A prose parody of Horace’s Satire I 9, in which the author runs into Horace himself on a Parisian street and chats with him about his poetry.

The hemostasis system is designed to ensure the integrity of the body’s internal environment, stop bleeding, and maintain a liquid state of blood in the vascular channel. Modern biological and veterinary science presents highly fragmented and scarce data containing clinical and diagnostic clotting characteristics in different fish species. An essential point emphasising the practical component of such studies is spontaneous thrombus formation in fish farming described in the literature. The present research is devoted to the study of the functional state of plasma hemostasis in some ray- finned commercial fishes: phylogenetically more ancient cartilaginous ganoids – sturgeon Acipenser baerii and hybrid of sterlet A. ruthenus and starred sturgeon A. stellatus, as well as bony fishes – carp Cyprinus carpio and tilapia Oreochromis niloticus. It should be noted that the current study was performed at the aquaculture development center “AquaBioCenter” of VSDFA from 2015 to 2020. Species-specific features of clotting were revealed: activation by common and extrinsic pathways, characterised by thrombin time ( TT), prothrombin time ( PT), and fibrinogen concentration, is several times faster in cartilaginous ganoids than in both bony fish species; hemostasis with activation of the intrinsic pathway, characterised by activated partial thromboplastin time ( APTT), is faster in hybrids and tilapias, in contrast to carps and sturgeons. Content of soluble fibrin monomer complexes ( SFMC) in all fish was higher than in dogs and humans but lower than in cattle. The highest amount of SFMC was detected in carps, the lowest – in cartilaginous ganoids.