This is a fish called a bichir.
Bichirs are found in Africa, and like all fish, they live in water.
That is, until they met researcher Emily Standen, who's working at McGill University in Canada.
Standen thought that she would try raising bichirs on land. Why, you ask?
To see if it helps them walk. It isn't quite
as mad as it sounds. Let's go back a step.
Bichirs, unusually among fish, actually have lungs as well as gills, so they can breathe air.
But having lungs doesn't mean you can walk,
as demonstrated by this lunged fish's failed attempts at perambulation.
But there are fish that do take tentative steps on to land.
Arguably, the masters of fishy walking
are these – mud skippers.
Bichirs too can make flappy forays over land, but they walk in a very different way.
In fact, scientists think they walk like the ancestors of all tetrapods might have walked – 'fishapods', if you will.
Studying how they react to a terrestrial environment could help us understand
how the very first fishy footsteps were taken on land.
Standen's bichirs grew up in a decidedly damp but totally terrestrial environment.
She and her team set up some high-speed cameras, placed the bichirs on a stage and let them go.
They compared their walking abilities with those of bichirs raised more traditionally,
you know, in water, and they saw some differences – subtle but distinct.
The land-lovers lifted their heads higher, planted their fins more efficiently,
and slipped less often than their aquatic associates.
This suggests that bichirs have the ability to modify their behaviour in response to their environment,
a concept called plasticity.
This is the first time that plasticity has been shown to be a potential facilitator of such a major evolutionary steps
as our ancestors crawling out of the seas and onto land. But it doesn't stop there.
When Standen examined the skeletons of her land-living bichirs,
she found that their muscles and bones had changed as they adapted to walking.
It appears that the bichir's anatomy
is as plastic as their behaviour.
These changes looked strikingly similar to the changes scientists see in the fossil record,
as ancient species started making the transition to land.
It might not look elegant but don't be deceived.
After all, one small flappy step of our fishy
ancestors may have led to the giant leaps of mankind.
