Ever imagined fishes being capable of walking on land? It may sound like an interesting movie concept but scientists these days suggest that it maybe even more than just a concept which you can only expect to see in sci-fi films or kiddie cartoons.
The year 2020 is truly filled with surprising discoveries and happenings, which now includes the existence of a recent study that suggests at least 11 fish species are capable of walking. On September 8, 2020, the Florida Museum of Natural History has revealed that an international team of scientists has identified at least eleven (11) fish species which they suspect to have land-walking abilities.
In a new study, researchers from New Jersey Institute of Technology, Florida Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State University and Thailand’s Maejo University analyzed the bone structure of nearly thirty (30) hillstream loach species.
The researchers based their findings on CT scans and a new evolutionary map of the hillstream loach family, which includes Cryptotora thamicola or the cave angel fish, the only living fish species caught in the act of walking and whose walking capabilities have been studied.
Based on the shape of the bone that connects some loaches’ spines to their pelvic fins, the scientists have found out that there are ten (10) other species of loach that shared the unusually hefty pelvic girdle of cave angel fish.
“Fishes don’t usually have any connection between their spine and pelvic fin. But before, the idea was that the cave angel fish was totally unique. What’s really cool about this paper is that it shows with high detail that robust pelvic girdles are more common than we thought in the hillstream loach family.”
– Zachary Randall biologist, manager of the Florida Museum’s imaging lab, one of the co-authors of the study
Rather than evolving from a single origin, the scientists also found out that a robust pelvic region appeared several times across the hillstream loach family. By pinpointing which species of hillstream loaches have walking capabilities, scientists may be able to piece together “how the first land-walking vertebrates might have come to be.”
The team published its work was published in the Journal of Morphology on August 3, 2020. It is called the “Skeletal and muscular pelvic morphology of hillstream loaches (Cypriniformes: Balitoridae).”
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Source: Science Alert, Florida Museum of Natural History, Journal of Morphology, New Jersey Institute of Technology
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