Bizarre fish has sensory “legs” it uses for walking and tasting
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infernal666
Ars Praefectus
I'm trying very hard not to imagine what a city sidewalk would taste like if walked on.....
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Instead of wishing that the kids of my enemies will be born with no buttholes, I now wish that they will be born with taste buds covering their limbs.
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That's awesome science.
It has long been suspected... then someone finally gets around to testing the hypothesis. Scientific method for the win! (It's not necessary that every hypothesis get tested quickly, that is. There are always more hypotheses than there is time to test them all.)
It has long been suspected... then someone finally gets around to testing the hypothesis. Scientific method for the win! (It's not necessary that every hypothesis get tested quickly, that is. There are always more hypotheses than there is time to test them all.)
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OK, now nature is just giving ideas to Futurama, for new disgusting features to add to the character of Zoidberg. That is if there isn't already an episode where he tastes the contents of a dumpster with his feet?
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According to a recent story on Science Friday, the Sea Robin's taste receptors can identify samples as little as one molecule.
Amazing creatures.
Amazing creatures.
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I now have "Rock Lobster" by the B-52s stuck in my head.
I await an article about the elusive bikini whale.
I await an article about the elusive bikini whale.
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What's the difference between a "leg" and a leg? IOW, why aren't they considered legs proper. What's the technical definition of a leg?
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Walking On Sunshine is the correct ear worm for this story.
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They're not homologous with vertebrates legs. The fish that gave rise to frogs, finches, and humpty-backed camels had lobe fins, with internal bones that evolved into our arm/leg and hand/foot bones.
That projecting nub of pebbly bones is what turned into the arms and legs of land vertebrates, while the tiny rays around the fin disappeared.
The spindly crawlsticks on these sea robins are derived from those thin fin rays, a different kind of structure.
It's a kind of convergent evolution because the split between lobe- and ray-finned fishes happened long before our legs or sea robin creep-reachers evolved, and the two types of body parts don't share a common evolutionary history.
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One type of molecule. Not just one single molecule floating by.
They originally tested using mussels, then found they didn't need the whole chemical melange coming from a mussel. They only needed a single type of amino acid for the fish to find a bait in the lab.
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Do we know that there are more hypotheses than there is time to test them all?
That sounds like a hypothesis to me. We should test that.
:-D
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Yes. Determining that a biological system (eg fish in habitat) could detect a single molecule would be impossible with current technology.
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"OUCH! Who is this jerk?! Hmm, they taste just like chicken." - The fish, probably.
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I don't know how edible the Connecticut sea robins are, but in general sea robins tend to have firm flesh but yield excellent soup stock, making them ideal for stewing. On the other side of the Atlantic, it's a common ingredient in the French bouillabaisse. Over here in Japan, sea robins are not cheap, having long been prized for simmering and hot pot. Personally, my favorite way to cook sea robin is a simple acqua pazza.
As for the main subject of this article, I had thought it was well accepted that the "legs" were sensors used to search for food (it would be a surprise if it were used for anything else, tbh, as it is clearly not suitable for physical support); it was interesting to learn that the functions weren't that well known, and differ from species to species. Oh, and they tend to fall off during cooking, so I don't remember how they taste like; given how thin they are, I suspect they have little taste of their own except that of fish skin, but I'll have to check more carefully the next time one ends up on our dinner table.
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Like he needs more disgusting features. He already considers toenails to be a "feast".
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And to add to that, Neil Shubin's book "Your Inner Fish" is an absolute must-read! Students in his Human anatomy class were shocked to discover that he is a fish paleontologist. Shubin used careful reasoning to determine where to look in the geologic strata for the intermediate "fish to land dweller" transition species and as a result he is quite famously known as the discoverer of the first Tiktaalik species fossil.They're not homologous with vertebrates legs. The fish that gave rise to frogs, finches, and humpty-backed camels had lobe fins, with internal bones that evolved into our arm/leg and hand/foot bones.
That projecting nub of pebbly bones is what turned into the arms and legs of land vertebrates, while the tiny rays around the fin disappeared.
The spindly crawlsticks on these sea robins are derived from those thin fin rays, a different kind of structure.
It's a kind of convergent evolution because the split between lobe- and ray-finned fishes happened long before our legs or sea robin creep-reachers evolved, and the two types of body parts don't share a common evolutionary history.
https://shubinlab.uchicago.edu/research-2-2/
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Homeopathy proves you wrong - it can not only detect the molecule, but cure you woth it too!
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Yes! The memory of molecules! Who knew water would remember what molecules were in the vessel with it in the past and its memory would improve with each time you spanked its vessel! Thank you sir! May I have another!
The patent absurdity of the homeopathic worldview beggars the imagination
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The more you dilute the homeopathic hypothesis, the more powerful it gets.
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