Black goby
Gobius niger
— Where the name comes from
Gobius comes from the Greek kōbiós, the name of the gobies already in Aristotle, which passed into the Latin gobio and from there into Italian. Niger gives the colour of breeding males, which turn almost black. It is a fish nobody looks at, and it belongs to the family with more species than any other among vertebrates: the gobies number over two thousand.
— Facts
- Group
- Fish · Actinopterygii · Chondrichthyes
- Order
- Gobies and allies
- Habitat
- Coastal sandy and muddy bottoms, lagoons, harbours, down to 75 metres
- Range
- The eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Baltic
- Size
- 10–15 cm, up to 18 cm; 20–50 g
- Diet
- Crustaceans, worms, molluscs, fish eggs
- Lifespan
- 5 years
— Characteristics
- 01
The pelvic fins are fused into an adhesive disc that grips the bottom.
- 02
The male prepares a nest under a shell or stone and guards it.
- 03
It has no swim bladder: it rests on the bottom and does not float.
— What sets it apart
The sucker under its belly is the mark of a family that has conquered nearly everything: gobies number more than two thousand species and occupy coral reefs, mountain streams, caves, mangroves and harbour mud, and include the smallest fish in the world. That adhesive disc — the fused pelvic fins — allows them to hold station in a current without spending energy, and in many tropical species it even serves to climb vertical waterfalls, centimetre by centimetre, for weeks.
