Mudskippers — of which there are 25 species, inhabiting mudflats, swamps, and mangrove forests from Africa to South Asia to South America — spend more than half of their life on land, doing everything from eating to mating out of the water.
, a professor emeritus of biology at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of the bookIn fact, although no two species of mudskippers are identical, or function exactly the same, there are a couple of neat features which distinguish most of them from the rest of the fish we’re used to hearing about.
The second method is more direct: A mudskipper’s gills trap water in their cavities and store it for longer-term oxygen retrieval. This is why some species can often be observed making their way to a body of water, opening their mouth and taking gigantic gulps of it. What’s more, to protect the patches of land they’ve burrowed in, male mudskippers engage in theatrical fights between themselves, with their mouths gaping and painted dorsal fins splayed out in a display of power, and flop onto each other violently.Unlike most fish, the mudskipper’s eyes are on top of their heads like periscopes for greater visibility, they can move independently of each other, and they can… blink.
“So it really demonstrates that you can produce a very complex multifunctional behavior using this really rudimentary or basic set of anatomy,” says Aiello.
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