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Incredible New Photographs of Live Coelacanths

Posted by timothy on from the besonders-freundlich dept.

zapyon writes "German magazine Spiegel Online has just put some incredible photographs of coelacanths on their site. The article is pointing to the current German edition of National Geographic."

3 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. It's not news on Vulcan by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Human beings, however, might enjoy simple ape-like wonderment gazing at some modern high quality images of a fish-o-saurus that's said "Fuck you, that's why" to evolution for 65 million years.

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  2. Fascinating Animals by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've always wondered how Coelacanth survived for so long. Everything about it is primitive. It has a slow metabolism (or at least the ability to make it slow) and more or less rides the currents to its feeding grounds and back. Very different from the high energy, small, modern fish.

    As a species, it has basically been in a evolutionary standstill for 400 million years, and current populations have low genetic diversity (which may be a hint as to why).

    My best guess is that some mechanism to not mutate much, flesh that isn't good food for many animals (gives humans upset tummies), a robust way of obtaining food (eating anything), and good energy conservation have probably contributed to its durability as a species. But I would think that lots of species have had these attributes, long ago.

    It's habits and characteristics are remarkably similar to another living fossil, the Nautilus.

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    1. Re:Fascinating Animals by Bowling+Moses · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Of course biologists do: coelacanths (and insects, and everything else) are evolving. Over the 360 million years coelacanths have been around there have been countless new mutations and new environmental pressures that have shaped the coelacanths. We know of around a hundred coelacanth species that are grouped into not only multiple genera, but multiple families which we can identify from changes in skeletal structure and which we can use as index fossils. They hit upon a successful basic body form a long time ago but they've been evolving the whole time. The only way a species can't evolve is if it goes extinct.