ‘left-eyed’?  Also, if you placed a checkerboard in the water and laid one of these fish on top, they could instantly change their skins cells to create a basic checker pattern.  Its related American cousin is almost equally as impressive, but has a problem reproducing what color?

Good Luck 😉

Answer:

Wow, Carter actually took a species he knew nothing about and was able to write a trivia that stumped everyone.  Plenty of folks guessed Flounder but no one knew the other answers.  the odd looking fish we featured is the European Flounder. The European flounder is a flatfish of European coastal waters from the White Sea in North to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea in South. Introduced into the USA and Canada accidentally through transport in ballast water. It is a well-known food fish.

All flounders start off with one eye on each side of their body.  As they grow, one of their eyes starts to migrate (along with their nostril) over to the other side of their head and they start fishing while buried on the sandy bottom.  Most flounders are ‘Right-Eyed’ but about 1/3rd of them end up being ‘Left-Eyed’.  Foe some reason, the American version of these fish are not able to reproduce shades of red while changing their color to camouflage themselves.  Here is more on these cool, yet ugly fish: European Flounder

Thanks for playing along 😉