Tuesday Crustie: Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

This week, the focus is not so much on what a crustacean looks like as what it can do.

Waach this little speck – a copepod – faced with being eaten by a fish.



According to Gemmell and colleagues, when a copepod leaps out of the water this, only one fish out of all they tested was then able to catch the escaping crustacean.

And here is is in high speed. It’s too bad that it’s so fast that you can’t get in any closer, because the beast would immediately have gone out of focus.



For more, check out the story from the indefatiguable Ed Yong: “Flying plankton take to the air to flee from fish.”

Reference

Gemmell B, Jiang H, Strickler J, Buskey E. 2012. Plankton reach new heights in effort to avoid predators. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: In press. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2012.0163