Transcript:

Today on Animal Fact Files we’re talking about parrotfish. Sometimes it’s blue... or green… it could be red, too - and it might change color during its lifetime. A parrotfish isn’t just capable of changing color either - but more on this in a bit. Because parrotfish don’t always look the same throughout their lifetimes, earlier scientists believed there were hundreds of species of parrotfish. Nowadays, there are fewer than 100 classified species.

A parrotfish has fused teeth that form what looks like a parrot’s beak, hence the name. A parrotfish also has teeth in its throat and these teeth are used for grinding. The main diet of parrotfish is algae but the way they obtain this food source is by literally chopping it off coral reefs and extracting it from pieces of coral. Chunks of coral are broken off by the parrotfish’s beaklike mouth and then ground down while traveling through the parrotfish’s digestive system. As destructive as breaking off parts of coral may sound, parrotfish are a huge asset in the ecosystem of a reef. If left unchecked, algae growth could completely choke out coral. Plus, parrotfish help make sand! That’s right, beach vacations involve a lot of... parrotfish poop. A large group of parrotfish could actually create an entire island if they had enough access to coral. All that ground up coral has to go somewhere, right? Needless to say, parrotfish are found living on coral reefs throughout the world.

Parrotfish are diurnal animals and at night they have a few means of hiding while they sleep. Some species will simply hide in the reef’s small cracks and crevices. Others take to burrowing under the sand… the sand they… ugh nevermind. And some species go so far as to create a cocoon every night from a mucus they produce specifically for this purpose. It’s thought that the cocoon helps to make them less visible to predators and to mask the fishes’ scent. The predators from which a parrotfish is hiding include other fish such as eels and sharks as well as crustaceans.

Parrotfish live in schools of just a few members to up to 500 individuals. These groups are typically led by a breeding male - though he may not have started out that way. When the breeding male dies he usually gets replaced by one of the more prominent female members of the group. She will turn into a male and become the school’s next leader. In parrotfish that school in this way, the male will individually reproduce with each of the females in his group. Conversely, in the parrotfish that don’t do this, reproduction happens simply by many individuals releasing sperm and eggs at the top of the water column which will be dispersed by tidal currents. It only takes 25 hours for the fertilized eggs to hatch and the young take about two to four years to fully mature. They can grow up to four feet (1.2 meters) in length in their lifetime depending on the species of parrotfish. A parrotfish’s lifespan depends on the species, and a parrotfish may live to be five years old or older!

For more facts on parrotfish, check out the links in the description. Give a thumbs up if you learned something new today, and thank you for watching Animal Fact Files.