Blowfish Or Puffer Fish (Takifugu Rubripes)

2023 Author: Molly Page | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-07-31 03:34

I have never eaten fugu soup. Shark fin soup has been eaten. It really tastes good. The Vietnamese pho soup is delicious too. Tried kangaroo tail soup, turtle soup, even tomato soup with bananas (this one, generally speaking, is not for everybody). But I have never eaten fugu soup. And I know for sure: even if it is ever offered to me, I will firmly refuse.

Blowfish or puffer fish (Takifugu rubripes)

In order to eat a fugu, first of all, one must be a courageous person. Secondly, a cold-blooded person. Thirdly, you have to be a convinced gourmet. Finally, you have to be at least a little Japanese. Because fugu is only eaten in Japan.

And outside the Land of the Rising Sun, puffer, on the contrary, is not eaten. And even thrown out of the net.

The fact is that puffer is, strictly speaking, a poisonous fish. And even very much. Its insides contain a substance that is 25 times more potent than known to all curare and 275 times more toxic than cyanides. If even the slightest dose of poison enters the human body, severe poisoning will follow, most likely fatal. Sixty percent of all cases of puffer poisoning in Japan end in death.

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Most of the poison accumulates in the liver of the fish, and the method of neutralizing it is very unreliable. Meanwhile, it is the fugu liver that is considered the highest delicacy. Japanese restaurateurs are strictly forbidden to serve this liver on the table, but it happens that the chef will give in to the client's request, and then … No, not necessarily drama. The client may well get up from the table cheerful and cheerful. Thousands, millions of Japanese people eat puffer, prepared by the hands of experienced chefs, consuming about one and a half thousand tons of this fish per year. But this also happens, with complete clarity of thought, arms and legs suddenly go numb. The person loses coordination of movements. The head works clearly, but the language does not obey: a person cannot speak, sometimes he cannot even clearly inform others about food. Then - paralysis of the locomotor system. And - like a tragic ending - respiratory arrest.

We will not analyze the question here: why do the Japanese revere fugu so much and dare to eat such insidious meat? This is the business of psychologists. We are more interested in the fish itself and everything connected with it.

Ocean hare-headed puffer (Lagocephalus lagocephalus)

It is difficult to establish exactly when the poisonous puffer began to be eaten in the Japanese islands. But on the other hand, a case of Europeans meeting her was documented.

This happened during the second voyage around the world of the famous James Cook. In 1774, the Resolution anchored near the newly discovered island, which Cook named New Caledonia. The clerk, who took care of the provisions, exchanged from the natives for a strange fish that none of the Europeans had ever seen. The naturalists J. Reinhold Forster and his son George, who were aboard the Resolution, sketched the fish, then the cook took it to the galley for cutting.

“Fortunately for us,” Captain Cook later wrote in his diary, the procedure for drawing and describing the fish took so much time that only liver and caviar were served on the table, which both Mr. Forster and I personally barely touched. About three or four o'clock before midnight, we were seized by an extraordinary weakness in all limbs, accompanied by numbness and a sensation similar to that if an arm or leg, bitten by frost, were suddenly exposed to an open fire. I almost completely lost the feeling of feelings, just as I could not distinguish a light body from a heavy one, a pot with a quart of water and a feather were equal in my hand. Each of us indulged in vomiting, and after that a profuse sweat came out, which brought great relief. The underwater photo shows no puffer, and its close relative from the two-toothed family is the hedgehog fish.

Brown Puffer (Takifugu rubripes)

In the morning, one of the pigs, which ate the entrails of the fish, was found dead …"

What kind of fish is this, which brings death and which, nevertheless, is eaten with pleasure on the Japanese islands?

Fugu is the Japanese name for blowfish. This family of fish from the order of the common jaw has many names. Pufferfish, four-toothed, puffer-toothed, dog-fish … Related families from the same order are named like this: box bodies, two-toothed (they are hedgehogs-fish) … The puffer, which is found near the Hawaiian Islands, is known as the "death fish". His bile was used to lubricate the arrowheads: the poison brought certain death to the enemy.

In blowfish, the fused jaw bones form four plates (hence one of the names), and the entire dental apparatus resembles a parrot's beak. The fish skin is provided with thorns.