Polka-dot Batfish

Batfish, any of about 60 species of fishes of the family Ogcocephalidae (order Lophiiformes), found in warm and temperate seas. Batfishes have broad, flat heads and slim bodies and are covered with hard lumps and spines. Some species have an elongated, upturned snout. Batfishes grow at most about 36 cm (14 inches) long. They are poor swimmers and usually walk on the bottom on thickened, limblike pectoral and pelvic fins. Most live in the deep sea, but some inhabit shallow water.

Polka-dot Batfish

This is a benthic (bottom-dwelling) fish that lives on sandy or muddy bottoms and coral rubble as well as in seagrass beds. It ranges from North Carolina south around the Florida peninsula to the Panhandle and the northern Bahamas, as well as Mexico’s Campeche Bank.

It’s also really weird looking, with a flat, arrow-shaped head and flexible pectoral fins, with which it walks along the bottom. And batfish don’t have scales, which means they ain’t kosher, but kosher or not, we’re not sure we’d want to eat one.

As you might guess by its appearance, this guy is not a swift hunter like a shark or mackerel. Instead, it’s an ambush predator, whose dorsal fin has evolved into a stiff moveable spine that attracts prey such as shrimp, small crabs, worms and juvenile fish. The polka-dot batfish’s polka-dots serve as camouflage as it waits for supper to come by.