Thank you @narwhalsdisguised for your donation to Mahmoud's fundraiser! Here are some fun facts about coelacanths:
Like tortoises, coelacanths are extremely long lived. Individuals don't reach sexual maturity until they're around 50, and most can live up to 100!
In fact, coelacanths take their time with just about everything- including pregnancy. Females gestate their young for 5 years, and can carry anywhere from 8 to 26 offspring.
Coelacanths are ovoviviparous, meaning they retain fertilized eggs inside their bodies until they hatch, and then give birth to live young!
Thanks to their three pairs of fins, which are extremely flexible, they can swim in almost any direction- including doing headstands and swimming upside down!
Coelacanths were thought to have gone extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs, around 65 million years ago
In 1938, they were re-discovered by a woman named Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, who was the curator of the East London Museum in South Africa. Bonus fun fact: she finished writing the paper detailing the species' rediscovery only 4 days before giving birth to her son!
Although coelacanths can grow to be 1.8 m (5.9 ft) long, their brains only take up 2% of their cranial cavity!
Their large size also means that coelacanths have the largest eggs of any fish species, coming in at 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) in diameter and weighing over 325 g (0. 7lbs)!
Most fish have swim bladders filled with air, which helps them to float or sink as needed, but the swim bladders of coelacanths are filled with fat!
Two other characteristics that give the coelacanth the nickname 'living fossil' are the presence of a "rostral organ" in the snout that is part of the electrosensory system, and an intracranial joint or "hinge" in the skull that allows the top portion of the skull to swing upwards and the mouth to open much wider than other fish; neither feature is found in any other living vertebrate!
(Image: An African coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) by Peter Scoones)
