Sinistral is more of a medical/microbio guy, rather than an organism guy. But I could be wrong. That said not much to discuss in regards to the pufferfish as it clearly wouldn’t survive being forcefully expanded outside of the water. Suffocation would be one problem. Keeping its gills moist wouldn’t be good enough, it needs the constant flow of oxygenated water. Fish don’t breath water, they breath the oxygen present in it.
more nipples = delay death
Simplified.
Some fish can thrive outside water from minutes to hours, as long as their gills are moist. Also, I’ve seen puffers that swim in shallow waters take air in by accident, as long as you leave them alone they’ll be fine and eventually “depuff”. I’m sad that even with helium there wouldn’t be enough lift for it to fly, though. I always wanted a live baloon…
Well, maybe hydrogen will do the trick. That way you can also have an instant hot temaki if you lit a match close to its mouth.
You must be thinking of members of the sarcopterygii, or lungfish. They actually have lungs and can survive outside of water for extended periods of time. The only other fish that I can think of that can survive out of water for extended periods of time are catfish and their relatives, such as carp. Pufferfish are quite distant from those. I could be wrong as I’m not a pufferfish expert, but I do know for certain that your experiment wouldn’t work, and would only result in a dead pufferfish. Why don’t you just get a balloon and draw spikes and eyes on with a marker? Much less invasive that way.
*edit: a bit of further research shows that fish that can survive out of water for certain time periods tend to be fish that already live in shallow water, or freshwater. Pufferfish are salt water fish, and have slightly different body systems than those of fresh water fish. Keeping its gills moist wouldn’t suffice.
Another fun fact, which I found out through briefly researching this. Carp/catfish can survive outside of water by absorbing oxygen through their digestive tract. Obviously they can’t sustain themselves on this indefinitely, but it’s a nice survival mechanism.
*edit again: More searching says there are pufferfish that live in freshwater, such as in rivers and lakes, particularly in South America which is where you are from, right? That said I have my doubts that they have similar survival mechanisms as the catfish, as they come from different orders.
I wanted to use a specific marine species in the experiment. I don’t think the river ones have spikes. What fun would balloon puffers be if they couldn’t get into a flying spike fight?