Guine-Bissau is near the western tip of the western bulge of northern Africa. Independence from Portugal was recognized in 1974. The country has experienced little internal peace since then.
Though it seems tiny on a map, at least to my eyes, it is larger that Taiwan, and larger than Belgium.
Like Florida, the country is relatively flat, with the highest point being only 984 feet (300 m). Though Florida’s highest point is only 345 feet.
This 1983 stamp features a male Berthold’s Killifish, Scriptaphyosemion bertholdi (formerly Roloffia bertholdi). The fish only grows to about two inches (5 cm). Females are drab brown in comparison.
It is a killifish, a group of short-lived “annual” fishes that mostly only live about a year, some of them hatching and breeding in the course of three months or so. The next generation, in the form of eggs, hatches the following year.
This fish was only discovered by European science in 1965. It is found in small pools and streams in coastal basins in Sierra Leone. There is also one population in Liberia.
I could find out little more about the fish, other than the eggs are 1.1 mm in diameter. It seems to have been imported into Britain shortly after discovery and has appeared in the aquarium trade.
Buy me a Ko-fi
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