Eel-catfish & the terra-firma leap!

You get it first and you get the best over at the National Geographic web site. From the Lost Gospel of Judas to more evidence for evolution: a catfish that hunts on land! You heard it right, this catfish leaps out of water and assails its victim on dry land then if flops back into the drink to consume it. This makes Kierkegaard’s leap of faith look possible! According to some over at the Unintelligent Design Headquarters (UDH), the discovery may shed light on how various prehistoric fish species evolved into land animals.

Also, other notable persons over at NPR observe that though this species isn’t old enough to be part of the evolutionary chain it may show how sea creatures transitioned to the land. There you have it! But what’s so great about terra-firma that these first creatures made this move, what were they hunting or seeking? Who cares! What ever the motivation, it gave them a distinct evolutionary advantage. Just think about it, your pedigree may be very, very fishy!

Click on this video clip (after a bit of advertising) and you will witness first hand how an eel catfish in a laboratory wriggles out of a tank of water to attack an overturned beetle (something tasty worth hunting, howbeit, the little morsel didn’t exist at the time of the first great leap) Note in the diagram how the fish's head has the rare ability to rotate to a relatively extreme downward angle (see superimposed illustration of the fish's skeleton). It can actually bow it’s head!

Want to here a bit of a fish song? On this 5:43 minute NPR recording, writer David Taylor lends Debbie Elliot his views on how Texans relate to the environment. What’s interesting here (for many hidden reasons) is a 45 second song clip of the late Mr. Townes Van Zandt’s “The Catfish Song”. The link is on RealOne Player located at 3:00 minutes into the interview. Click here, move the bar to 3 minutes, listen and enjoy!

BTW: That odd, mystical and fanciful film Big-Fish is finally making some sense!