Re: Great in the air, not so good underwater

[Michael Habib <mhabib5@jhmi.edu>]

On Thursday, December 7, 2006, at 10:00 PM, jrc wrote:

> Hatchet fish fly by means of flapping flight, but not very well (or 
> very far).

Good point; though the last I heard that classic bit of strangeness may 
not be true after all.  I'll check on it, but I'm pretty certain that 
someone has finally done a kinematic study on hatchet fish leaps and 
confirmed that their trajectory is a simple ballistic path.  I saw a 
reference to it in a review paper (either Vogel or David Alexander, I 
think).  In any case, hatchet fish swim mostly by caudal action, so 
they wouldn't be an amphibious flyer in the way that I had in mind, but 
I should have been more specific.

Cheers,

--Mike