Professor Alice Gibb and her research team at Northern Arizona University witnessed a small amphibious fish, the mangrove rivulus, jump with apparent skill and purpose out of a small net and back into the water. This was no random flop, like you might see from a trout that’s just been landed. The rivulus seemed to know what it was doing. Gibb said the study “supports a big-picture theory in evolution,” which is that the nervous system, in its control of bones and muscles, can allow a new behavior to appear without necessarily bringing about a physical change. According to the researchers this can be used as a example of how life changes to its own benefit. Also Gibb said, “This shows that you don’t have to have legs or rigid pectoral fins to move around on land. So if you go back and look at the fossil record to try to say which fish could move around on land, you’d have a hard time knowing for sure.” This new theory has made some scientist rethink how fishes started to move on land.
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