Desperate times call for desperate measures and for small fishes, nothing could ever be more desperate than being chased by a predator which is probably the reason why some of them have evolved the ability to leap out of the waters and into the land. It may seem amazing to see a fish out of the waters but in exceptional cases like the blennies in the island of Rarotonga, they're only doing what is necessary to survive.
If there is one thing that is important to every species on Earth then it would definitely be survival. Sometimes, an organism would go out of its comfort zone just for the sake of survival and this definitely seems to be the case in a new study conducted on blennies in Rarotonga, Phys.org reports. According to first author Dr. Terry Ord of the UNSW Sydney, the probable reason as to why animals move out of their natural habitat and into foreign environments is to avoid predators. However, evidence for this is hard to collect because of the rarity of such occurrences.
Dr. Ord added further that their study on the blennies of Rarotonga is the first to probe into the pressures that drive fish out of the water. The study conducted by scientists from the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University had taken advantage of the scientific opportunity provided by the island of Rarotonga since it hosts four species of blennies that spends ample amount of time on land.
According to Science Daily, the researchers looked into the behavior of three of these species and have found that during low tide, most of them can be found on a rock in the intertidal zone while those who stayed in the water made sure to avoid the areas that predators like flounders, trevallies, and moray eels frequented.
When the tide did come in, the blennies moved onto higher ground in order to avoid the predators that came with the tide. To further solidify their study, the team had also made 250 replicas of blennies using plasticine and then placed them in the water. They would then witness attacks made to the replicas by blenny predators. The blennies are definitely benefitting from moving out of the water since there are lots of predators in the oceans especially for small fishes like them while on land, they only need to worry about birds.
