Viewing / tourism (2010s band)
TicketedSafari, hide, cage-dive or parade tickets in the 2010s often sat in the tens to hundreds of USD per person -- a dated band, not a live quote.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed21
Intelligence33
Range49
Resilience58
Cultural impact43
Ecological role40
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Is every puffer deadly to eat?
No. Toxin load varies by species, organ and season. Licensed fugu service still treats liver as forbidden in many prefectures after historic poisonings.
Why was Takifugu rubripes sequenced so early?
A compact genome (about 400 Mb) made it a 2002 model in Nature -- a puffer as a human-genome shortcut, not a menu story.
How does inflation work?
The fish gulps water into a specialised stomach diverticulum. Spines (in some species) erect. It is a mechanical jam, not a bluff only.
Do puffers make their own TTX?
Much evidence points to bacterial and food-chain accumulation. Captive-raised puffers can be far less toxic -- a husbandry fact that complicates folklore.
What is the fugu chef licence?
Japan requires training and exams after 20th-century restaurant deaths. The licence is a public-health instrument, not a gourmet badge.
Are aquarium puffers the same as fugu?
Hobbyists keep freshwater and brackish tetraodontids (e.g. figure-eight, Mbu). They share the beak and inflate; they are not all Takifugu.
Money around the pufferfish is regional even when the brand is global.
Figures are dated educational bands -- not live quotes and not a buying guide.
Encounter bands
Conflict / livestock loss
Local & episodicPredation and crop-raid compensation schemes (US, Kenya, India) published per-head bands that changed with election cycles.
Fishery / take value
CommodityWhere the type is a catch (tuna, salmon, fugu), 2000s-2020s ex-vessel or auction bands were the political number -- not a supermarket tag.
Captive / zoo husbandry
InstitutionalAnnual keep for a large mammal or a specialist bird in AZA/EAZA reports ran to five or six figures USD in the 2010s.
Enforcement / reserve ops
PublicRanger, observer and census costs are socialised; they do not appear on a viewing ticket.
Regions
North America
ESA listings, Parks Canada, Alaska runs and Churchill buggies are the English-language field the localLens keeps returning to.
United Kingdom and Ireland
RSPB, NatureScot, reintroductions and a dense NGO press shape how this atlas type is taught in British English.
European Union / wider Europe
Habitats Directive, IWC delegations and returning wolves sit beside UK practice without being identical.
Range-state core
The biological centre of the pufferfish -- often not English-speaking -- still writes the Red List.
Australia and New Zealand
DOC, Phillip Island, Taiaroa Head and kakapo-style ICU projects are the southern English conservation dialect.
Global trade desks
CITES, ICCAT, IWC and auction houses price the animal whether or not a local language has a word for it.
Key range numbers
21Atlas speed
58Atlas resilience
43Atlas cultural impact
40Atlas ecological role
Field programmes
Japanese MHLW / prefectures
Fugu chef licensing and organ bans.
Shimonoseki dealers
Historic puffer landing and processing hub.
Genome consortia
2002 Takifugu project partners.
FDA
US import channel for licensed fugu.
Reef aquarium breeders
Non-fugu tetraodontids for tanks.
Public-health labs
TTX assays that keep the plate legal.
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