Koi appear helpless to the casual observer. They have no claws, to teeth to bite, no paws, no arms, no fists, no obnoxious odor glands, no venom and no horns or antlers.

 So koi are not about offense. But they are survivors for these past 40,000 years and that is because they are built for DEFENSE. They can survive very low oxygen levels (in the wild form of common carp), they are very strong swimmers and they can survive on things that other fish would never ingest let alone get any nutrition out of!

  Kong and I have been talking about the protective elements of a koi’s skin. In that conversation we focused on cell structure and its resistance to sun light. But there is a huge grey elephant in the room we did not bring into the conversation. And that is the koi’s armor. Armor? Armor. Koi are born with budding cells ( scale pockets) within the undifferentiated skin layer. They have no protection then as fry and fingerlings. As the skin layers differentiate and become complex, these scale pockets begin to grow a scale. These growing scales fill in the dermis and actually cause the dermis and epidermis to wrap around the scale as it becomes a uniform armor all over the koi’s body. This ‘suit of ring mail’ protects the fish from the elements and from predators and natural surfaces during foraging and spawning activity. It assists osmotic regulation and protects the circulatory system and it protects the fish from the sun.

    If a koi did not have scales it would be naked and exposed to the outside world and all its dangers.

  And in ZNA of course, our motto is “friendship thru scales”. Many purposes for scales!