Loach Minnow (Marsh Education by Safari Ltd.)

I promise I will eventually not write about a fish…but today will not be that day. Instead, I’m going to write about a really interesting fish, and a really unusual–and rare–figure produced to represent it (spoiler, it’s in the title!). I am speaking of course about the Safari Ltd Loach Minnow, produced for Marsh & Associates LLC (as part of their Marsh Education program).

The loach minnow, Rhinochthys cobitis (Girard, 1856), is one of the many fishes in the order Cypriniformes, the minnows, dace, loaches, chubs, carp, goldfish, minnows…etc. It’s a big group. For quite a while they were in the subfamily Leucisinae, family Cyprinidae but they, and all NATIVE North American cypriniformes, are now referred to as the family Leucisidae (Wikipedia has not kept up). So those invasive carp and goldfish are a separate family.

Loach minnows are a small (6.5cm TL max) stream-dwelling minnow found in streams in New Mexico and Arizona (and presumed extirpated from the Mexican state of Sonora). Belying their demersal lifestyle in turbulent and gravelly stream bottoms, loach minnows have converged somewhat with their namesakes the loaches and have flattened abdomens and large pectoral fins, with a down-turned mouth for hunting invertebrate prey. Their short lifespan and low distribution has caused them to be listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, although USFWS has them listed as Endangered…either way, they need help.

And that’s where this figure came in! Marsh Education received funding to develop 6 models for their programming and fundraising to raise awareness of interesting and endangered Arizona fishes (for the curious, the others are the desert pupfish, the razorback sucker, the bonytail chub, the Apache trout and the Colorado pikeminnow). Working with Safari Ltd, they developed these figures to augment their programs–and sell as fundraisers. This was in 2009, and probably due to web search issues…they remain obscure and are still available (two are sold out–including the loach minnow).

I first discovered the set by a total fluke of an eBay search–I stumbled upon the Desert Pupfish by accident and, seeing the markings on the auction that clearly said Safari Ltd, I picked it up. Despite being marked with the organization, I could not locate the source (SEO is so important)–but someone (I think at the STS site) did find this site listing the product test reports of the Pupfish…and a Razorback Sucker! So now we knew for sure that there was at least one other figure. A few years later, someone I knew was selling what I thought was the Razorback…but it turned out to be the Bonytail Chub! So now there were 3. Then I saw a post on Twitter featuring the group of 6 in an Arizona classroom–and was finally able to locate the site, and purchase the ones I didn’t have…except the Razorback. I eventually located that one in an auction (two, actually) in China…one of which found its way to London. tl;dr, finding out about these was hard–but the history was eventually confirmed by Safari. They will do custom runs of 5000 of a SKU (single model/product) which is…a lot of a single figure! Next time, funding willing, Marsh should just do a toob (more fish! More!)

The figures themselves are large, generally around 15cm or more. The loach minnow figure is about 15.4cm TL (hard to compress that caudal fin), making the scale 2.4:1. This is great for a figure meant for education purposes, since it makes the features much more clear (for adults, or kids…it’s hard to see small details on small fish!). They would best be considered very similar to the Incredible Creatures line–a softer PVC material with a hollow body, but they have much more in depth detail work, especially in the paint work.

The figure itself is overall a light yellow ochre colour, fading to cream, with an asymmetric patterning of black splotches and bars along the dorsal surface and sides (but not in front of the dorsal). The fins are are held out fully erect from the body with the fin rays individually sculpted. The body fins are generally white with a darker wash; the ventral fins are all red at the bases indicating that this is a spawning male. The tail is highlighted with red and a pair of thin black bands. The face has been sculpted in careful detail, with the eyes carefully painted a shiny gold with black pupil, and ringed in black. The nostrils are sculpted with a slight indent and picked our with black as well. The red lips on the underslung mouth are also indicative of spawning colours.

The abdomen is entirely reddish orange, obviously inspired by a breeding male, but is somewhat exaggerated (it’s usually more patchy, near the fin bases). The texture of the abdomen is smooth, save for the labelled writing. Most of the dorsal and sides , however, are textured with a cross-hatch of scales, from behind the operculum to the base of the tail. The head itself , as well as the very dorsal margin to the base of the dorsal fin, is smooth and scaleless, as well as unmarked by black marks, although there is a black wash across it.

Overall, this is a fantastic figure that belongs in any collection of toy animals, of fish, of Safari figures…there’s just one problem. When I bought it several years ago from Marsh Education…my first parcel was lost, and it was the last one available for sale 🙁 Fortunately, they were able to dig up one more for me on the reship (along with an Apache Trout and Colorado Pikeminnow. And that, was, indeed, the last one. Other than the one sitting lost in transit somewhere. It’s a shame since cypriniformes are among the most diverse fish groups, and feature a lot of familiar and unique-but-should-be-familiar species, but we mainly get carp/goldfish. It would be great to see more toys & figures of other cypriniformes (and other fish orders, like cichilds and charciformes like the pictured dorado) to better appreciate our fishy friends and their freshwater habitats. At the very least, you can support the important work at Marsh Education and get some pretty cool figures (also, stickers of a larger array of species, and a few different plush fish too!)