The Ocean Sunfish Or Common Mola (Mola Mola) Is One Of The Largest Bony Fish In The World. It Is The

The ocean sunfish or common mola (Mola mola) is one of the largest bony fish in the world. It is the type species of the genus Mola, and one of five extant species in the family Molidae. It was once misidentified as the heaviest bony fish, which was actually a different and closely related species of sunfish, Mola alexandrini. Adults typically weigh between 247 and 1,000 kg (545 and 2,205 lb). It is native to tropical and temperate waters around the world. It resembles a fish head without a tail, and its main body is flattened laterally. Sunfish can be as tall as they are long when their dorsal and ventral fins are extended.

Its common English name, sunfish, refers to the animal's habit of sunbathing at the surface of the sea.[citation needed] Its common names in Dutch, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Russian, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian, and German (maanvis, peixe lua, Poisson lune, pez luna, peix lluna, Pesce luna, рыба-луна, φεγγαρόψαρο, holdhal, månefisk and Mondfisch, respectively) mean "moon fish", in reference to its rounded shape. In German, the fish is also known as Schwimmender Kopf, or "swimming head". In Polish, it is named samogłów, meaning "head alone" or "only head", because it has no true tail. In Swedish and Danish it is known as klumpfisk, in Dutch klompvis, in Finnish möhkökala, all of which mean "lump fish". The Chinese translation of its academic name is 翻車魚; fān chē yú, meaning "toppled wheel fish". Many of the sunfish's various names allude to its flattened shape.

It was originally classified in the pufferfish family as Tetraodon mola, its epithet mola is Latin for "millstone", which the fish resembles because of its gray color, rough texture, and rounded body. It is now placed in its own genus Mola and family name Molidae as the type species with two other species: Mola tecta and M. alexandrini (previously known as Mola ramsayi). Extinct relatives of Mola mola lived in the Oligocene and Miocene epochs. However, the earliest known fossil remains of Mola mola itself were found in archaeological middens dating to the Holocene epoch.

The common name "sunfish" without qualifier is used to describe the marine family Molidae and the freshwater sunfish in the family Centrarchidae, which is unrelated to Molidae. On the other hand, the name "ocean sunfish" and "mola" refer only to the family Molidae.

The giant leopard moth (Hypercompe scribonia) is a moth of the family Erebidae. They are distributed through North America from southern Ontario, and southern and eastern United States through New England, Mexico, and south to Colombia.The obsolete name, Ecpantheria scribonia, is still occasionally encountered.

They are known to be attracted to bitter, unripe vegetables and broccoli flowers.

This moth species has a wingspan of 76 mm (3 in). Its wings are bright white with a pattern of neat black blotches, some solid and some hollow. The overside of the abdomen is dark blue with orange markings, while the underside is white with solid black spots, and males have a narrow yellow line on the sides. Their legs have black and white bands. Adult moths are strictly nocturnal and do not generally fly before nightfall.

This species has a notable sexual dimorphism in size, with the adult male reaching about 51 mm (2 in) in length, while the adult female grows up to 30 mm (1.2 in).The leopard moth requires two years to complete its round of life. In Missouri, adults are on the wing from May to September and are multivoltine. During mating sessions, the wings of the male cover most of the female's abdomen, which can sometimes lead to the loss of wing scales in the female and have negative effects on her flight efficiency. Their mating sessions are notably long-lasting, taking more than 24 hours. They stay mostly immobile during the whole process, but move from spot to spot to thermoregulate, walking into shadowy areas if too hot or into sunlight if too cold. The male effectuates the locomotion, while the female folds her legs to make her easier to carry.

The caterpillar is of the "woolly bear" kind, with a thick coat of black bristles (setae) and red or orange bands between its segments, which become conspicuous when the caterpillar rolls into a ball for defense. Like the banded woolly bear, its hairs are not urticant nor venomous and do not typically cause irritation. The moth overwinters as a caterpillar, often under the bark of decaying wood.The caterpillar grows to be 7.6 cm (3 in) long.

Plectorhinchus chaetodonoides, the harlequin sweetlips, clown sweetlips, spotted sweetlips or many-spotted sweetlips, is a species of marine ray-finned fish, a sweetlips belonging to the subfamily Plectorhinchinae, one of two subfamilies in the family Haemulidae, the grunts. It is native to the Indo-Pacific region. This species is of minor importance to local commercial fisheries and can be found in the aquarium trade

Plectorhinchus chaetodonoides has fleshy lips which become moderately swollen as the fish grows, there are 6 pores on the chin but no central pit.< The dorsal fin typically has 12 spines, although rarely it has 11 spines. and 18-20 soft rays, the soft rayed part of the dorsal fin has a height which is roughly equal to the length of its base. The juveniles are brownish with large, discrete creamy white blotches on the body these develop brown spotting as the fish matures. As they grow into adults the coloration slowly develops a greyish background colour broken large, dark brown spots, these spots having a greater diameter of the iris. The maximum recorded total length is 72 cm (28 in), although 60 cm (24 in) is more typical, and the maximum published weight is 7 kg (15 lb). It is thought that the juveniles are Batesian mimics of poisonous flatworms. The caudal fin of juveniles is deeply forked and has wide rounded lobes both of which are mostly white marked with a large brown spot, in adults it is much less forked.

Plectorhinchus chaetodonoides is found in coral-rich parts of clear lagoons and on seaward reefs. The adults are solitary fish, living in the vicinity of and sheltering beneath ledges or caves during the day. The juveniles are found sheltering in corals. It is a carnivorous species which preys on benthic invertebrates such as crustaceans and molluscs, as well as fishes, which it forages for during the night. The juveniles typically swim in a head down posture wildly undulating their fins as they swim, a behaviour which may mimic toxic or distasteful platyhelminths or nudibranchs and so provide some protection from predation.

The reedfish, ropefish (more commonly used in the United States), or snakefish, Erpetoichthys calabaricus, is a species of fish in the family Polypteridae alongside the bichirs. It is the only member of the genus Erpetoichthys. It is native to fresh and brackish waters in West and Central Africa. The reedfish possesses a pair of lungs in addition to gills, allowing it to survive in very oxygen-poor water. It is threatened by habitat loss through palm oil plantations, other agriculture, deforestation, and urban development.

The largest confirmed reedfish museum specimen was 37 cm (15 in) long, and three studies where more than 2,000 wild reedfish were caught (using basket traps, meaning that only individuals longer than 15–20 cm [6–8 in] were retained) found none that exceeded 41.4 cm (16.3 in). Although sometimes claimed to reach up to 90 cm (3 ft) long, this is incorrect.

Body elongation in fishes, such as eels, usually happens through the addition of caudal (tail) vertebrae, but in bichirs it has happened through the addition of precaudal vertebrae. Reedfish have evolved a more snakelike body by having twice as many precaudal vertebrae as the members of its sister genus Polypterus, despite having the same number of tail vertebrae. Pelvic fins are absent, and the long dorsal fin consist of a series of well-separated spines, each supporting one or several articulated rays and a membrane. The reedfish possesses a pair of lungs, enabling it to breathe atmospheric air. This allows the species to survive in water with low dissolved oxygen content and to survive for an intermediate amount of time out of water. The sexes are very similar in both median and maximum length, but females average heavier than males of a similar length, and they can be reliably separated by the shape of their anal fin. Reedfish are dark above and on the sides, with lighter orangish or yellowish underparts. Males are generally more olive-green in colour, whereas females generally are more yellowish-brown. Larvae have conspicuous external gills, making them resemble salamander larvae.

The genus name derives from the Greek words erpeton (creeping thing) and ichthys (fish).

Beautiful black witch moth

The erebid moth Ascalapha odorata, commonly known as the black witch, is a large bat-shaped, dark-colored nocturnal moth, normally ranging from the southern United States to Brazil. Ascalapha odorata is also migratory into Canada and most states of United States. It is the largest noctuoid in the continental United States. In the folklore of many Central American cultures, it is associated with death or misfortune.

Female moths can attain a wingspan of 24 cm. The dorsal surfaces of their wings are mottled brown with hints of iridescent purple and pink, and, in females, crossed by a white bar. The diagnostic marking is a small spot on each forewing shaped like a number nine or a comma. This spot is often green with orange highlights. Males are somewhat smaller, reaching 12 cm in width, darker in color and lacking the white bar crossing the wings. The larva is a large caterpillar up to 7 cm in length with intricate patterns of black and greenish-brown spots and stripes.

The black witch lives from the southern United States, Mexico and Central America to Brazil, and has apparently been introduced to Hawaii.[citation needed]

The black witch flies north during late spring and summer. One was caught during an owl banding project at the Whitefish Point lighthouse on the shoreline of Lake Superior in July 2020.[citation needed]

The black witch is considered a harbinger of death in Mexican and Caribbean folklore. In many cultures, one of these moths flying into the house is considered bad luck: e.g., in Mexico, when there is sickness in a house and this moth enters, it is believed the sick person will die, though a variation on this theme (in the lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas) is that death only occurs if the moth flies in and visits all four corners of one's house (in Mesoamerica, from the pre-Hispanic era until the present time, moths have been associated with death and the number four). In some parts of Mexico, people joke that if one flies over someone's head, the person will lose his hair.

In Jamaica, under the name duppy bat, the black witch is seen as the embodiment of a lost soul or a soul not at rest. In Jamaican English, the word duppy is associated with malevolent spirits returning to inflict harm upon the living and bat refers to anything other than a bird that flies. The word "duppy" (also: "duppie") is also used in other West Indian countries, generally meaning "ghost".

In Brazil it is called "mariposa-bruxa", "mariposa-negra", "bruxa-negra", and "bruxa", and it is also believed that when a moth of this type enters the house it can bring some "bad omen", signaling the death of a resident. In the Ecuadorian highlands they are called Tandacuchi and in Peru Taparacuy or Taparaco. These countries share the belief that if this moth, a messenger of death, appears in your home, someone will die very soon.

In Hawaii, black witch mythology, though associated with death, has a happier note in that if a loved one has just died, the moth is an embodiment of the person's soul returning to say goodbye. In the Bahamas, where they are locally known as money moths or money bats, the legend is that if they land on you, you will come into money, and similarly, in South Texas, if a black witch lands above your door and stays there for a while, you will supposedly win the lottery.

In Paraguay and Argentina, this insect is mostly known as "ura", and there is a popular belief that this moth urinates and leaves worms on the skin of people and animals. However, the insect that lays eggs in the skin and whose larvae become embedded in the flesh is the colmoyote or screwworm (Dermatobia hominis).

In Spanish, the black witch is known as "mariposa de la muerte". Other names for the moth include the papillion-devil, la sorcière noire, the mourning moth or the sorrow moth.[citation needed]

Black witch moth pupae were placed in the mouths of victims of serial killer 'Buffalo Bill' in the novel The Silence of the Lambs. In the movie adaptation, they were replaced by death's-head hawkmoth pupae.