- Animals
- Reference
Parrotfish
It's hard to decide which of the colorful parrotfish's many unique characteristics is most remarkable.
There’s its diet, which consists primarily of algae extracted from chunks of coral ripped from a reef. The coral is pulverized with grinding teeth in the fishes’ throats in order to get to the algae-filled polyps inside. Much of the sand in the parrotfish's range is actually the ground-up, undigested coral they excrete.
There's its sex, which they can change repeatedly throughout their lives, and their coloration and patterns, which are a classification nightmare, varying greatly, even among the males, females, and juveniles of the same species.
Finally, there are the pajamas. Every night, certain species of parrotfish envelope themselves in a transparent cocoon made of mucous secreted