Longnose gar

Common gar ( Lepisosteus osseus )

The common gar ( Lepisosteus osseus ) or long- snouted billfish is a solitary, up to two meters long predator.

Appearance

The animals have the typical elongated shape of all shock robbers. The snout is more than two-thirds, sometimes 80 %, the length of the head from. Offspring and many Adult fish wearing a belt, or a speckle pattern along the edges. Dorsal and anal fin sit far back on the fuselage and, together with the heterocerken tail fin, the drive member.

Dissemination

He lives in the western U.S. from Wisconsin, Lake Erie and the rivers of Vermont to the Rio Grande and Florida. A former occurrence in Lake Michigan is off. They usually keep to between vegetation, where they lurk as shock predators on prey. Adult fish also go into brackish water, especially in the winter months.

Reproduction

The common gar spawn in groups of one female and two to eight males. The males show there is no aggression against one another. It will set up over 35,000 eggs in shallow water. The eggs are poisonous and are short drying tolerated. After hatching, the larvae attach with a suction cup on the end initially oriented perpendicularly to water plants or rocks until the yolk sac will be absorbed. Then they initially feed on small crustaceans. From a length of five centimeters, they hunt other small fish.