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Plagued by predators in the sea, these fish are moving onto land
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On the remote Pacific island of Rarotonga, some fish are fleeing to land.
Scientists have long suspected that blenny fish leapt out of water to escape the many sea creatures that seek to eat them, but the blennies' true motivations remained a mystery. Now, in a study published this week in The American Naturalist, researchers show that these sausage-shaped fish were over three times more likely to be devoured in the sea than on land, giving credence to this theory.
"It turns out the aquatic environment is a nasty place for blennies, full of enemies wanting to eat these small fish. But life is less hostile on the rocks, with birds their main worry,” says Terry Ord, the study’s lead author and evolutionary ecologist from the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia.
To find out, Ord and his team visited Raratongo Island, where several species of blenny are regularly found lying on the ground near the water. The team fashioned 250 fake plastic blennies, about 2.5 inches long, with lifelike colorings and patterns. Half of the mimics were put in the water, and the other half were fully exposed on dry land. Predatory attacks on the mimics were observed over eight days, and the results suggest that blennies are much safer on land. “There were at least three times more attacks on our model blennies placed in the water than there were on models positioned on land,” says Ord.
So although being hacked to death by predatory seabirds surely isn’t a great way to go, it seems the blennies prefer that alternative to whatever ravenous creatures lurk in the sea.
[link to www.popsci.com]
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