The Puffer Fish
Presentation by Hoel SEZNEC
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Background About the
Puffer fish:
 more commonly known as the Japanese puffer
fish.
 There are nearly 100 kinds of puffer fish
worldwide.
 Live in salt water or fresh
water
 They can grow up to 70.0 cm.
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Its food
 Algae
 Mollusks
 Invertebrates
 crustaceans
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Its defenses
 It inflates its body
 It poison his prey, enough poison to kill 30
humans
It doesn’t fear its environment
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Japanese like it in sushi !
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Its poison
 The Second most poisonous vertebrate on earth,
 Poison = tetrodotoxin =lethal poison=1200 more deadlier
than cyanide,
 It is possibly that a human can survive to a bite
 Otherwise death is possible in 30 minutes
 It is use in voodoo to make zombies
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Its poison
 No antidote,
 It paralyze muscles => death by asphyxiation
The victim stays conscious,
 A medical approach is to support the respiratory and
circulatory system,
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Where come from the poison?
 The poison is located on intern organs :
Liver, ovaries, skin, testes, intestines.
- The poison is made by a toxin located on algae. The
puffer fish eat the bacteria and digest it to make the
poison,
- If the puffer fish is raised in artificial place it is not
poisonous,
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Where come from the poison?
 It is the same poison in the cone snail or the blue-ring
octopus
 The bacteria are located on red limestone algae at -100
m
 It is the pseudomonas and vibrion.
9
An
other
use
of
the
poison
 Medical use :



Anesthetic
Better than any opium or morphine
No dependance
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The puffer fish video
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