Dorsal
in sentence
20 examples of Dorsal in a sentence
And like all the dolphins in our community, we photographed Mugsy and tracked her little spots and nicks in her
dorsal
fin, and also the unique spot patterns as she matured over time.
Under normal circumstances, these signals would be curtailed in the
dorsal
horn of the spinal cord.
For reasons we don’t fully understand, after an amputation, there is a loss of this inhibitory control in the
dorsal
horn, and signals can intensify.
Now, Arctic whales, like this bowhead, they have no
dorsal
fin, because they have evolved to live and swim in ice-covered waters, and having something sticking off of your back is not very conducive to migrating through ice, and may, in fact, be excluding animals from the ice.
My favorite line from the article: [... 'discovery' can mean finding a guppy with an extra spine in its
dorsal
fin."]
We actually do get excited about finding a new
dorsal
spine in a guppy.
A second part of the brain is called the
dorsal
stream.
You'd be activating the
dorsal
stream if you did that.
One day when I was only seven years old and fishing, I pulled a "pinfish," they're called, with sharp
dorsal
spines, up too hard and fast, and I blinded myself in one eye.
Cavorting around the Nautilus was a school of triggerfish with flat bodies, grainy skins, armed with stings on their
dorsal
fins, and with four prickly rows of quills quivering on both sides of their tails.
From the butterfish genus, whose oval bodies are very flat, I observed several adorned in brilliant colors and sporting a
dorsal
fin like a sickle, edible fish that, when dried and marinated, make an excellent dish known by the name "karawade"; then some sea poachers, fish belonging to the genus Aspidophoroides, whose bodies are covered with scaly armor divided into eight lengthwise sections.
I also observed some wonderful snappers belonging to the order Lutianida, sacred fish for the Greeks, who claimed they could drive off sea monsters from the waters they frequent; their Greek name anthias means "flower," and they live up to it in the play of their colors and in those fleeting reflections that turn their
dorsal
fins into watered silk; their hues are confined to a gamut of reds, from the pallor of pink to the glow of ruby.
These were tuna from the genus Scomber, blue-black on top, silver on the belly armor, their
dorsal
stripes giving off a golden gleam.
There were whitish eels of the species Gymnotus fasciatus that passed like elusive wisps of steam, conger eels three to four meters long that were tricked out in green, blue, and yellow, three-foot hake with a liver that makes a dainty morsel, wormfish drifting like thin seaweed, sea robins that poets call lyrefish and seamen pipers and whose snouts have two jagged triangular plates shaped like old Homer's lyre, swallowfish swimming as fast as the bird they're named after, redheaded groupers whose
dorsal
fins are trimmed with filaments, some shad (spotted with black, gray, brown, blue, yellow, and green) that actually respond to tinkling handbells, splendid diamond-shaped turbot that were like aquatic pheasants with yellowish fins stippled in brown and the left topside mostly marbled in brown and yellow, finally schools of wonderful red mullet, real oceanic birds of paradise that ancient Romans bought for as much as 10,000 sesterces apiece, and which they killed at the table, so they could heartlessly watch it change color from cinnabar red when alive to pallid white when dead.
As for marine mammals, on passing by the mouth of the Adriatic Sea, I thought I recognized two or three sperm whales equipped with the single
dorsal
fin denoting the genus Physeter, some pilot whales from the genus Globicephalus exclusive to the Mediterranean, the forepart of the head striped with small distinct lines, and also a dozen seals with white bellies and black coats, known by the name monk seals and just as solemn as if they were three-meter Dominicans.
Among bony fish, Conseil noticed some blackish marlin three meters long with a sharp sword jutting from the upper jaw, bright-colored weevers known in Aristotle's day as sea dragons and whose
dorsal
stingers make them quite dangerous to pick up, then dolphinfish with brown backs striped in blue and edged in gold, handsome dorados, moonlike opahs that look like azure disks but which the sun's rays turn into spots of silver, finally eight-meter swordfish from the genus Xiphias, swimming in schools, sporting yellowish sickle-shaped fins and six-foot broadswords, stalwart animals, plant eaters rather than fish eaters, obeying the tiniest signals from their females like henpecked husbands.
Chief among them were specimens of that dreadful cartilaginous genus that's divided into three subgenera numbering at least thirty-two species: striped sharks five meters long, the head squat and wider than the body, the caudal fin curved, the back with seven big, black, parallel lines running lengthwise; then perlon sharks, ash gray, pierced with seven gill openings, furnished with a single
dorsal
fin placed almost exactly in the middle of the body.
"Those animals are only members of the genus Balaenoptera furnished with
dorsal
fins, and like sperm whales, they're generally smaller than the bowhead whale."
During our crossing I saw numerous baleen whales belonging to the three species unique to these southernmost seas: the bowhead whale (or "right whale," according to the English), which has no
dorsal
fin; the humpback whale from the genus Balaenoptera (in other words, "winged whales"), beasts with wrinkled bellies and huge whitish fins that, genus name regardless, do not yet form wings; and the finback whale, yellowish brown, the swiftest of all cetaceans.
I'll finish up this catalog, a little dry but quite accurate, with the series of bony fish I observed: eels belonging to the genus Apteronotus whose snow-white snout is very blunt, the body painted a handsome black and armed with a very long, slender, fleshy whip; long sardines from the genus Odontognathus, like three-decimeter pike, shining with a bright silver glow; Guaranian mackerel furnished with two anal fins; black-tinted rudderfish that you catch by using torches, fish measuring two meters and boasting white, firm, plump meat that, when fresh, tastes like eel, when dried, like smoked salmon; semired wrasse sporting scales only at the bases of their
dorsal
and anal fins; grunts on which gold and silver mingle their luster with that of ruby and topaz; yellow-tailed gilthead whose flesh is extremely dainty and whose phosphorescent properties give them away in the midst of the waters; porgies tinted orange, with slender tongues; croakers with gold caudal fins; black surgeonfish; four-eyed fish from Surinam, etc.
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Species
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Furnished
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