It's not that surprising that one of the strangest living things in the world, the Pacific leaping blenny, lives in Guam -- the default location used by many for naming a far-away land. The fish-amphibian hybrid might as well be a fictional creature.
Land-dwelling leaping blennies convulsively leap from rock to rock where violent waves crash, one reason why they've been difficult to study until a group of researchers from the University of New South Whales in Australia journeyed to Guam in order to better understand the fish's camouflage techniques, the National Monitor reported.
Amphibious by nature -- they're born in the water, but live their entire adult life on land (unless they are the water-dwelling type) -- blennies are still classified as fish because, unlike most amphibians, they never lose their gills. Instead of living in the water, blennies use the constant flow of waves and the everlasting wetness of coast rocks to stay moist, according to the press release.
Because their skin resembles the craterous, bumpy rocks they inhabit, researches wanted to prove it was an adaptation used to stave off predation from birds, lizards, and other fish. They used plastic versions of bennies and dispersed them on the sand and rocks. When they later counted the number of bite marks on each one, they found that the sand blennies were most often picked. Camouflage has helped the amphibious fish survive.
Sea-living blennies share the same skin pattern, giving researchers a clue into their evolutionary path. They believe all blennies started in the water; when some ventured to land, they quickly established themselves because of their camouflage.
"This terrestrial fish spends all of its adult life living on the rocks in the splash zone, hopping around defending its territory, feeding and courting mates. They offer a unique opportunity to discover in a living animal how the transition from water to the land has taken place," Dr Ord, of the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, said in a statement.
