The Pacific leaping blenny (Alticus arnoldorum) is a land-dwelling fish that sounds like an Irish drinking exclamation (“leapin’ blenny!”) or maybe the name of a pub. Native to Guam, the fish is also the subject of a new study in Animal Behavior that looks at how important camouflage is.
The li’l buddies are only one to three inches long, but they can leap much farther than that (hence the name), flinging themselves on rocks near water and wiggling around to stay wet. Writes Sci-News:
“This terrestrial fish spends all of its adult life living on the rocks in the splash zone, hopping around defending its territory, feeding and courting mates …” said study senior author Dr. Terry Ord.
Sounds like twentysomethings. Zing!
The leaping blenny also frequently matches its outfits to rocks in order to avoid detection by fashion bullies birds, crabs, and lizards. Researchers made fake, less well-camouflaged blennies out of plastic, and sure enough, predators viciously attacked the non-color-coordinated fish, ripping them apart on street style blogs (or just trying to eat them).
Did we really need this scientific study to reinforce what Stacy and Clinton have been saying all along? Your outfit matters! Even if you’re a weird link in the evolutionary chain between fish and lizards. (We hear chain-link is gonna be big in 2014.)
