#mudskippers

just found about this funky fish that can walk around on land and the thing looks straight out of the trolls world. look at this thing, i love it!

anyway, floyd grew up in a cage and hed grew up in a city, i doubt they'd be thrilled to see one of these things for the first time. I know I would have shat my pants if i saw a 1.5 meter long catfish walk out of a lake towards me

Mudskippers

Habitat: Intertidal mud flats

Strengths:

Coloration provides excellent camouflage against their environment

Able to crawl and skip over land using their pectoral fins, and leap over a distance of up to 61 cm (24 in)

Can survive in water with almost no oxygen, and breathe through their skin in wet conditions

Good eyesight; can move their eyes independently of each other

Weaknesses:

Only grow up to 30 cm (12 in) long

No claws and only very small teeth

Typically very slow and clumsy

Dusky Gilled Mudskipper 🐟 Asia (2024) "Beneath the Waves"

Atlantic mudskipper!

It reminded me of you.

I am now craving fish facts.

Do you play civ 6?

no I dont play that, I had to google it lol. it seems cool tho.

and as you requested, here are some fish facts about 2 very cute fish:

mudskippers are a group of 6 species that can crawl, climb, and hop around outside of water! their fins are specialized to do this thanks to evolving in muddy swamps where water could dry up in some areas, causing the need for the hopping ability. they also have cartoonish eyes that they need to blink inside of themselves since they dont have proper eyelids.

the lumpfish are as the name suggests very lumpy, an aquarist apparently described them as "feeling like old, mold-crusted Jell-O" lmao. they are super slow and have no scales but! their pelvic fins are funky and work as suction cups to stick to things like rock or kelp when theres a strong current. they are actually also really helpful for salmon farmers because they eat sea lice which can hurt and stunt the growth of salmon, so it's a safe natural alternative to exposing fish to chemicals to keep them safe! usually before they get put into salmon farms they get vaccinated since the ones that do this are usually bred for it, and they get vaccinated by hand too. which like must be a crazy job, but also super cool to bring up in conversations.