While being a "fish out of water" sounds like a bad thing for most of us, there are actually a surprising number of fish that have evolved to emerge from their subaqueous homes and onto land. Much like frogs, who live a life of half-and-half, these fish are amphibious.
Take the lungfish, a family of ancient fish from about 400 million years ago, which do indeed have lungs, and will drown if they spend too much time underwater. Eel catfish, meanwhile, can propel themselves out of the muddy swamps they inhabit to lunge at their favorite terrestrial snacks, like beetles. Then there are grunions, sardine-sized fish that leave the water during mating season and lay their eggs in the sand across beaches in California.
But among the amphibious fish, it is the mudskipper, arguably, that has best perfected its ability to thrive on land.
What Is a Mudskipper?
Mudskippers — of which there are 25 species, inhabiting mudflats, swamps, and mangrove forests from Africa to South Asia to South America — spend more than half of their life on land, doing everything from eating to mating out of the water.
