Crazy “missing link” Darwin fish can breathe air, walk on land AND climb trees!

Nathan Waltham/James Cook University

In Australia, there is a fish that has lungs, can walk on dry land, and breathe air, for up to six days. It’s not a new species, but it’s on the move. This has scientists warning that if the reaches the mainland, it could be devastating to native species, who are simply not equipped to share an environment with a super-powered creature such as this.

Nathan Waltham/James Cook University

The fish, known as the aggressive climbing perch, is just a little guy, ranging six to eight inches long at adulthood. Small stature aside, this critter is basically terrifying. It can “walk” on land, using its gill plates to crawl across the ground. The perch has lungs, as well as gills, so it can breathe air as well as any mammal—for up to six days, at least. This bizarre, evolutionary ‘missing link’ of fish can even suffocate a predator who attempts to swallow the perch, by swelling up inside the attacker’s throat. Oh, and did we mention it’s called a climbing perch because of its ability to climb trees? For real.

The climbing perch, originally discovered over 200 years ago, is native to Papua New Guinea and was already known to have spread to Indonesia. The land-loving fish has more recently been discovered in northern Australia, which has wildlife scientists more or less freaking out. An invasive species like this could spell “major disaster” for native animals, and it’s not just the other fish who are in danger, according to Nathan Waltham, an ecologist at Australia’s James Cook University. He believes this fish would also wreak havoc for turtle and bird populations. Waltham manages the TropWATER program, aimed at educating the public about this and other dangerous invasive species.

Let’s recap some of the amazing abilities of this freaky freshwater fish:

• walks on dry land
• has lungs and can breathe air for six days
• climbs trees!!!
• suffocates its predators from the inside
• can tolerate saltwater (despite being a freshwater dweller)
• hibernates in the mud for up to six months
• scares the begeezus out of rational humans

Via The Guardian and James Cook University

Images and video via Nathan Waltham/James Cook University

ORIGINAL: Inhabitat

by Cat DiStasio

07/27/2015

Stanford researcher warns sixth mass extinction is here

Image: Esteban De Armas/Shutterstock.com

And humans may struggle to survive it.
Biologists have used conservative new estimates to prove that vertebrate species on Earth are disappearing faster than at any time since the extinction of the dinosaurs, and humans are now at risk of being wiped out.

"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," one of the researchers, Paul Ehrlich from Stanford University in the US, said in a press release. Even worse, the research shows that we triggered the event ourselves.

Although many biologists have long believed that Earth is in the middle of a major extinction event, skeptics have argued that estimates were overstating how fast species were being wiped out as a result of inconsistent data.

Scientists work out whether we're in a major extinction event by comparing the current extinction rate to the background extinction rate - the rate at which you'd expect species to normally disappear.

By looking only at well-verified data and fossil records of vertebrates - our best-studied group of organisms - the new research came up with a background extinction rate that's twice as high as previous estimates.

But even using this background rate and the most conservative species loss estimates, the researchers found that animals are still being wiped out around 15 to 100 times faster than they should be - in fact, the rate of species loss hasn't been this high since the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago.

"Rather than the nine extinctions among vertebrates that would be expected to have occurred in normal geological circumstances since 1900, their conservative estimate adds in another 468 extinctions, spread among mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish," Jan Zalasiewizc writes for The Guardian.

At this rate, the team estimates that around 41 percent of all amphibian species and 26 percent of all mammals will be wiped out.

Such dramatic biodiversity loss will also put humans in danger within just three generations, the team estimates, particularly if we also lose crucial pollinators such as the honeybee.

"If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on," said one of the lead researchers, Gerardo Ceballos from the Universidad Autónoma de México.

"We are sawing off the limb that we are sitting on," added Ehrlich.

The researchers also found that the main culprit for this mass extinction isn't a major event such as a volcanic eruptions or meteor strike. Instead, it's human activity. The researchers found the following four activities had been particularly damaging:

• Land clearing for farming, logging and settlement
• Introduction of invasive species
• Carbon emissions that drive climate change and ocean acidification
• Toxins that alter and poison ecosystems

"We emphasise that our calculations very likely underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis, because our aim was to place a realistic lower bound on humanity's impact on biodiversity," the researchers write in the journal Science Advances, where their results are published.

But it's not all bad news - the researchers remarked that we could still avoid such steep biodiversity loss through intense conservation action. "But that window of opportunity is rapidly closing," they conclude.

Hopefully the threat of wiping out our own species will be enough to finally make us sit up and take action. Find out more about the research in the Stanford University video below.

There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity's existence. That is the bad news at the center of a new study by a group of scientists including Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.
Read more: http://stanford.io/1RgQBMj

Read these next:

WATCH: The Sixth Extinction - this time, we're the asteroid

Earth has entered a new epoch, and we caused it

Here are the 15 vertebrates most likely to become extinct next


ORIGINAL: Science Alert

FIONA MACDONALD
22 JUN 2015