Why?
The goals of the Salmon change when they reach mating age. Now they don’t need to survive in the ocean, they need to make sperm/eggs and survive the long trip to their birthplace. This trip is through fresh water lakes and rivers. That is a very different environment from the ocean. They will need to jump/swim up waterfalls. They will need to avoid predators, but very different ones than they faced in the ocean.At the end of their journey they will mate and die.
Because the goals and environmental pressures change so much the Salmon must also change to meet those new challenges. If they didn’t they wouldn’t be as successful in reaching their final destination and making more Salmon.
How?
Just like humans, hormones trigger biological changes. The change to fresh water also triggers changes and a countdown clock. The changes use a lot of energy, as does their trip and mating. Their body will literally consume itself to make the changes and meet the challenges it needs to so that the salmon make it home to mate.
In case anyone was curious
If there’s one person on lemmy that I trust for my aquatic animal info, it’s sharkfucker420
I would also trust them with knowledge on marijuana
They dropped the weed for communism on my end
Thank you. My takeaway is that this is salmon puberty. I wonder if they, too, stare at themselves naked in the bathroom mirror and feel weird.
They do. But then, they jump up a waterfall and die :(
#LifeGoals
But why do pacific salmon go through all these changes and die after mating only once, while Atlantic salmon can do the same thing but survive to mate many years in a row?
the cruel joke of evolution
His humps, his humps his humps his humps
His lovely fishy lumps
Whatcha gonna do with all that roe? All that roe inside your hole?
I’ve seen this happen to human men who got too horny, tbh.
Is it all salmon species? I stumble upon dead salmon after spawning all the time during field work and I’ve never seen one that looks like that. They usually look like the top photo.
This is just a pink salmon aka a humpy. Other species of salmon get the big overbite - called a kipe and big doglike teeth and usually more red coloration.
This is a good way to illustrate what “gooning” is.
Do they taste different?
Well, I vaguely remember watching a documentary about it. They literally start rotting while being alive. Somehow, I don’t need to be either a nutritionist, nor a doctor to assume that flavour, texture, and safe-to-consume are all gonna be a no-no.
Edit: Found a video about it:
Yeah but that’s only when they’re on their way back to the sea, for most of the salmon run the fish are perfectly edible. For Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest whose territories don’t directly border the sea (so mostly Interior and Columbia Plateau nations) the salmon run was traditionally a major source of staple food. The rivers used to run so thick with fish that people up and down the major rivers could gather enough salmon to live off for the next year.
(yt link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=C5AjppfOntc)
Asking the big questions.
Photoshopped, unfortunately. They change, but not that much.
Might be exaggerated, but some get pretty crazy looking.
https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=714
What’s everyone’s favorite? Mine’s coho.
Chinook, looks like hot iron.
Welp, Lemmy’s now able to hug a site to death now too! We did it Lemmy!
It’s going strong here. Have you been banned from Alaska recently?
Ah, it works for me now too. I guess it was a short hug of death xD
Oh no, they change that much and sometimes even more. The hump is a sexual selection trait - the bigger the hump, the more likely it is that a male will get to mate. This favors genotypes that lead to a big ol’ hump. While not all pink salmon get a hump that large, the Barry Whites of the humpy salmon world have a great big shoulder boulder that makes the lady fish swoon.
Here’s one of those fishy freaks: https://www.landbigfish.com/articles/default.cfm?ID=352
Ahhhh it’s a humpy, I stand corrected. Not familiar with them. That’s absolutely wild!
They’re so weird! Imagine going through your life sleek and swift, just to turn into Quasimodo once you hit puberty. Then you die.
Probably not photoshopped, more likely just different species and the one on the bottom has been butterflied and laid with the meat touching the ground so it looks much larger. Neither one has really started to change that much at the point these pictures were taken. Towards the end of the season, at least for west coast salmon, they’ll often get a lot leaner and their scales turn a super vivid red. As they lose their fat reserves, the meat also becomes much more delicate.
The second one doesn’t seem to be butterflied, as it would be missing a dorsal fin if it was, and the skin color is asymmetrical. They’re 2 different species imo, but I’m only familiar with Atlantic salmon so I can’t say for sure. Atlantic salmon normally look like the top one and get an upturned hook mouth but don’t really change color.
Same
Everything I know about salmons is thanks to The Chemical Brothers
are they still salmon colored?
Salmon 1: “Oh gosh, i’m out of the water. I cannot breathe. If this continues for much longer I will surely perish. What a sad state of affairs.”
Salmon 2: "YOU FCKFACE YOU CANNOT KILL ME BY TAKING ME OUT OF WATER I WILL SUCK THE MOISTURE OUT OF THE AIR THEN SPIT BLOOD INTO YOUR SOUL, AUUUGGGHHH! SEX!!! SEEXXX!!! I NEED SEEEEXXXXXXX!!!"
Because they do not need to survive like that for long lol they die like immediately after.
Happens to the best of us.
Do da humpty hump
That thing looks like a fish skeksis.
