After delivering a guest lecture on sticklebacks, an unfamiliar fish caught Stanford University researcher David Kingsley’s eye. When he walked past an aquarium at the Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory, a strange aquatic creature stopped him in his tracks.
“I did this huge double take because I looked in this one tank, and there was one of the weirdest fish I've ever seen,” says Kingsley. “It had the body of a fish, the wings of a bird, and it was walking along the bottom of the tank on six legs. It almost looked like a centaur or something.”
That was the first of three serendipitous moments that led a team of biologists to understand how the fish, called a sea robin, uses its legs to find food. Not only do the legs have an acute sense of touch, but they also “wear” the piscine equivalents of taste buds on their ...
