Wednesday 4 December 2013

How Legless, Leaping Fish Living On Land Avoids Predators

Dec. 2, 2013 — One of the world's strangest animals -- a legless, leaping fish that lives on land -- uses camouflage to avoid attacks by predators such as birds, lizards and crabs, new research shows.

UNSW researchers, Dr Terry Ord and Courtney Morgans, of the Evolution and Ecology Research Centre, studied the unique fish -- Pacific leaping blennies -- in their natural habitat on the tropical island of Guam.

Their study will be published in the journal Animal Behaviour.

"This terrestrial fish spends all of its adult life living on the rocks in the splash zone, hopping around defending its territory, feeding and courting mates. They offer a unique opportunity to discover in a living animal how the transition from water to the land has taken place," says Dr Ord, of the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.

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