Animal · Barbados, Brazil, United States
Flying fish
Exocoetidae — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
A flying fish does not really fly, but it can leave the sea and glide above the waves on stiff fins that open out like a pair of wings. Its tail does the work of an engine.
Picture credit: SR EXR (Public domain) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the flying fish live?
Home: Sunlit surface water of warm open seas.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Barbados, Brazil, the United States, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Australia.
The short profile
Fully grown: most between about 15 and 30 cm long. It weighs about 0.2 kilograms. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
There are about sixty-four kinds of flying fish, all of them living near the surface of warm oceans. To take off, a fish builds up speed under water, breaks through the surface and keeps sculling with the lower half of its tail, which stays in the water and beats very fast. Then it spreads its long side fins and glides. A normal glide covers around fifty metres, but a fish that dips back down, gives another burst of tail beats and lifts off again can cross several hundred metres in a chain of glides. Rising air along the front of a wave helps it stay up. The longest flight ever filmed, off Japan, lasted about forty-five seconds. Gliding is an escape: dolphins, tuna and squid hunt these fish from below, while frigatebirds snatch them from above. On Barbados the flying fish is a national symbol and appears on coins.
Find it on the globe
Flying fish is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How do they get out of the water?
They swim upward fast and break through the surface at a flat angle. The long lower half of the tail keeps beating in the water for a moment longer and pushes them on before they glide.
Do they flap their fins?
No, the fins are held stiff and open, like the wings of a glider. All the push comes from the tail before take-off, and after that the fish rides on moving air.
Why do they land on boats?
Lights at night draw them in, and a fish gliding low over dark water cannot see a hull in the way. Sailors regularly find a few of them on deck in the morning.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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