#trunk-fish

Boxfish swim in a manner that looks like they are rowing. They are very closely linked to the puffer-fish and the file-fish. Because of its unique ability to secrete poison from its skin, the taxonomist Halsted (1967) proposed a new category called ‘ichthyorcrinotoxic fishes’ which defines them as fish that produce poisons by glandular secretion but don’t have a venom apparatus such as a sting or a spine. (Photograph: Adam Middlemass)