Deep Sea Fish Chaunax Pictus Uses its Fins to Walk Around

Walking fish

The Chaunax pictus, a large-mouth pink sea toad, was discovered near Puerto Rico by Okeanos Explorer, an oceanographic exploration boat of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric NOAA. This fish, about forty centimeters long, live in most of the tropical and temperate waters except the Caribbean Sea at a depth of 200 to 600 meters. He moves in a quite fashionable way by using his 4 fins like legs such as quadruped mammals, amphibians or salamanders.

Which fishes has feet

But it is not the only fish that walks, other species do the same. The cat fish, also called Chaetostoma microps, uses its anterior fins to crawl, taking support alternately on one then on the other of its so called “legs”. The Cryptotora thamicola, a small cave-like cavernicole fish that lives in the northern part of Thailand is only few centimeters long and moves on the walls of the caves in the same way. There are also fishes, called Oxudercinae, that walks in water and on land, but I will tell you about it in another article of the blog.

The study of these species is very important for humankind because it can explain how and why fish came out of the water to come on solid ground millions of years ago.