Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1886 — Fish That Climb. [ARTICLE]

Fish That Climb.

Of all land-frequenting fish, says Grant Allen in Popular Science Monthly, by far the most famous is the so-called climbing perch of India, •which not only walks bodily out of the water, but even climbs trees by means of special spines near the head and tail, so arranged as to stick in the bark and enable it to wriggle its way up awkwardly, soniething after the same fashion as the 1 “looping" of caterpillars. The tree-climber is a small, scaly fish, seldom more than severr inches long; but it has developed a special breathing apparatus to enable it to keep up the stock of oxygen on its terrestrial excursions, which may be regarded as to some extent the exact converse of the means employed by divers to supply themselves with air under water. Just above the gills, which ferm, of course, its natural hereditary breathing apparatus, the climbing perch has invented a new and wholly original water chamber, containing within it a frilled, bony organ, which enables it to extract oxygen from the stored-up water during the course of its aerial peregrinations. While on shore it picks up small insects, worms, and grubs, but it also has vegetarian tastes of its own, and does not despise fruits and berries. Tihe Indian jugglers tame the climbing perches and carry them about with them as part of their stock in trade; their ability to live for a long time out of water makes them useful "fconfederates in many small tricks which seem very wonderful to people accustomed to believe that fish die almost at once whoa taken out of their native element.