''Pao turgidus''Kottelat, M. (2013)
The Fishes of the Inland Waters of Southeast Asia: A Catalogue and Core Bibliography of the Fishes Known to Occur in Freshwaters, Mangroves and Estuaries.
''The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, 2013, Supplement No. 27: 1–663.'' is a species of

freshwater Fresh water or freshwater is any naturally occurring liquid or frozen water containing low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids. Although the term specifically excludes seawater and brackish water, it does include ...

pufferfish Tetraodontidae is a family of primarily marine and estuarine fish of the order Tetraodontiformes. The family includes many familiar species variously called pufferfish, puffers, balloonfish, blowfish, blowies, bubblefish, globefish, swellfis ...

native to the

Mekong basin The Mekong or Mekong River is a trans-boundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's twelfth longest river and the third longest in Asia. Its estimated length is , and it drains an area of , discharging of water annuall ...

(Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam). It may also occur in the Chao Phraya basin in Thailand. This species grows to a length of SL. These pufferfish are toxic, like many other pufferfishes. In Cambodia, poisonings caused by eating pufferfish caught from lakes and rivers are common and sometimes result in fatalities. The toxin, primarily

saxitoxin Saxitoxin (STX) is a potent neurotoxin and the best-known paralytic shellfish toxin (PST). Ingestion of saxitoxin by humans, usually by consumption of shellfish contaminated by toxic algal blooms, is responsible for the illness known as paralytic ...

, is likely acquired through food, and mostly accumulates in the skin. The toxin typically found in marine pufferfishes, tetrodotoxin, is toxic to the Mekong pufferfish, and does not accumulate similarly in the skin.

References

Tetraodontidae Fish of the Mekong Basin Fish of Cambodia Fish of Laos Fish of Thailand Fish of Vietnam Fish described in 2000 Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN {{tetraodontiformes-stub fi:Ruskopallokala