Funny Little Critters

omg mudskippers….. 

okay everyone thinks they’re silly and they are !!!! but they’re acc so so interesting and important they’re so cool

so first off they’re like masters of adaptation. they’re amphibious fish - fish that can live on land and water (there are different types of mudskippers that live at different ratios of land/water )

and they use their modified pectoral fins to get around on land. Their eyes are also super cool - the giant cute eyes ykyk are actually super useful bc they can move independently from each other which gives mudskippers a HUGE basically 360 field of vision.

they also have a really high ammonia tolerance relative to most fish which is super duper interesting (it’s to help them survive the conditions of the intertidal zone where they live).

mudskippers use an ammonia excretion process in which they basically remove ammonia through their gills, as well has having low membrane permeability for ammonia, which means ammonia doesn’t get through their skin as easily as other fish. Fish also usually produce a lot of ammonia themselves, but mudskippers have the ability to slow down their own ammonia production when under high ammonia exposure to further protect themselves which is SO fascinating.

This, along with high disease tolerance and very water retaining skin that allows them to stay on land for relatively long periods of time, allows them to be amphibious fish. 

but the main thing that actually allows them to be amphibious is their limbs - the adapted pectoral fins that let them skip around (where the name comes from)! they’re a big subject of scientific discussion because they help in the study evolutionary processes and the mechanisms behind species diversification - by studying different species of mudskippers (some more terrestrial than others) we’ve been able to learn a lot about how organisms adapt and evolve to transition from marine to amphibious to terrestrial. theyre like a HUGE part of evolution research its so so cool i read a really good study on it.

among like… less sciency talk bc i got a little too into it. so it’s fun fact time.

1)they’re just SILLYYYY. 

2)they climb trees. 

3)they fight each other all the time (full of hate). 

4)their silly puffed up cheeks are actually them using their gill chambers that are full of water to breathe air. 

5)they’re actually not great swimmers and can literally drown.  

6) theyre SO COOL LOOKING. like.... the colors.... the fins.... so fun

7) they fight crabs (one of their main food sources)

overall? my opinion on mudskippers? very Good. i like them. idk if you can tell.

also this video (flash warning)