African Catfish Hunts On Land

Dave Knott writes "The journal Nature will be publishing a report on an African catfish that hunts its prey on land. The fish wriggles out of the swamps to catch land-based prey. From the article: 'The eel catfish, Channallabes apus, catches unsuspecting victims by arching upwards and descending upon prey, trapping an insect against the ground before sucking it up. The same trick may have been used by the very first vertebrates to venture onto land, the researchers speculate.' There is a video of the fish in action."

Comments

direct link

[blhack]

Direct link to video:

Link

Re:direct link

[blair1q]

It's dead already. Prompting this new slogan:

"A /. of one"

Re:direct link

[G00F]

if you post a link, you might want to make sure the url is correct.

the correct link is here

Re:Another Nail

[turvalon]

Being that all things of existence are in constant change for the Buddha, I think he is more likely to side with the evolutionists so I don't know why you lumped him in with Jesus and Allah.

Actually even worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, apparently this fish has eaten a DOZEN dogs over the years: http://user.bahnhof.se/~wizard/GUSTeng03/artiklar_ moenchengladbach.html

So this was not just a single-dachshund type of fish. No this cat had a taste for dogs.

Nothing new

[edwardpickman]

When I was growing up I saw catfish in a zoo pond climb completely out of the water and go as much as a foot to retrieve popcorn. Most catfish can leave the water to got after food. I think the unique thing about this catfish wasn't leaving the water but the way it pounched on the food. It would raise up and strike. They aren't fish but something as large as an orca will leave the water to go after food. I've seen medium sized sharks scramble half out of the water going after food. Catfish seem to be the record holders for actually completely leaving the water to search for food.

Re:Now Explain How They Develop Feet

[Expert Determination]

You can get an overview of the general principles here. This books is pretty old but it's still good and in some ways it's better than modern texts because it doesn't take anything for granted. This is a good modern popular account of the kinds of processes involved. By time you've read all three of these you should be in a pretty good position to think about how feet might develop. None of this tells you anything about how feet actually did develop - it just removes roadblocks that make such development seem impossible. If you actually want to find out more about how feet develop a good starting point might be here though I haven't read that.