Curious why we named our sand castle tools "Pufferfish"? Pufferfish make incredible sand castles on the ocean floor! Our namesake is one of the cutest sea creatures (they always look like they are smiling, don’t they?), but we didn’t pick the pufferfish as our spirit animal just because of its good looks! No, we picked it because it makes gorgeous sand creations in the ocean floor. Yes, really.
These mandalas are gorgeous, and they are also a huge amount of work. This is how the male pufferfish attracts a female to lay her eggs, right in the center of his sand masterpiece. That’s one way to make a memory!
Not only does the pufferfish make the mandala, but since the ocean is always moving and the sand is always shifting, the pufferfish has to keep making it and remaking it until some lady pufferfish decides that’s he’s the one. And that can take up to a week! Can you imagine dancing non-stop for 7 days straight to attract your mate? We can’t either. That’s like an eternal Saturday Night Fever. Wow.
So Pufferfish are insanely cute, brilliant artists, hopeless romantics, ultra-endurance athletes, and stalwart workers. In short they are a modern marine renaissance fish.
And we love them!
- The Pufferfish Team
p.s. If you want to really geek out on our fave fishy's sand shimmying, you can watch this great video from BBC Earth, or read this incredible research paper.