Humans will not be in any danger unless they eat an uncooked cowfish. This could result in being poisoned from a different type of toxin, palytoxin. The cowfish is deadly thanks to a unique poison that is only found in this species and some sea cucumbers.

Scrawled cowfish can be quite tasty if cooked properly. It is locally abundant in the Caribbean region and often sold fresh. Although they are very good to eat, in many places around the world they are used as an aquarium fish because of their beautiful coloration.

Despite this, however, trunkfish are edible and are marketed in many parts of the world. Smooth Trunkfish have “inferior” mouths which allow them to feed on various invertebrates such as mollusks, crustaceans, worms, and sponges.

Atlantic ocean
This species is often called cowfish, trunkfish, or shellfish. The scrawled cowfish lives in the Atlantic ocean as far north as Massachusetts in the United States, to Bermuda, throughout the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and south to Brazil.

The longhorn cowfish is a quirky looking saltwater species found in regions of the Indo-Pacific. They are most recognizable by their yellow coloring, box-like shape and protruding horns on both their head and tail end.

There are only a few freshwater species of puffers, most puffers are a marine fish. Most of the aquarium puffers come from the genus Canthigaster. Boxfish: Boxfish includes the ever popular Cowfish and the Trunkfishes. The body is enclosed in a bony carapace with fins sticking out.

The longhorn cowfish (Lactoria cornuta), also called the horned boxfish, is a species of boxfish from the family Ostraciidae, recognizable by its long horns that protrude from the front of its head, rather like those of a cow or bull. They are a resident of the Indo-Pacific region and can grow up to 50 cm (20 in) long.

You’ll find on this page species belonging to 3 closely related fish families: the Tetraodontidae (pufferfish), the Diodontidae (porcupinefish) and the Ostraciidae (boxfish, trunkfish). Puffers and porcupines are known for their capacity to puff up, while boxfish has kind of an exoskeleton, and sometimes small horns.

Uses. In some regions, the smooth trunkfish is caught for human consumption. It is also sometimes kept in reef aquaria. Caution needs to be used however as it produces a toxic substance, ostracitoxin, in mucous secretions from the skin.

Often dubbed the unicorns of the sea, narwhals are strange and beautiful creatures with long tusks protruding from their heads.

Second, cowfish are unaffected. The good news in all of this, as long as you’re not a fish, is that cowfish, and other boxfish species, don’t appear to be poisonous to humans. In some parts of the Pacific they are considered a delicacy, and roasted over the fire like chestnuts.