cowfish

While badly suited to the home aquarium, the cowfish is becoming increasingly popular as a pet.

In life, it would have strongly resembled a modern cowfish (genus Lactoria).

They are such slow swimmers cowfish are easily caught by hand, making a grunting noise when captured.

This latter point distinguishes cowfish from trunkfish.

While trawling under the supervision of marine biologists, you'll pick up and touch sponges, sea horses, puffers and cowfish.

Aracana aurita (Striped cowfish)

Acanthostracion notacanthus (Island cowfish)

Aracana ornata (Ornate cowfish)

Lactoria cornuta (Longhorn cowfish)

Acanthostracion polygonius (Honeycomb cowfish)

Acanthostracion quadricornis (Scrawled cowfish)

Lactoria diaphana (Roundbelly cowfish)

Lactoria fornasini (Thornback cowfish)

Ocean Oddities is home to pinecone fish, cowfish, flying gurnards, potbellied seahorses, and short dragonfish.

The honeycomb cowfish, Acanthostracion polygonius, belongs to the Ostraciidae family and is closely related to boxfish and trunkfish.

While most of these tanks are not as aesthetically pleasing as their tropical counterparts, colorful species such as the ornate cowfish, blennies and sea anemones can be found.

Q. I would like to add a Moorish Idol to my tank, which is 48" x 12" x 18" and contains a Bicolour Angel and a Cowfish.

Biozone showcases the amazing biodiversity found in the world's oceans and displays longhorn cowfish, lionfish, Giant Pacific Octopus Enteroctopus dofleini and seahorses.

The English vernacular names used for the species also include cowfish, jollytail, common jollytail, eel gudgeon, lananga, native trout, pulangi, slippery tarki, spotted minnow and whitebait.

Lantern-eye fish, long-horned cowfish, fish shaped like rocks, razor shrimps that can also be used as knives when bone dry, medusas and moray eels all give rise to shrieks of 'Rigolo!'

Porkfish, stoplight parrotfish, yellow goatfish, trumpet fish, a crazy-looking scrawled cowfish - I scribbled my first fish list in the back of Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things."

The longhorn cowfish, Lactoria cornuta, is a variety of boxfish from the family Ostraciidae, recognizable by its long horns that protrude from the front of its head, rather like those of a cow or bull.

USS Toro (SS-422), a Tench-class submarine, was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for the toro, a name applied to various fish including the cowfish, the catalufa, and the cavallo.