The secret behind clownfish stripes and more fishy fascinations

Short Wave

NPR

Science, Life Sciences, News, Nature, Daily News, Astronomy

4.7 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2026

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

We reeled in science reporter Ari Daniel for this episode who grants us three wishes in the form of three fishes. He takes us on a trip around the world to learn about how a clownfish in the western Pacific loses its stripes as it grows up just to fit in, a fat French fry of a fish that can scale a 50-foot rockface in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the remarkable rearing of a pea-sized Pokémon-like fish at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. Together, these stories reveal just how remarkable and diverse these unassuming creatures are.

If you liked this episode, check out our Sea Camp series.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.0	Hey there, Shorewavers. It's Regina Barber, and today we're going underwater with science reporter Ari Daniel.
0:11.8	Hey, Ari.
0:12.5	Hi, Regina.
0:13.4	So what do you have for us today?
0:15.5	Well, I want you to think of me in this episode as your, let's say, fairy godfather, who's about to grant you
0:22.8	three fishes. I love this already. Okay. Where are we starting? We're going to go to the
0:28.6	Western Pacific, among the tentacles of a certain kind of anemone, called the bubble tip anemone.
0:35.3	Are we talking about clownfish? Bingo.
0:38.4	Yes. Clownfish are those splashes of color that you find in the sea and aquaria and, of course,
0:45.8	Finding Nemo.
0:47.2	Are you woozy? How many stripes do I have? I'm fine. Answer the stripe question.
0:51.2	Three. No. See, something's wrong with you. I have one, two, three.
0:55.2	That's all I have.
1:10.4	Huh, you're okay. Marlon is me. I am like always worried about my baby. I love this. I've seen it so many times. Me too. In fact, I just rewatched it with my kids. Now, there are different kinds of clownfish. There's the Nemo kind, of course, but I want to tell you about
1:12.1	a mystery from one called the tomato clownfish. I'm going to look it up right now. Hold on.
1:18.5	Oh my gosh. They are so cute. They really do kind of look like tomatoes. Yeah. I'm also noticing
1:25.2	this like white stripe down their head, like kind of like a big, thick headband.
1:30.1	Yeah, keeping up with the tomato analogy, it's like a strip of barata cheese or something.
1:35.7	Yeah.
1:36.2	And you see that single stripe in all adults.
1:39.5	But young tomato clownfish, just a couple weeks old, they have two to three white stripes. As they
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