In Ukraine it has been learned how important air defense and the ability to strike from afar are in warfare. Modern anti-aircraft systems cost hundreds of millions. They track even a small target from a long distance and shoot it down with a missile.
Then we have shooter fish. Kala doesn’t cost a hundred million, but it can do amazing tricks too, even though it has a much simpler mainframe.
Forelegs shooter fish live in Southeast Asia and Oceania. They are known for their amazing ability to shoot down insects with a jet of water.
When a fish sees an insect stopped on a plant leaf near the shore, it swims to the surface and sprays a jet of water from its mouth, which drops the insect into the water as prey for the shooter fish.
The fish usually hits the pole on the first try and can shoot insects from up to three meters away.
The trick would be difficult even for a person equipped with a water gun, but the fish also has to take into account the distortion caused by the refraction of light on the surface of the water. When viewed from below the surface, the object is not quite where it seems to be.
And, of course, the fish also knows how to take the distance into account when it calculates how much pressure it loads into the water jet. Sometimes it may catch the bug directly in flight, either with a water gun or by jumping out of the water. What a nice apple!
Shooter fish the target search system amazes even researchers.
Namely, it has been found that shooter fish are able to recognize human faces. It has not been thought that fish would be able to do this, since they do not have the same developed cerebral cortex as mammals.
In addition, it is difficult to distinguish the faces from each other, because in the end they are quite similar: two eyes, a nose and a mouth, only at slightly different distances from each other.
However, the fish only learned to recognize a certain face board when they were taught to aim at it hoping for a treat. The study was published Scientific Reports – in the scientific journal.
The fish spit right at the face image of a real person with up to 86 percent accuracy, even though the alternatives were face images edited to look almost exactly the same. The University of Oxford and the University of Queensland have also published about the experiment video.