Pufferfish: The 1,200-Times Expansion

A Japanese tiger pufferfish in Sagami Bay was timed at swelling its body to over twelve times its original size in just fifteen seconds. Gills snap shut, jaw locks, and water hits the stomach-a single gulp fills the stomach pouch until the fish stretches into a striped, unrecognizable orb. Sharks bite, but get a mouthful of what feels like a spiky, ballooned beach ball, and half their teeth can snap right off. While most fish inflate their swim bladders only a fraction, the tiger puffer’s special crosshatch stomach muscles let it gulp and hold six hundred milliliters of seawater, more than its entire body's normal volume. Predators can try again and again, but every time, the puffer inflates faster, inflates bigger, until even crabs spit it out untouched. That’s how the pufferfish in Sagami Bay escapes-the only fish that survives by becoming twelve hundred percent too much for anything to eat.