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Blind cavefish

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When first discovered in the 1930s, these eyeless, pigmentless fish were assigned their own genus, Anoptichthys. Since then, ichthyologists have determined they are at least 30 genetically isolated populations of…
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Cardinal tetra

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This popular aquarium fish was unknown to science until 1956, when ichthyologists at the Smithsonian Institution and Stanford University published descriptions a day apart. It took a meeting of the…
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Red-bellied piranha

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It appears there are no documented cases of piranhas killing people, but there have been several cases where they have eaten humans that had drowned. In general, these specialized relatives…
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Black-banded leporinus

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Growing to a foot in length, this eye-catching relative of tetras and piranhas is a typical inhabitant on flooded forests in South America. For more than 50 years it has…
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