Archer Fish | Oral Sniper |
Archerfish live in mangroves and marshy areas where the depth is pretty shallow.
These fish belong to the "Toxotes" genus having about 10 extant species.
Projectiles are common in animals such as snakes shooting venom from their fangs, beetles shooting acids and Octopuses shooting out their ink etc, But perhaps the most precise of them in all the animal kingdom is the Archerfish.
They prey on (terrestrial) insects mostly, which make up 25% of mass of it's diet !!!!!
These fish shoot out high pressure, thin jets of water from their specialized mouth to knock out the insects, such as on stem or leaves exactly above the water body/pool. It presses it's tongue against a groove in it's mouth to build up a pressure like a gun barrel and the closes it's gills forcing out water through it's mouth. They can notice and interpret distorted images (because of the water surface, refraction), the speed and angle required for hitting the target.
In simple words, relatively it's equivalent to shooting water bottles with a snow ball (with your mouth, may i add) from 50 feet away for a human !!!!
They are so efficient at this work that they are considered tool users (water as a tool) according to scientists and researchers. Their jet has a blob at the end for maximum impact delivery. The fish doesn't just spat hard and hold the tongue tight, there's more to it. It opens and closes the mouth resulting varied speeds of water in different parts of the jet, enabling the blob to always form such that it give maximum impact.
They also have better eyesight to see through the muddy water and are social creatures. They have been found to form communities and societies and interact socially.
There also the absence of "Neo-cortex" responsible for function such as higher reasoning, memory and facial recognition and can still differentiate human faces like humans, a rather rare characteristic in animals.
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