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Asked by blueelephant to Alberto on 19 Jun 2013.
Question: do you have a favourite zebrafish?
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Alberto Lapedriza answered on 19 Jun 2013:
In the lab we have an aquarium with thousands of zebrafish. Some of them have a normal pigment pattern consisting in 5 horizontal stripes going from the head to the tail (as you can see in this link:
). These fish are called “wild type” because they are the ones we can find in the rivers, in the “wild”. We also have lots of fish that have some pigmentation defect, and therefore, they don’t have 5 horizontal stripes. Some have dots instead of stripes, others have 3 stripes instead of 5, and others don’t have stripes at all. These ones are called “nacre”, because they look whitish like the nacre of the pearls. They are very beautiful and shinny, and I think they are my favourite ones.
Comments
12aitka1 commented on :
how many types of zebra fish are there
Alberto commented on :
The proper name for zebrafish is Danio rerio, and the fish is characterised by its 5 horizontal black/blue stripes that go from the head to the tail (this is the “wild type” strain). Sometimes, natural and random mutations occur in a gene of the fish, and they may get a new feature or trait, such as loss of stripes, originating a new stripe. There are lots of strains, each of them with a characteristic phenotype.
alexszczech commented on :
What are the Zebra fishes, can you give us some pics. I presume it will be a mix between a zebra and a Fish with a tail and a lot smaller.
Alberto commented on :
The zebrafish is a small (3-4 cm) freshwater fish, whose main feature is that they have 5 black or bluish horizontal stripes on the side of the body going from the head to the tail. They remind to the zebra’s stripes, hence its name. Definitely, it’s not a mix between a zebra and a fish, they are just fish that look like a zebra. You can see a picture in the following link:
twmbiss commented on :
Zebra fishys are awsome
ecofreeko commented on :
can you geneticly breed a huge or a tiny zebra fish
ecofreeko commented on :
do zebra fish come in lots of different colours