Snakeheads. The weirdo of the fish family. Not only can these fish survive 3 days without water (but there needs to be some moisture) but they can breathe atmospheric air, and in the past they have decimated small streams and lakes because of no natural know predators.
You know, I am not sure how a fish can flap its arm like structures and gills to move across land, but I could only imagine if over time these fish adapt where they can live on land. Somewhere in this fish may be the key to our own evolution, as we too (supposedly) have come from the sea.
Some stats from http://www.scinet.cc/articles/northern-snakehead/frankenfish.html
Highly predatory. Northern Snakeheads are capable of disrupting entire food webs by consuming a large quantity and variety of prey, including other fish, amphibians, crustaceans, insects, zooplankton, and occasionally aquatic birds and small mammals. This can cause changes in the feeding pattern and food availability for other organisms in the ecosystem (USFWS, 2003). To compound the problem, the adult snakehead has no known natural predators in the US.
High fertility and parental care.Female snakeheads can lay as many as 50,000 eggs per year (1,300 to 15,000 eggs per spawn). The parents aggressively protect their young until they are about 18mm in length (after about 1 month of development). After this time, the juvenile snakeheads have developed fins, and are capable of fending for themselves (Berg, 1965, Courtenay and Williams, 2004).
Low oxygen requirement. Northern Snakeheads do not require high levels of dissolved oxygen. Thus, they tend to have a competitive advantage over fish that require more dissolved oxygen, such as trout, pike, and bass (USFWS, 2003).
Wide dispersal. They are capable of breathing atmospheric oxygen and can remain out of water for 3 – 4 days at a time (Agbayani, 2004). They can also move over land by wriggling their body and moving their fins. These physiological adaptations allow them to travel short distances over land, from one freshwater body to another (Hilton, 2002).
May spread disease. Northern Snakeheads may be able transfer pathogens to native fish, such as Epizootic Ulcerative Syndrome (USFWS, 2002).
So, Snakehead fish, maybe in the future you will walk on two feet, and take over the earth, after we nuke ourselves first.
Man this is one real freak of nature in our books. Love you fishy.
Related posts:
- Glow in the dark pigs - Jellyfish-Pigs? [VIDEO] Recently, Chinese scientists announced that the offspring of a transgenic...
- The weirdo, Michael Jackson has kids…Newsflash with pics. Now this is some weird stuff. You know, I have...
- Red Sea Yields Discovery of a New Type of Moray Eel - It’s UGLY! The sheer volume of life in the ocean boggles the...
- Russians Breed “Cosmic Cockroaches” Cosmic cockroaches faster developers, Russian scientists say 15:39 |...
- Vitamin D deficiency linked to heart, stroke risk Taken from Yahoo Reuters Article WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People with...
Wall RSS Feed