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Freshwater animals

Florida gar

Amazing fact

The Florida gar’s swim bladder works like a lung, letting it live in water with little oxygen.

University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web
Florida gar in its habitat (illustration)

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An illustration based on the real animal.

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The Florida gar’s swim bladder works like a lung, letting it live in water with little oxygen.

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THE REAL WORLD

The real Florida gar

Scientific name
Lepisosteus platyrhincus
Japanese name
フロリダガー
Group
Freshwater animals
Order
Lepisosteiformes
Family
Lepisosteidae
Genus
Lepisosteus
Facts about the real animal.
01

A fish of the Florida peninsula in North America.

02

It looks so much like the spotted gar that the two are hard to tell apart.

03

It feeds mainly on small fish.

How the Florida gar lives

In shallow water, it becomes more active at night and travels farther. It slowly approaches prey, then strikes with a quick sideways movement of its head. An adult Florida gar repositions its prey to swallow it headfirst. During the dry season, it burrows into marsh sediments and becomes dormant.

University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web

Basic data

Diet
Small fish
Range
Florida Peninsula
鳥羽水族館

Where the Florida gar has been recorded

World map with dots where the Florida gar has been recorded
Each dot marks a place with observations or specimens shared on GBIF. Some records are of animals that strayed or were brought by people, so the dots are not always where the animal lives.

Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF

Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.

Names around the world

简体中文
佛罗里达雀鳝
繁體中文
佛羅裡達雀鱔
Português (Brasil)
Gar-da-Flórida

Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.

Sources and how we check

We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.

The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.

The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.

This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.

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