Saturday 17 March 2007

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This is one of my favourite videos of all time, particularly because of the cute mudskippers featured at the end. As is obvious by the title of my blog, I find the idea of fish with feet fascinating. So before you get to the video, a little indulgence:

Mudskippers are a group of marine fishes that are unique in that they have adapted a suite of characteristics to suit an amphibious lifestyle:

* Weight bearing limb structure
* Cutaneous air breathing (breathing through skin, mouth and throat)
* Ability to dig burrows for protection (from predators and for their nurseries)

All of these characteristics as well as their widespread sub tropical to tropical distribution means mudskippers have a lot in common with the first tetrapods. However unlike the first tetrapods, mudskippers are small: about 15cm long (the first tetrapods were large, some as big as 150cm) long and mudskippers eat crabs and insects (not fish).

3 comments:

Malacoda said...

Yes, but the 'devolutionary' sequence is badly, badly wrong!

Sarda Sahney said...

I thought scientists were oriniary peopel who could relax, leave work at the office and have a beer once in a while. Turns out they can't even manage that:)

Anonymous said...

the dinosaurs evolved into dolphins???