Content tagged with "Fishes"

This small, colorless, blind fish lives its entire life in springs, cave streams and underground waters. It has been declared Endangered in our state and as Threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

This unusual fish is Missouri’s officially designated aquatic animal. Like a small shark, it nearly lacks scales and has a cartilaginous skeleton; like a baleen whale, it filters its dinner from the water—but no other fish on our continent has a paddle for a snout!

Small size, grayish color heavily speckled with black, single dorsal fin, no adipose fin, body rough to touch, tail fin slightly notched, but without fork. In Missouri, only pirate perch and cavefishes have anus located far forward on body in the throat area. Most closely related to cavefishes and trout-perch.

The most abundant and widely distributed minnow in the prairie region of north and west Missouri, the red shiner inhabits a variety of habitats, from riffles to quiet pools.