This week in science: What would happen if the sun generated a killer superflare, and the newly discovered fish that can walk up waterfalls.
The Fish That Can Walk Up Waterfalls
The little-known Cryptotora thamicola cavefish, found in Thailand, is just a few inches long and totally blind. But it can do something not only that no other fish can do, but also something that has upended some of our most basic assumptions about evolution and life on this planet: it can walk.
We’re talking honest-to-goodness walking. In the words of researcher Brooke Flammang, “It possesses morphological features that have previously only been attributed to tetrapods. The pelvis and vertebral column of this fish allow it to support its body weight against gravity and provide large sites for muscle attachment for walking.”
Of course, this discovery will have serious implications in determining just how Earth’s creatures went from finned to limbed, from sea to land, some 420 million years ago.
Read more at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
