The gurnards – their name comes from the growling sounds the fish make with their swim bladders – are special animals. They have, among other things, six extended fin rays that resemble small legs and with which they ‘walk’ on the seabed. Now researchers have made a new discovery.
Pondons are sea fish that live on the bottom. They are found in all flat seas and prefer to live on sandy or soft bottoms, where they browse for food with their elongated fin rays (“legs”). The animals live in water depths of up to 400 meters.
Accurately detect prey in the sand
Now two new studies have found that the ‘legs’ are not only used for walking on the seabed, but that they function as sensory organs that use paws to locate prey buried in the sand, such as mussels and other shellfish – a true ‘super sense’. “.
The six small legs are actually extensions of their pectoral fins, of which they have three on each side. Biologists have long suspected that gurnard legs are good for more than just running and digging. A team led by Corey Allard of Harvard University therefore examined animals more closely under laboratory conditions.
Small legs are covered with papillae
The scientists discovered that the animals can accurately detect ground and filtered mussel extract and even individual amino acids using their paws in the sand of a pool. It turned out that the six legs of the ponen are covered with so-called papillae: small wart-shaped protrusions on the skin. These look remarkably similar to the papillae on the human tongue, in which taste buds and receptors are bundled.
“This is a fish that developed legs using genes that also contribute to the development of our limbs, and then reused those legs to find prey using the same genes that our tongue uses to taste the food it uses – pretty crazy,” says Nicholas Bellono of Harvard. University in Massachusetts, describing the discovery.
The researchers hope that this genetic overlap between humans and fish may help clarify how our species developed upright walking about six million years ago.
Source: Krone
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