In 2012, researchers found an unusually well-preserved fossil of a prehistoric flying fish in Guizhou: the exquisite Usha fish. After testing and analyzing, the researchers found that the fossils date back to the middle Of the Triassic period, 235 million to 242 million years ago.
In nature, there are many flying vertebrates, but in the evolutionary history of 400 million years of teleost fish, the "surface gliding mechanism" has only appeared twice, namely the pectoral fin fish family more than 200 million years ago and the modern flying fish family.
The discovery of ancient flying fish fossils has aroused people's curiosity about modern flying fish.
Flying fish, in order to escape to evolve a fish that can "fly"
Flying fish are silver fish order - flying fish creatures, their biggest feature is that they can "fly". But in fact, they are not really flying, but to avoid predators and use their fins to glide in mid-air.
In nature, each creature has its own unique skills and survival skills, and the flying fish's unique skill is to glide by a pair of wide pectoral fins.
The pectoral fin of the flying fish is very developed, the long pectoral fin extends to the tail, when swimming in the ocean, the pectoral fin of the flying fish will be close to the body, and the entire body shows a beautiful streamlined shape, swimming at a speed of 10 meters per second in the sea at a high speed.
If they encounter a predator faster than themselves, the flying fish will jump out of the water, open their pectoral fins like the wings of birds, and glide hundreds of meters in the air to avoid predators.
In the early days, people always thought that flying fish evolved the ability to "fly", but it was only a few thousand years, but with the discovery of these ancient flying fish fossils, scientists understood that the original flying fish had already trained a life-escape skill more than 200 million years ago.
Flying fish, what is the secret of being able to "fly"
People have always been very interested in how flying fish jump out of the water and fly. With the development of science, high-speed photography technology has revealed the secret of flying fish "flying".
In fact, flying fish do not fly, when they are ready to leave the sea, they must swim at high speed in the water, the pectoral fin is close to the sides of the body, minimizing the resistance of the sea, rising rapidly like a submarine.
If the pectoral fin of a flying fish is used as a "wing", then the tail fin is the "engine" of the flying fish.
At the moment when the flying fish is about to leave the water, it will slap the surface of the water with its tail fin, and the whole body will sprang out of the water with the inertia of swimming and the power of the tail fin. After leaping into the air, the flying fish opens its long, shiny pectoral fins and glides forward rapidly.
In the process of gliding, its pectoral fins do not instigate, but use the air currents to try to "fly" farther. If the wind is suitable, the flying fish can fly 200 to 400 meters in the air 4 to 5 meters above the water surface.
When the flying fish is about to return to the sea, it will slap the water surface again with its tail fin at the moment when it is about to fall into the water, and use the power of the tail to make itself "fly up" again, the whole action is like "dragonfly point water", but the dragonfly point water is spawning, and the flying fish point water is to escape.
According to statistics, flying fish can shoot water 12 times in a row, and the longest "flight" time reaches 45 seconds.
It can be seen how important the tail fin is for flying fish, if the tail fin of the flying fish is cut off, and then put it back into the sea, the flying fish want to jump out of the sea is basically delusional.
However, even if the flying fish mastered a life-escape skill, it still became the food in the mouths of other animals, even worse than when it was before when it could not fly.
Flying fish, no door into the sea
Flying fish are the "leeks" of the ocean, cutting stubble after stubble, for more than 200 million years, they have been at the bottom of the food chain.
Although the speed of flying fish swimming in the sea is not slow, it is much worse than fierce carnivorous fish such as swordfish and sailfish. In particular, the loach, known as the "ghost head knife", has become the biggest harvester of flying fish because of its huge size and agility.
You know, as a small fish in the ocean, flying fish usually move in groups, know how to "hug and warm", and swim together with huge fish to resist predators.
But when flying fish encounter loach, this method is not easy to make.
The loach is slightly larger, can grow up to 2 meters, and swims extremely fast, able to chase other fish at a speed of 30-50 kilometers per hour. The main thing is that the loach is also a group of fish. Therefore, in the ocean, there is often a group of loach chasing a group of flying fish to bite.
Flying fish, which are often "hunted down" by various marine creatures, are trembling and exhausted. Until hundreds of millions of years ago, in order to survive better, they had to evolve wing-like pectoral fins and exercise powerful tail fins.
Since then, the sea has leapt with fish, and the sky is high for "birds" to fly.
Flying fish, there is no way to the sky
Jumping out of the water does not represent a class leap, waiting for the flying fish is a round of "harvest" from the air.
Underwater, all kinds of ferocious carnivorous fish are staring at each other and chasing after them. The flying fish had just jumped out of the water, and before they could catch their breath, they had already been swept away by various birds hovering in the air. Among them, the frigate bird is represented.
Warship bird feathers have no oil, can not get wet, otherwise they will drown, can not dive into the water like pelicans, cormorants to fish. If they want to catch food, they can only catch fish close to the surface of the water, or rely on superb flying skills to snatch fish caught by other birds.
The flying fish that jumped out of the water provided a new food source for the frigate birds.
The frigate birds have been silently observing as they hover in the air, and once they see the waves chasing the waves on the surface of the water, they know that today's meal has fallen. When the flying fish was chased out of the water, the warship bird swooped down with a thunderous momentum and grabbed the flying fish in mid-air.
When the flying fish was still complacent about escaping from the "tiger's mouth", he did not know that he had long been reduced to food for the warship birds.
Say at the end
Do you want to say that flying fish are magical? Indeed magical, as a fish in the ocean that can "fly" in the air, flying fish allows us to see the magic of nature and the evolution of living things.
Unfortunately, the flying fish that was forced by life to evolve to be able to "fly" could not escape the fate of being swallowed. After hundreds of millions of years of hard work, a stick was beaten back to the prototype, and I thought that I had achieved a leap of class, but I did not know that the "harvest" was becoming more and more intense.