''Batrachomoeus trispinosus'', the three-spined frogfish or Broadbent's frogfish, is a species of Indo-Pacific

toadfish Toadfish is the common name for a variety of species from several different families of fish, usually because of their toad-like appearance. "Dogfish" is a name for certain species along the gulf coast. Dolphin-Toadfish relationship Toadfish mak ...

, from the largely Old World subfamily,

Halophryninae The Halophryninae is a largely Old World subfamily of toadfish, part of the family Batrachoididae. Genera The following genera are classified as members of the Halophryninae: * ''Allenbatrachus'' Greenfield, 1997 * '' Austrobatrachus'' J.L ...

, of the

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

Batrachoididae Batrachoididae is the only family in the ray-finned fish order Batrachoidiformes . Members of this family are usually called toadfish, or "frogfish": both the English common name and scientific name refer to their toad-like appearance (''batrakh ...

. It is the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specime ...

of the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

'' Batrachomoeus''. It is said to be the only fish known to cry like a baby and produce complex non-linear calls. Others fish can only make simple linear sounds but human babies and other mammals use non-linear sounds in their calls, in which other animals associate such non-linear sounds with a sense of emotional urgency. ''B. trispinosus'' is a tropical species which can be found in a variety of habitats including intertidal flats near

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in severa ...

s, estuaries, and reefs down to depths of . It is distributed in the eastern Indian and western Pacific Oceans from Thailand to the

Arafura Sea The Arafura Sea (or Arafuru Sea) lies west of the Pacific Ocean, overlying the continental shelf between Australia and Western New Guinea (also called Papua), which is the Indonesian part of the Island of New Guinea. Geography The Arafura S ...

between northern Australia and

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

, it is found in the Mekong Delta. The alternative common name and the synonym ''Batrachomoeus broadbenti'' were coined by Ogilby in honour of the Australian explorer and collector of Australian and New Guinea specimens,

Kendall Broadbent Kendall Broadbent (born Horsforth, Yorkshire 26 August 1837; died Brisbane, Queensland 16 January 1911) was an English Australian naturalist and explorer. He arrived in Australia with his father in Victoria in 1852. He worked as a collector for ...

References

{{taxobar, from=Q4919798 Batrachoididae Fish described in 1861 Taxa named by Albert Günther