Sea robins are fish with ‘the wings of a bird and multiple legs like a crab’
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Some types of sea robins, a peculiar bottom-dwelling ocean fish, use taste bud-covered legs to sense and dig up prey along the seafloor, according to new research.
 
Sea robins are so adept at rooting out prey as they walk along the ocean floor on their six leglike appendages that other fish follow them around in the hope of snagging some freshly uncovered prey themselves, said the authors of two new studies published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.
 
David Kingsley, coauthor of both studies, first came across the fish in the summer of 2016 after giving a seminar at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Kingsley is the Rudy J. and Daphne Donohue Munzer Professor in the department of developmental biology at Stanford University’s School of Medicine.
 
Before leaving to catch a flight, Kingsley stopped at a small public aquarium, where he spied sea robins and their delicate fins, which resemble the feathery wings of a bird, as well as leglike appendages.
 
“The sea robins on display completely spun my head around because they had the body of a fish, the wings of a bird, and multiple legs like a crab,” Kingsley said in an email.
“I’d never seen a fish that looked like it was made of body parts from many different types of animals.”
Kingsley and his colleagues decided to study sea robins in a lab setting, uncovering a wealth of surprises, including the differences between sea robin species and the genetics responsible for their unusual traits, such as leglike fins that have evolved so that they largely function as sensory organs.
 
The findings of the study team’s new research show how evolution leads to complex adaptations in specific environments, such as the ability of sea robins to be able to “taste” prey using their quickly scurrying and highly sensitive appendages.