Researchers studied the habits of a "legless, leaping fish that lives on land."
The peculiar creature uses camouflage to hide from prey such as crabs, lizards, and even birds, a University of New South Wales news release reported.
The "fish" are called Pacific leaping blennies
"This terrestrial fish spends all of its adult life living on the rocks in the splash zone, hopping around defending its territory, feeding and courting mates. They offer a unique opportunity to discover in a living animal how the transition from water to the land has taken place," Doctor Terry Ord, of the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, said.
The research team looked at five different color varieties of the fish in the region and compared them to their habitats such as the rocks they rested on.
"They were virtually identical in each case. The fish's body colour is camouflaged to match the rocks, presumably so they aren't obvious to predators," Ord said.
The team used plasticine to create incredibly lifelike models of the predatory fish.
"We put lots of these model blennies on the rocks where the fish live, as well as on an adjacent beach where their body [color] against the sand made them much more conspicuous to predators," Ord said. "After several days we collected the models and recorded how often birds, lizards and crabs had attacked them from the marks in the plasticine. We found the models on the sand were attacked far more frequently than those on the rocks.
The team believes their finding suggests the blennies are highly-adapted to camouflage on the rocks they live on.
The team also compared the blennies' body color to those of other species of fish living in the same areas, some of which also spent some of their time on land.
"These species provide an evolutionary snapshot of each stage of the land invasion by fish," Ord said.
The team believes in their development, the blennies were already adapted to camouflage with the rocks before they moved ashore.
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This article has been edited to include a correction.
