Pufferfish — Reef puffer heat notes · 237

Beak-toothed inflators whose tetrodotoxin made a Japanese cuisine and a genome project out of one family. No. Toxin load varies by species, organ and season. Licensed fugu service still treats liver as forbidden in many prefectures after historic poisonings. Why was Takifugu rubripes sequenced so early?

A compact genome (about 400 Mb) made it a 2002 model in Nature -- a puffer as a human-genome shortcut, not a menu story. The fish gulps water into a specialised stomach diverticulum. Spines (in some species) erect. It is a mechanical jam, not a bluff only. Much evidence points to bacterial and food-chain accumulation. Captive-raised puffers can be far less toxic -- a husbandry fact that complicates folklore.

Japan requires training and exams after 20th-century restaurant deaths. The licence is a public-health instrument, not a gourmet badge. Hobbyists keep freshwater and brackish tetraodontids (e.g. figure-eight, Mbu). They share the beak and inflate; they are not all Takifugu. Four fused tooth plates continuously grow and must be worn on hard prey -- a dental bill, not a cartoon.