Wolf Fish

• It replaces its entire set of teeth every year, after breeding, and during that period it eats practically nothing.
• Its blood contains antifreeze proteins that let it live in water below zero degrees.
• The male guards the eggs, a mass the size of a football, for several months with hardly any food.
• By crushing sea urchins it keeps their numbers down and helps stop them from stripping the kelp forests.
• It makes antifreeze in its blood. Its antifreeze proteins allow it to live in waters below zero, the same solution the Antarctic fishes arrived at on their own.
• Its teeth are a demolition tool: prominent canines at the front and crushing molars behind, with which it breaks the shells of bivalves, sea urchins and crabs.
• It renews that entire set of teeth every year. After spawning it loses its teeth and grows new ones, a process during which it stops eating.
• Unlike almost all fishes of the North Atlantic, it tends its clutch: the male guards the mass of eggs for months until they hatch.
• Its flesh and skin have traditionally been put to use, and in Iceland the skin was tanned as leather.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bony fish)

Habitat and environment

Rocky and gravel bottoms of the North Atlantic, from 20 to 500 m

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Anarhichas lupus