A Puffed Up … Porcupine | What Sam Sees

hey guys it's me Sam and I'm here aquatic guide in the Atlanta coral reef of the national aquarium ready to dive and learn about a pretty awesome fish but before we do always remember safety first that's why it's important to wear the right gear a scuba suit keeps me warm underwater it gets pretty cold down there my oxygen tank so I can breathe underwater flippers help me swim like the fishes and a mat lets me see the amazing creatures down there I'm all geared up and ready to go let's see what today has in store [Music] imagine a fish and a porcupine together whoa sounds like an interesting combo right well today we're going on a dive to learn more about the spotfin porcupine fish not only does it have a funky name but it's pretty funky looking too I can inflate itself with water puffing up like a water balloon and when it does these sharp spines poked out like a porcupine we'll be looking for this poppin in this awesome team with the help of my dive buddy Jackie Cooper who looks after the safety of all the divers here at the aquarium [Music] seeing all these beautiful fish down here makes it so hard to focus on just one [Music] well I guess they worried too hard to spot because Jackie's found one just look at how big they are there are three in here two very big ones and one smaller one Wow they have such big eyes [Music] and remember if you get too close they'll pop up just like a porcupine the spotfin porcupine uses those sharp spines to protect against predators I'm better stay back I don't want to get poked let's get out to learn more about this crazy-looking fish from Jackie okay Jackie we saw some spots in porcupine right yes so then we had three sports popping spot fin porcupine fish yeah really hard to say this name some people call them puffer fish and that's common term to crawl that's a common term to call them and people call them puffer fish because they can puff up why do they puff up generally it's a defensive mechanism so if they were threatened they would puff up and something really cool happens not only that can they be three times larger but now they have long spines sticking out they can grow from about 20 centimeters up to as much as three feet three times larger than the size they are already that correct sometimes early in the morning we can catch them when the lights first come up and they'll puffs when nothing's going on and we think that's kind of like stretching as you get out there me too I can always use a good stretch in the morning [Music] so where did the stuff in porcupine get its name it's really complicated [Music] they're called spots and porcupines because wait for it they have spots on their fins so another cool name for them their scientific name is diet on hystrix which sounds really crazy but it's Greek for two teeth porcupine they actually only have two T so their upper and lower teeth are fused so they only have one tooth on the top basically a one tooth on the bottom like a beak Wow a beak this really is a cool fish [Music] thanks Jackie for all the fun fish facts guys today we had so much fun what did we see the spot in porcupine fish we learned that when he blows up he has some spikes that stick out that means he's in defense mode so a porcupine fish that gets puffed up is just trying to protect itself we may not have puffer powers but we can protect ourselves underwater by wearing a scuba suit oxygen tank flippers and a mask remember safety first [Music] bye everybody I'll see you on our next adventure [Music] [Music]

Channel: National Geographic Kids

Views: 145,803

Rating: 4.6769233 out of 5

Keywords: puffer fish, fish, porcupine, ocean, scuba, nat geo kids, kids, kid, for kids, national geographic, nat geo, animals, making stuff, educational, A Puffed Up, Porcupine, this episode, What Sam Sees, Sam meets a fish, looks like, a balloon, a spiky attitude, Swim with Sam, the National Aquarium, Atlantic Coral, Coral Reef, Baltimore, Maryland, learn more about one, PLQlnTldJs0ZQHiJtBZwH91UMHdXPB3elF, PLQlnTldJs0ZR56MScVzlbeucr3brcHb-e, national geographic kids

Id: dg9YdYLf3Zs

Length: 6min 34sec (394 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 07 2018