In southeast Asia, archerfish spit streams of water at insects outside the water, knocking them in and making them convenient targets for gobbling. There are only seven known species of fish that use this hunting technique, and they’ve gotten quite good at it. Archerfish are able to calibrate the velocity of their spit to precisely hit their targets, using water as a weapon.
In this beautiful Deep Look video, we learn about the archerfish, its impressive spitting ability…and its puzzling ability to recognize human faces. Crank this up to 4K resolution and enjoy:
For more on the archerfish and the research discussed in the video, check out this KQED blog post. You might also enjoy our coverage of those archerfish face-recognition experiments.
February 4, 2017 – 4:00am