Animal field guide
Cichlid
Cichlidae
With well over a thousand described species, these spiny-finned freshwater fishes form one of the largest vertebrate families. Behind the ordinary mouth sits a second set of jaws in the throat that grinds, crushes or slices food, leaving the front jaws free to become specialised for biting, scraping or sucking.
Cichlid at a glance
Animal · North Africa & Middle East · Fresh water of almost every kind · Relatively common
Known for: A single nostril on each side of the snout, Lateral line usually broken into upper and lower, Long dorsal fin with a spiny front part, Deep or elongate body
Its Power
Many Roles
A second set of tools lets one body take many jobs.
Adapting to many roles can help life flourish in changing environments.
“One body, many jobs.”
Capture a Cichlid, and it's yours when you finish one step it gives you.
Biological basis
Cichlids carry a second, pharyngeal set of jaws in the throat that handles food processing, freeing the oral jaws to specialise; that decoupling is a main reason one lake can hold hundreds of cichlid species eating scales, snails, algae or other fish.
Put it into practice
A shop owner hires a bookkeeper, which frees her hands to design, sell, and teach classes.
What does the cichlid symbolize?
The cichlid symbolizes many roles: a second set of tools lets one body take many jobs. It represents versatility, using the right tool and efficiency. Its AnimalDex motto: "One body, many jobs."
The cichlid as a spirit animal
If the cichlid is your spirit animal, the AnimalDex reading is Many Roles: adapting to many roles can help life flourish in changing environments. It suggests a strength in versatility and using the right tool, and a reminder to use it on purpose.
What can the cichlid help you with in life?
The cichlid is a guide for versatility, using the right tool and efficiency. Its lesson applies wherever versatility matters: adapting to many roles can help life flourish in changing environments.
- Versatility
- Using the Right Tool
- Efficiency
In practice: A shop owner hires a bookkeeper, which frees her hands to design, sell, and teach classes.
What can we learn from the Cichlid?What does it mean to dream about or encounter a wild cichlid?
A wild cichlid, whether in a dream or in front of you, tends to show up when versatility or using the right tool is on your mind. In AnimalDex, the cichlid's principle is Many Roles: a second set of tools lets one body take many jobs. Read the moment through its core lesson: Adapting to many roles can help life flourish in changing environments.
Neither good nor bad on its own. How the cichlid acts matters: at ease, it reflects versatility; hostile, it flags versatility out of balance.
Spotting a cichlid in the wild
Coming across a cichlid in person asks for attention more than interpretation. Watch it for a minute; the cichlid's way of working is Many Roles, and the lesson is: adapting to many roles can help life flourish in changing environments.
A cichlid that keeps appearing
Repeated sightings of a cichlid usually mean the Many Roles lesson is still open: adapting to many roles can help life flourish in changing environments.
Dreaming of being chased by a cichlid
If the cichlid pursues you, look at where using the right tool is being asked of you and you are stepping away instead of meeting it.
Dreaming that a cichlid attacks you
An attack points to versatility turned against you: someone using it on you, or your own versatility overused until it costs you.
A calm or friendly cichlid
A relaxed cichlid near you, in a dream or in person, reads as readiness: Many Roles is available to you now, as its motto puts it, "One body, many jobs.".
A dead or injured cichlid
Seeing the cichlid hurt may point to using the right tool that has been neglected. Ask what it would take to restore it.
These readings are reflective prompts drawn from how the cichlid really lives, not predictions. If you meet one in the wild, watch from a distance and leave it undisturbed.
Capture your own Cichlid
Photograph or film one in the wild, at a zoo or at home with the app. It becomes yours: it remembers you, gives you steps, and can debate your problems with your other animals.
Animal field guide
Cichlid
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With well over a thousand described species, these spiny-finned freshwater fishes form one of the largest vertebrate families. Behind the ordinary mouth sits a second set of jaws in the throat that grinds, crushes or slices food, leaving the front jaws free to become specialised for biting, scraping or sucking.
Native range
Natural range, not this capture location
Fresh water of almost every kind, from the rocky shores and sandy floors of great lakes to rivers, floodplain pools, swamps and forest streams. A few species tolerate brackish lagoons, and some tilapias live in hot, alkaline soda lakes.
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Size scale
Understand the animal
Understand the Cichlid
Factual biology first: what this animal is like, where it lives, how it survives, and why those traits exist.
01
Introduction to Cichlid
With well over a thousand described species, these spiny-finned freshwater fishes form one of the largest vertebrate families. Behind the ordinary mouth sits a second set of jaws in the throat that grinds, crushes or slices food, leaving the front jaws free to become specialised for biting, scraping or sucking.
How to identify a Cichlid
- A single nostril on each side of the snout
- Lateral line usually broken into upper and lower sections
- Long dorsal fin with a spiny front part
- Deep or elongate body, often boldly patterned
Why Cichlid are interesting
- Lakes Malawi, Tanganyika and Victoria each hold hundreds of cichlid species, most found in no other lake.
- Tilapias are cichlids and are among the most widely farmed fish in the world.
- Discus parents feed their newly free-swimming young on a nutritious mucus produced on their skin.
- Some small Lake Tanganyika cichlids live and breed inside empty snail shells on the lake bed.
- In some Lake Tanganyika species, older offspring stay on as helpers, defending the territory and younger siblings.
02
Adaptations and biological abilities
03
Why does Cichlid behave this way?
- A single nostril on each side of the snout
- Lateral line usually broken into upper and lower sections
- Long dorsal fin with a spiny front part
- Deep or elongate body, often boldly patterned
Most are active by day and rest at night close to the bottom or in rock crevices and plant cover, often in paler or duller colours than during daylight.
04
Why Fresh water of almost every kind?
Habitat: Fresh water of almost every kind, from the rocky shores and sandy floors of great lakes to rivers, floodplain pools, swamps and forest streams. A few species tolerate brackish lagoons, and some tilapias live in hot, alkaline soda lakes.
Native range: North Africa & Middle East, North America, South America, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa
Native range
Natural range, not this specific capture location.
Fresh water of almost every kind, from the rocky shores and sandy floors of great lakes to rivers, floodplain pools, swamps and forest streams. A few species tolerate brackish lagoons, and some tilapias live in hot, alkaline soda lakes.
05
Why this diet?
Varies more than in almost any other fish family: algae scraped from rock, plankton, insect larvae, snails, other fish and plant matter. A few Lake Tanganyika species bite scales from other fish. Many are opportunistic omnivores.
06
Activity, rest, and lifespan
Most are active by day and rest at night close to the bottom or in rock crevices and plant cover, often in paler or duller colours than during daylight.
Many small species live about 3 to 5 years, while larger ones such as the oscar commonly reach 10 to 15 years in aquariums. Wild lifespans are poorly documented for most species.
07
Cichlid reproduction
Parental care is found throughout the family. Substrate spawners lay sticky eggs on rock or leaves and fan and guard them; mouthbrooders, usually the female, carry eggs and fry in the mouth for weeks. Clutches range from roughly a few dozen to over a thousand eggs.
Varies across the family. In many species males are larger and brighter with longer fin tips, and in many species where the female mouthbroods, males bear egg-like spots on the anal fin; in others the sexes look alike, and in a few females are the more colourful.
08
Predators, threats, and defense
Larger fish, including other cichlids, and birds such as kingfishers, cormorants, herons and fish eagles take many, and otters and snakes some. They hide among rocks and plants. In Lake Victoria the introduced Nile perch is thought to have eliminated or greatly reduced hundreds of native species.
09
Conservation and rarity
Rarity: Relatively common · 19/100. AnimalDex canonical rarity score: 19/100, maintained by the live indexed species profile.
- Observe from a respectful distance and avoid changing the animal's behavior.
- Do not block feeding, shelter, nesting, or travel routes.
- Use a live camera capture without handling or staging wildlife.
Talk to it
Talk to the Cichlid
It answers as itself: ask about how it lives, or bring it something of yours and hear what it would do, from its own Power.
Anonymous: 6/day. Signed-in: 10/day. Pro: 100/day.
Side by side
The Cichlid, side by side
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Where to find them
Where to find Cichlid
To find Cichlid in the wild, focus on the exact habitat patches that match its body design and daily behavior, not just the broad country where it exists. You usually do better by working one good piece of habitat inside north Africa & Middle East, North America, South America, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa than by covering too much ground.
- Quiet marsh edges, reedbeds, river bends, or shallow wetland margins
- Forest edge, canopy gaps, fruiting trees, or shaded trails where cover and food meet
- Open grassland edges, lightly wooded plains, or raised ground where you can scan long distances
In the Ark
No Cichlid is aboard yet.
None have come aboard or left since November 6.
The Ark is a live, shared animal world. Animals come aboard when people capture them, and live there by rules based on their field guides.
Scientific name
Cichlidae
Category
Animal
Habitat
Fresh water of almost every kind, from the rocky shores and sandy floors of great lakes to rivers, floodplain pools, swamps and forest streams. A few species tolerate brackish lagoons, and some tilapias live in hot, alkaline soda lakes.
Rarity
Relatively common · 19/100
Native range
North Africa & Middle East, North America, South America, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa
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