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Snipped from DailyMail.co.uk.
Some of the arguers against evolution ask, “Well, if evolution exists, where are the species that are evolving themselves? Or middle-species?” Well, although there doesn’t need to be a middle species, this story may give a debater of evolution some ammunition. If a middle species is what you want then a killfish (among many more, but let’s stick with this one) is what you get. Here is a fish that is adapting has adapted to surviving outside of water for longer than thought possible.
This is really cool, and can be proof that life can originate in the ocean and end up evolving to become land species like what we see today. So there you go bible belchers, there is your proof. Now pack up your stuff and play somewhere else.
Here is a small portion of the article:
The discovery, along with its ability to breed without a mate, must make the mangrove killifish, Rivulus marmoratus Poey, one of the oddest fish known to man.
Around two inches long, they normally live in muddy pools and the flooded burrows of crabs in the mangrove swamps of Florida, Latin American and Caribbean.
The latest discovery was made by biologists wading through swamps in Belize and Florida who found hundreds of killifish hiding out of the water in the rotting branches and trunks of trees.
The fish had flopped their way to their new homes when their pools of water around the roots of mangroves dried up. Inside the logs, they were lined up end to end along tracks carved out by insects.
Dr Scott Taylor of the Brevard County Environmentally Endangered Lands Programme in Florida admitted the creatures were a little odd.
“They really don’t meet standard behavioural criteria for fish,” he told New Scientist magazine.
Although the cracks inside logs make a perfect hiding place, conditions can be cramped. The fish – which are usually fiercely territorial – are forced to curb their aggression.
Another study, published earlier this year, revealed how they alter their bodies and metabolism to cope with life out of water.
Their gills are altered to retain water and nutrients, while they excrete nitrogen waste through their skin.
These changes are reversed as soon as they return to the water.
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