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Moon fish genus. Moonfish are the largest of the bony fish

Moonfish are different from other fish species due to their unique appearance. If you look at this representative of the underwater world, it is difficult to say that this is a fish, and not some other animal. This is due to the fact that the body of the fish resembles the shape of a disk, which indicates its extraterrestrial origin. At least that's what many think. The easiest way is to compare this fish to a regular plate.

This fish also has a second name - mola, as it represents the genus and species of the same name (Mola mola). If the name is translated from Latin, the mole means "millstones", which have the shape of a large circle of gray-blue hue. Therefore, the name of the fish corresponds to its appearance.

Some sources call this representative of the underwater world a fish moon, and some just a floating head.

Despite the different approaches to determining the name, it is the largest representative of bony fish. Its average weight reaches 1,000 kg, although there are specimens weighing up to 2 thousand kg.

The fish is characterized by rather bizarre body shapes. Its body is round and flattened from the sides, and you can see two dorsal and 2 anal fins on it. The tail section also has a unique structure called corns.

This fish is devoid of scales, but its body is covered with strong and reliable skin, which, under certain conditions, can change its color. The skin is quite elastic and covered with a layer of mucus. This fish is not taken by a regular harpoon. Depending on the habitat, its color can vary from brown or brownish gray to light bluish gray.

Interesting Facts! The moon fish, unlike other fish species, has a smaller number of vertebrae, which indicates a lack of bone tissue in the skeleton. In addition, the fish lacks the classic pelvis, ribs and swim bladder.

And although the fish is quite impressive in size, its mouth is very small, resembling a parrot's beak. This illusion is created thanks to the teeth that have grown together.

The fish moon inhabits the waters of various continents located in warm and temperate latitudes. Several subspecies of this fish inhabit the waters below the equator, within Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Chile.

The average size of the fish moon is limited to a height of 2.5 meters and a length of 2 meters, and the maximum size is 4 and 3 meters, respectively. In 1996, a breakwater was caught, which weighed about 2 thousand. 300 kg. To have an idea, this corresponds to the weight and size of an adult white rhinoceros.

These fish, despite their huge size, are not predators, and even more so, are considered absolutely safe for humans. At the same time, they pose a danger to boats and ships if they move at high speed.

Interesting fact! Cement carrier MV Goliath, which was heading to Sydney Harbor, collided with 1400 kg mole fish. It happened in 1998. The transport moved at a speed of about 14 knots, but after the collision, its speed dropped to 10 knots. At the same time, one of the parts of the ship lost its protective paint, right down to the metal itself.

When the mole is still young, its body is covered with bony spines, which disappear as individuals mature.

At first glance, this fish does not know how to swim at all, but this is not at all the case. Even so, it has fins that allow the fish, albeit slowly, but to move in the water column. Her movements in the water occur in a circle, which is ineffective, but she succeeds.

The diet of the mole includes jellyfish and siphonophores - invertebrate living organisms. In addition, squid, small crustaceans, deep-sea eel larvae, etc. are its food source. Although there are plenty of jellyfish in the water column, they are not a nutritious food source.

It turns out that not so much is known about this fish, since even scientists do not know how long a moon fish can live. Some experts claim that fish can live for about 20 years. The statements are based on data on the growth and development of fish, depending on the habitat. Despite this, according to some reports, females are able to live for more than 100 years, and males up to 90 years. What information is reliable, no one knows.

The moon fish belongs to a separate marine species that spends its entire life in the open ocean, so little is known about it. The fish lives in the cold and southern waters of the world's oceans.

It is believed that the fish moon in the warm season is in warm layers of water, which are at depths of up to 50 meters, while the fish from time to time plunges to depths of more than 150 meters.

As far as is known, the moon fish is found everywhere in the tropical, subtropical and temperate latitudes of the world's oceans.

According to experts, the moon fish mainly feeds on jellyfish. As a rule, jellyfish do not differ in nutritional value and in order to grow to this size and gain impressive weight, fish dilute their diet with shellfish, crustaceans, squid and small fish. To do this, she needs to regularly go deeper in search of more nutritious food components. Being at a depth for a long time, and at a significant one, the body temperature of the fish drops, which leads to a slowdown in many life processes. To raise body temperature, the fish rise to the upper layers of the water and bask in direct sunlight.

As mentioned earlier, this fish has not yet been fully studied, including its reproductive biology. Despite this, it is known that the moonfish is considered the most prolific vertebrate on the planet.

Sexually mature individuals are able to lay up to 300 million eggs, and the larvae that emerge from the eggs are no larger than a pinhead in size. Emerging into the world, mole fry have a protective shell in the form of a translucent star or snowflake.

To date, it is not known where and how the fish lay their eggs. Presumably, for spawning, the fish chooses the waters of the North and South Atlantic, the North and South Pacific, as well as the waters of the Indian Ocean. It is important for fish that there is a concentration of rotating ocean currents in the form of gyres.

Interesting fact! The hatched larvae of the fish of the moon reach a length of no more than 2.5 mm. To reach sexual maturity, the fish will have to increase in size up to 60 million times.

The appearance of the moon fish surprises almost everyone, but what is most surprising is that the puffer fish is the closest relative of the mole.

When individuals become sexually mature, there are practically no natural enemies for them, with the exception of a person who is engaged in a very wasteful fishing. The main share of the fish catch is in the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Up to 90% of the fish of the moon is caught in these areas, in relation to the total catch. At the same time, fishing is rarely practiced, and it is purely accidentally caught in the nets.

Despite these facts, moon fish meat is considered a real delicacy in some Asian countries. As a rule, even the skin and cartilage of fish is used, especially in countries such as Japan and Thailand. In addition, fish is actively used as a remedy, although only traditional medicine uses it. It is impossible to buy this fish in supermarkets or in the market, but you can try it in expensive restaurants, where they know how to cook this fish properly.

A characteristic feature of meat is the repulsive smell of iodine. Despite this, meat is rich in proteins and other useful components. Butchering this fish requires special professionalism, as there is a lethal dose of poison in the liver and bile ducts. In case of unprofessional cutting, if the liver and bile ducts are touched, the poison will get into the meat, and then into the food. This is usually fatal.

Considering the fact that the fish is of no commercial value, no measures are taken to preserve its number, although it is absolutely unfair, since everything is interconnected in nature. Fish fall prey to uncontrolled fishing and other factors. She often falls into the nets of fishermen, as she often moves closer to the surface. The fish is quite slow due to the structural features of its body, which makes it especially vulnerable to a number of negative factors.

Scientists have calculated that up to 340 thousand individuals of the moon-fish are caught annually within the waters of South Africa. Experts have calculated that moon fish accounts for about 29% of the total fish catch, which clearly exceeds the need for it.

In the waters of Japan and Taiwan, a targeted catch of mollus is carried out. This is due to the fact that fishermen supply this fish to local restaurants as a culinary delicacy.

Based on some calculations, we can safely say that the populations of this fish in some water areas are decreasing by up to 80%. In this regard, it is not difficult to assume that the world stocks of this fish are also decreasing. At the same time, it is believed that the level of decline reaches the level of about 30%. This is especially true in relation to the next 3 generations, that is, in the next 25 years. Little is known about the populations of other subspecies, such as the "tecata" Mola and the Mola "ramsayi", but it is not difficult to assume that they will face the same fate.

It is even difficult to assume that even those species of fish that do not differ in commercial value suffer from unreasonable human activity. In this case, it is not difficult to imagine the scale of catch of valuable fish species, or at least those that are of commercial interest. It is not surprising that man has already come to the point where you just need to prohibit fishing on a global scale. If this is not done, a product such as fish will simply have to be forgotten, which is fraught with serious negative consequences for humans. It seems that humanity is waiting for a stage when fish will have to be grown artificially, in specially designated areas. The reason for this may be the fact that water resources are being polluted at a high rate, which also leads to a decrease in fish stocks on a global scale.

The fish moon is an amazing creature, but for some reason it has been studied very poorly and it is not known what role this amazing creature plays in the life of all nature and man, in particular. This suggests that even in the 3rd millennium there is a lot of unknown on Earth, which makes it difficult to have a complete picture of life on our Planet.

Having met this fish in the ocean, you can be seriously scared. Still - a whopper 3-5 meters long and weighing several tons is capable of instilling fear with its size and completely implausible appearance.

In fact, the moonfish is completely harmless, because it feeds on jellyfish, comb jellies, small fish, crustaceans and other zooplankton, which, unfortunately, was next to it. This fish does not know how to quickly maneuver and quickly swim in pursuit of prey, but only sucks into its mouth-beak everything edible that is nearby.

Due to its rounded shape, in many languages of the world this unusual creature is called the moon fish, or the sunfish, because of the habit of basking in the sun, floating on the surface. The translation of the German name means "floating head", Polish - "lonely head", the Chinese call this fish "upside-down car". In Latin, the most numerous genus of these fish is called mola, which means "millstone". Fish have earned a similar name not only for their body shape, but also for their gray, rough skin.

Moonfish belong to the order of blowfish, which includes blowfish and hedgehog fish, with which they have much in common. First of all, these are four fused front teeth that form a characteristic non-closing beak, which gave the Latin name to the order - Tetraodontiformes (four-toothed). The family of moon-like, or moon-fish, (Molidae) is united by an unusual species of these millstone-like animals. One gets the impression that at the dawn of evolution, someone bit off the back of the fish just behind the dorsal and anal fins, and they survived and gave birth to equally strange offspring. Indeed, representatives of this family have fewer vertebrae than other teleost fishes, for example, in the species mola mola - there are only 16 of them, the pelvic girdle is completely reduced, the caudal fin is absent, and instead there is a tuberous pseudo-tail. The Molidae family includes three genera and five species of moonfish:

Genus Masturus

Sharptail mola, Masturus lanceolatus
Masturus oxyuropterus

Ocean sunfish, Mola mola
Southern sunfish, Mola ramsayi

Genus Ranzania

Slender moonfish, Slender sunfish, Ranzania laevis.

Almost all members of the moonfish family live in tropical, subtropical, and sometimes temperate waters. All of them reach large sizes and have a rounded, laterally compressed shape of the head and body. They have rough skin, no tail bones, and the skeleton is made up mostly of cartilage. Moonfish have no bony plates in their skin, but the skin itself is thick and dense, like cartilage. They are painted in brown, silver-gray, white, sometimes with patterns, colors. These fish lack a swim bladder, which disappears during the early stages of larval development.

Moonfish are the largest teleost fish. The largest measured mola mola was 3.3 meters long and weighed 2.3 tons. There are reports that fish were caught that reached a length of more than five meters. In the process of development from larvae to adults, all moonfish go through several stages of development, and all forms are completely different from each other. The larvae hatching from the eggs resemble puffers, then wide bony plates appear on the body of the grown larvae, which later remain only in fish of the genus Ranzania, in the mole and masturus, the protrusions on the plates gradually turn into sharp long spines, which then disappear. The caudal fin and swim bladder gradually disappear, and the teeth merge into a single plate.

Moon fish - (lat. Mola mola), translated from Latin as a millstone. This fish can be over three meters long and weigh about one and a half tons. The largest specimen of the moonfish was caught in New Hampshire, USA. Its length was five and a half meters, data on weight are not available. In shape, the body of the fish resembles a disk; it was this feature that gave rise to the Latin name.

The most studied moonfish of the genus Mola. Fish of the genus Masturus are very similar to mola mola, but they have an elongated pseudo-tail, and their eyes are more displaced forward. It was believed that these fish are anomalous mola, which still have a larval tail, but studies have shown that in the process of fish growth, rays of the pseudo-tail appear after the reduction of the larval tail. Representatives of the genus Ranzania differ somewhat from other moonfish, which reach a small size of 1 m and have a flatter and more elongated body shape.

When moving, all moonfish use very long and narrow anal and dorsal fins, flapping their wings like a bird, while small pectoral fins serve as stabilizers. To steer, fish spit a strong stream of water from their mouths or gills. Despite the love to bask in the sun, moonfish live at a venerable depth of several hundred, and sometimes thousands of meters.

Moonfish are reported to be able to produce sounds by rubbing their pharyngeal teeth, which are long and claw-like.

Moonfish are the record holders for the number of eggs spawned, one female is capable of laying several hundred million eggs. Despite such fertility, the number of these extraordinary fish is declining. In addition to natural enemies that hunt larvae and adults, the population of moonfish is threatened by humans: in many Asian countries they are considered medicinal and they are extensively caught, although there is information that the meat of these fish contains toxins, like hedgehogs and blowfish , and in the internal organs there is a poison tetrodotoxin, like in puffer fish.

In the moon fish, the skin is very thick. It is elastic, and its surface is covered with small bony protrusions. Larvae of this species and juveniles swim in the usual way. Adult large fish swim on their sides, quietly moving their fins. They seem to lie on the surface of the water, where it is very easy to notice and catch them. However, many experts believe that only sick fish swim in this way. As an argument, they cite the fact that the stomach of fish caught on the surface is usually empty.

Compared to other fish, the moonfish does not swim well. She is unable to resist the current and often floats at the behest of the waves, without a goal. This is observed by sailors, noticing the dorsal fin of this hulking fish.

In the Atlantic Ocean, the moonfish can reach Great Britain and Iceland, the shores of Norway, and even climb even further north. In the Pacific Ocean in the summer you can see the moonfish in the Sea of Japan, more often in the northern part, and near the Kuril Islands.

Although the moonfish looks quite menacing because of its impressive size, it is not scary to humans. However, there are many signs among the sailors of South Africa, who interpret the appearance of this fish as a sign of trouble. Probably, this is due to the fact that the fish-moon approaches the coast only before the weather worsens. Sailors associate the appearance of fish with the approaching storm and rush to return to the shore. Similar superstitions also appear due to the unusual type of fish and its way of swimming.

Indeed, representatives of this family have fewer vertebrae than other teleost fishes, for example, in the species mola mola - there are only 16 of them, the pelvic girdle is completely reduced, the caudal fin is absent, and instead there is a tuberous pseudo-tail. The Molidae family includes three genera and five species of moonfish:

Sharptail mola, Masturus lanceolatus
Masturus oxyuropterus

Ocean sunfish, Mola mola
Southern sunfish, Mola ramsayi

Slender moonfish, Slender sunfish, Ranzania laevis.

Moonfish are reported to be able to produce sounds by rubbing their pharyngeal teeth, which are long and claw-like.

In 1908, this fish moon was caught 65 kilometers off the coast of Sydney, it got entangled in the propellers of the steamer "Fiona" and the ship was unable to move on. At that time it was the largest specimen of the moon fish caught, it reached 3.1 m in length and 4.1 m in width.Photo: danmeth

Scientific classification:
Domain: Eukaryotes
Kingdom: Animals
Type of: Chordates
Class: Beam-finned fish
Detachment: Blowfish
Family: Moon-fish (Latin Molidae (Bonaparte, 1832))

Description

These fish have a huge body in the form of a disk, strongly compressed from the sides. The pelvic girdle is reduced. The dorsal and anal fins, shifted back and devoid of spiny rays, form an elastic cartilaginous plate, which is supported by their branched soft rays. This tail plate acts like a paddle. During individual development, all species of the family undergo complex metamorphosis. Newly hatched larvae look like blowfish. Upon reaching a length of 6-8 mm, the body stage sets in - wide bone plates with large triangular projections appear, which are then crushed into small denticles with triangular projections, forming long spines. The larval caudal fin is still present at this stage.

The gills are apertured, the eyes and mouth are small, the pectoral fins are rounded, the pelvic fins and caudal fin are absent. The mouth ends in a well-developed beak formed by fused teeth.

Representatives of this family have the smallest number of vertebrae among fish, in the common moon fish there are only 16. The bones of the caudal fin are completely absent, and the skeleton mainly consists of cartilaginous tissue. Thick and rather rough skin is devoid of scales and covered with bony protrusions. No swim bladder.

These fish are poor swimmers. They swim with the dorsal and anal fins, and the pectoral fins act as stabilizers. To perform the turn, they release a strong stream of water from the mouth or gills. In addition, they are able to maneuver a little, changing the position of the anal and dorsal fins, similar to how birds use their wings to maneuver.

It is believed that moon fish are capable of using pharyngeal teeth en make gnashing sounds. They have fused teeth, which form a characteristic “beak” for representatives of the order of blowfish, which does not allow them to close their mouth tightly. Despite this, their diet is mostly soft, although they occasionally eat small fish and crustaceans.

Biology

Interacting with people

These fish have tasteless flabby meat. However, in some regions of the Western Pacific Ocean and in the South Atlantic, there is a specialized fishing for moonfish. They are sometimes kept in public aquariums. They are easy to feed, as they reflexively suck in any small food brought to the mouth. But they often die, breaking against the walls of the tanks. Occasionally moonfish are found on the shore. The population of moonfish is declining, and they are often caught as by-catch.

Classification

The name of the family and one of the genera comes from the word lat. mola- "millstone". The genus includes 2 types:

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Notes (edit)

Wheeler A.
Life of animals. Volume 4. Lancelet. Roundstomes. Cartilaginous fish. Bony fish / ed. T.S.Rassa, ch. ed. V.E.Sokolov. - 2nd ed. - M .: Education, 1983 .-- S. 506-507. - 300,000 copies
Matsuura, K. & Tyler, J.C. Encyclopedia of Fishes / Paxton, J.R. & Eschmeyer, W.N., ed .. - San Diego: Academic Press, 1998. - P. 231. - ISBN 0-12-547665-5.
... BBC Worldwide, Ltd .. ISBN 0-563-38498-0.
... Two Oceans Aquarium Cape Town, South Africa. Retrieved February 1, 2016.
: Information on the IUCN Red List website (English)
Russian titles according to the book Reshetnikov Yu.S., Kotlyar A.N., Rass T.S., Shatunovsky M.I. A five-language dictionary of animal names. Fishes. Latin, Russian, English, German, French. / under the general editorship of Acad. V.E.Sokolova. - M .: Rus. yaz., 1989. - S. 417-418. - 12,500 copies - ISBN 5-200-00237-0.

Literature

Wheeler A.// Key to the Fishes of Northern Europe / Translated from English by T.I.Smolyanova, edited by Cand. biol. V.P. Serebryakova. - M .: Light and food industry, 1983. - 432 p.
Joseph S. Nelson: Fishes of the World. John Wiley & Sons, 2006, ISBN 0-471-25031-7
Kurt Fiedler: Lehrbuch der Speziellen Zoologie, Band II, Teil 2: Fische. Gustav Fischer Verlag Jena, 1991, ISBN 3-334-00339-6

An excerpt characterizing the Moon-fish (genus)

Horses previously unseen were visible to their tails, and a watery light could be seen through the bare branches. Petya shook himself, jumped up, took out a ruble from his pocket and gave Likhachev, waving, tasted the saber and put it in its sheath. The Cossacks untied the horses and tightened the girths.
“Here's the commander,” said Likhachev. Denisov came out of the guardhouse and, calling to Petya, ordered to get ready.

Quickly in the semi-darkness they dismantled the horses, tightened the girths and sorted them out according to commands. Denisov stood at the guardhouse, giving the last orders. The party's infantry, plopping with a hundred feet, walked forward along the road and quickly disappeared between the trees in the predawn fog. Esaul ordered something to the Cossacks. Petya kept his horse on the bit, eagerly awaiting the order to sit down. Having been washed with cold water, his face, especially his eyes, burned with fire, a chill ran down his spine, and in his whole body something was trembling quickly and evenly.
- Well, are you all ready? - said Denisov. - Come on horses.
The horses were served. Denisov got angry with the Cossack because the girths were weak, and, having scolded him, sat down. Petya took hold of the stirrup. The horse, out of habit, wanted to bite him on the leg, but Petya, not feeling his heaviness, quickly jumped into the saddle and, looking back at the hussars who had moved behind in the darkness, drove up to Denisov.
- Vasily Fedorovich, will you entrust me with something? Please… for God's sake… ”he said. Denisov seemed to have forgotten about Petya's existence. He looked back at him.
- About one you pg "osh," he said sternly, "to obey me and not to meddle.
During the entire journey Denisov did not speak a word more with Petya and drove in silence. When we arrived at the edge of the forest, it was already noticeably brightening in the field. Denisov talked something in a whisper with the esaul, and the Cossacks began to drive past Petya and Denisov. When they had all passed, Denisov touched his horse and rode downhill. Sitting on their backs and sliding, the horses descended with their riders into the hollow. Petya rode next to Denisov. The tremors in his entire body intensified. It became brighter and brighter, only the fog hid distant objects. Having driven down and looking back, Denisov nodded his head to the Cossack who was standing beside him.
- Signal! He said.
The Cossack raised his hand, a shot rang out. And at the same instant there was the sound of pounding horses in front of them, shouts from different directions, and more shots.
At the same instant, as the first sounds of stomping and shouting were heard, Petya, hitting his horse and releasing the reins, without listening to Denisov shouting at him, galloped ahead. It seemed to Petya that all of a sudden, like the middle of the day, it was brightly dawning the minute the shot was heard. He galloped to the bridge. Cossacks galloped along the road ahead. On the bridge he ran into a straggler Cossack and rode on. Ahead, some people — they must have been the French — were running from the right side of the road to the left. One fell into the mud under the feet of Petya's horse.
Cossacks crowded around one hut, doing something. A terrible cry came from the middle of the crowd. Petya galloped up to this crowd, and the first thing he saw was the pale face of a Frenchman with a trembling lower jaw, holding on to the shaft of a pike directed at him.
- Hurray! .. Guys ... ours ... - Petya shouted and, giving the reins to the heated horse, galloped forward along the street.
Shots were heard ahead. Cossacks, hussars and Russian ragged prisoners who fled from both sides of the road, all loudly and awkwardly shouted something. A dashing Frenchman, without a hat, with a red scowling face, in a blue greatcoat, fought off the hussars with a bayonet. When Petya jumped up, the Frenchman had already fallen. Again he was late, it flashed through Petya's head, and he galloped over to where he heard frequent shots. Shots rang out in the courtyard of the manor house where he had been with Dolokhov last night. The French sat there behind a fence in a dense garden overgrown with bushes and fired at the Cossacks who were crowding at the gate. Approaching the gate, Petya in the powder smoke saw Dolokhov with a pale, greenish face, shouting something to people. “Take a detour! Infantry wait! " - he shouted, while Petya drove up to him.
- Wait? .. Uraaaa! .. - Petya shouted and, without hesitating a single minute, galloped to the place where the shots were heard and where the powder smoke was thicker. A volley was heard, and empty bullets squealed into something. The Cossacks and Dolokhov jumped up after Petya into the gate of the house. The French, in the wavering thick smoke, some threw down their weapons and ran out of the bushes to meet the Cossacks, others ran downhill to the pond. Petya galloped on his horse along the courtyard and, instead of holding the reins, waved both hands strangely and quickly, and farther and farther knocked off the saddle to one side. The horse, having run up to the fire smoldering in the morning light, rested, and Petya fell heavily on the wet ground. The Cossacks saw how quickly his arms and legs twitched, despite the fact that his head did not move. The bullet pierced his head.
After talking with a senior French officer, who came out to him from behind the house with a scarf on a sword and announced that they were surrendering, Dolokhov dismounted and walked over to Pete, who was lying motionless, with outstretched arms.
“Ready,” he said, frowning, and went to the gate to meet Denisov, who was on his way to see him.
- Killed ?! - Denisov cried out, seeing from afar that familiar to him, undoubtedly lifeless position, in which Petya's body lay.
“Ready,” Dolokhov repeated, as if pronouncing the word gave him pleasure, and quickly went to the prisoners, who were surrounded by dismounted Cossacks. - We will not take! - he shouted to Denisov.

Due to its rounded shape, in many languages of the world this unusual creature is called moonfish, or fish-sun (sunfish), due to the habit of basking in the sun, floating on the surface. The translation of the German name means “ floating head", Polish -" lonely head", The Chinese call this fish" upside-down car". In Latin, the most numerous genus of these fish is called mola which means "millstone". Fish have earned a similar name not only for their body shape, but also for their gray, rough skin.

Moonfish belong to the order of blowfish, which includes blowfish and hedgehog fish, with which they have much in common. First of all, these are four fused front teeth that form a characteristic non-closing beak, which gave the Latin name to the order - Tetraodontiformes (four-toothed). The family of moon-like, or moon-fish, ( Molidae) is united by the unusual appearance of these millstone-like animals. One gets the impression that at the dawn of evolution, someone bit off the back of the fish just behind the dorsal and anal fins, and they survived and gave birth to equally strange offspring. Indeed, representatives of this family have fewer vertebrae than other teleost fishes, for example, the species mola mola- there are only 16 of them, the pelvic girdle is completely reduced, the caudal fin is absent, and instead of it there is a tuberous pseudo-tail. The Molidae family includes three genera and five species of moonfish:

Genus Masturus

Rod Mola

Genus Ranzania

Moonfish are the largest teleost fish. The largest measured mola mola reached a length of 3.3 m and weighed 2.3 tons. There are reports that fish were caught that reached a length of more than five meters. In the process of development from larvae to adults, all moonfish go through several stages of development, and all forms are completely different from each other. The larvae hatching from the eggs resemble puffers, then wide bony plates appear on the body of the grown larvae, which later remain only in fish of the genus Ranzania, in the mole and masturus, the protrusions on the plates gradually turn into sharp long spines, which then disappear. The caudal fin and swim bladder gradually disappear, and the teeth merge into a single plate.