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Why fish jump and how they do it
ABC Science
By Anna Salleh
Posted Wednesday at 12:29
Fish contort their body so they can spring forward and often out of the water (Supplied: Richard Jupe)
Have you ever wandered along the banks of a river and suddenly, out of the corner of your eye, you see a fish leap out of the water?
As they plop back in, do you wonder how on earth do these leg-less creatures manage to jump — and why?
It turns out fish get around in a whole lot of ways other than swimming — apart from jumping, they can glide, squiggle and even flip on their tail and do multiple somersaults in the air.
A fish can contort its muscular body and use its fins in all kinds of imaginative ways to become airborne, said biomechanist Miriam Ashley-Ross of Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
And here are six reasons why they bother.
More:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-01-03/why-do-fish-jump-and-how/10519986?section=science
