Episode 261: Walking Fish

Sign up for our mailing list! We also have t-shirts and mugs with our logo! Thanks to my brother Richard for suggesting one of the fish we talk about this week--fish that can walk! (Sort of.) Further watching: Video of a gurnard walking Further reading: Walking shark moves with ping-pong paddle fins Walking sharks discovered in the tropics The Hawaiian seamoth (the yellowy one is a larval seamoth, the brighter one with the snoot the same fish as a juvenile, both pictures by Frank Baensch from this site):   The slender seamoth (an adult, photo from this site): A flying gurnard with its "wings" extended: A flying gurnard with its "wings" folded, standing on its walking rays: An eastern spiny gurnard standing on its walking rays: A mudskipper's frog-like face: Mudskippers on land: Walking sharks: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I'm your host, Kate Shaw. This week we’re going to look at some weird fish, specifically fish that use their fins to walk. Well, sort of walk. Thanks to my brother Richard for suggesting one of these fish. Before we get started, let’s learn the terms for a fish’s two main pairs of fins. Different types of fish have different numbers and locations of fins, of course, but in this episode we’re focusing on the pectoral fins and the pelvic fins. Pectoral fins are the main fins in most fish, the ones near the front on each side. If a fish had arms, that’s roughly where its arms would be. The pelvic fins are near the tail on either side, roughly where its legs would be if fish had legs. If you remember that people lift weights with their arms to develop their pectoral muscles in the chest, you can remember where pectoral fins are, and if you remember that Elvis Presley was sometimes called Elvis the Pelvis because he danced by shaking his hips, you can remember where the pelvic fins are. So, let’s start with the seamoth, which lives in shallow tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific Ocean and the Red Sea, including around Australia. We don’t know enough about it to know if it’s endangered or not, but since it’s considered a medicine in some parts of Asia, it’s caught to sell as an aquarium fish, and its habitat is increasingly impacted by bottom trawling and coastal development, it probably isn’t doing great. It’s never been especially common and doesn’t reproduce very quickly. Researchers think it may even be a social fish that forms a pair bond with its mate, since pairs are often found together. The seamoth doesn’t even look that much like a fish at first glance. It’s covered with bony plates that act as armor, including bony rings around its tail. It even has to shed its skin as it grows larger. The seamoth has a long, pointed snout with a tiny mouth underneath, but it can protrude its mouth out of its…mouth--okay that doesn’t make sense....