Trivia question for Nov-08-2011

Carter is up today and he found these fish to be interesting.  Lets see how you do with this trivia.  These fish live in coastal mangrove swamps flooded by high tide.  They are one of the very few fish able to exploit food sources outside of the water.

When these fish select its prey, it rotates its eye so that the image of the prey falls on a particular portion of the eye in the ventral temporal periphery of the retina and its lips just break the surface, squirting a jet of water at its victim. It does this using the narrow groove in the roof of its mouth. It presses its tongue against this groove to form a narrow channel, then contracts its gill covers to force a powerful jet of water through the channel. The resulting jet of water can be up to 2–5 m long, but their accuracy only allows them to shoot insects 1–2 m away depending on body size. The fish can alter the power of the shot for prey of different sizes. If the first shot does not knock the victim into the water, these fish will keep trying.

So here are Carter’s questions:  Tell us what this fish is called and tell us why they sometimes shoot at inedible objects?  Also, tell us what happens to humans when their skin is hit by the stream created by these fish?

Good Luck 😉

Answer:

Congratulations goes out to Ruthi Pascale from Pensacola, Florida for being the first with the correct answers to our trivia. The fancy shooting (or should we say spitting) fish is the Archerfish. The archerfish (Spinner Fish or Archer Fish) are a family (Toxotidae) of fish known for their habit of preying on land based insects by literally shooting them down with water droplets from their specialized mouths. The family is small, consisting of seven species in the genus Toxotes; which typically inhabit brackish waters of estuaries and mangroves, but can also be found in the open ocean as well as far upstream in fresh water in India to the Philippines, Australia, and Polynesia.

These fish can sometimes be seen shooting at inedible objects.  This is there way of practicing.  The archerfish shoots water with such force that the water jet actually stings if it hits human skin.  Here is more on these marksman fish: Archerfish

Thanks for playing along 😉