[HN Gopher] Photographer captures image of rare fish that walks ...
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       Photographer captures image of rare fish that walks on its 'hands'
        
       Author : bryan0
       Score  : 115 points
       Date   : 2023-02-20 15:34 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
        
       | hooverd wrote:
       | You missed your chance, pal!
        
       | gnudity wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | aklemm wrote:
       | They taste a little like people too.
        
       | luxuryballs wrote:
       | I'm guessing he didn't try one breaded and fried? That would be
       | an awesome culinary blog, guy follows researchers around and
       | makes unique dishes with the various exotic creatures they find.
        
         | pvaldes wrote:
         | As any other fish that eats mainly other fishes, should be
         | tasty, but is small and endangered also, so we shouldn't do it.
         | 
         | I'm all about breeding <endangered life thing> massively even
         | if we the price is to fry and eat a small amount of them as a
         | result. Each extra dollar to conservation of obscure animals
         | counts in large amounts, but frogfish reproduction has some
         | characteristics that made very complicated to breed them. They
         | can't breed in normal aquariums.
        
       | gavmor wrote:
       | > Of the red handfish, only 100 adults are thought to remain,
       | while the Ziebell's hasn't been spotted in the wild since 2007.
       | 
       | Well this is actually quite sad.
        
       | werdnapk wrote:
       | These handfish are related to frogfish which look pretty similar
       | overall.
        
         | quietthrow wrote:
         | Bingo! Came here to post the same.
        
       | GalenErso wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
         | sgregnt wrote:
         | Well, if humanity is unique in this, we are the only species to
         | make this far in the entire universe, that's pretty cool that
         | we have all these technologies and we should keep going. If we
         | are not unique. why worry about this? Not unique, then this is
         | probably a natural path the same as going from a bacteria to a
         | walking fish, just a few steps further down the evolution...
        
         | brink wrote:
         | What I'm about to say is controversial, but "better" is not
         | possible without meaning, meaning is not possible without
         | overcoming evil. Without man to interpret the meaning of it,
         | there's no meaningful difference between a decimated world, or
         | a world that sustains itself for trillions of years since
         | there's no measure to tell anything what is "good" or "bad".
        
         | TheRealPomax wrote:
         | No, they didn't. Nice and glib statement, but there's _almost
         | four hundred million years_ between those two things. Reasoning
         | backwards and pretending it 's a straight line from A to B is
         | kinda ridiculous: _all land-based non-arthropod animals_ went
         | from "basically this" to whatever they are today. You want to
         | talk about homo sapiens, you're gonna have to stop at
         | hominoids. Anything before that and it's meaningless
         | commentary.
        
           | GalenErso wrote:
           | My comment was not completely serious, as should have been
           | obvious.
           | 
           | Don't take yourself too seriously. Don't be the "akchually"
           | guy.
        
             | TheRealPomax wrote:
             | Don't be that "I wish we never existed" guy in an HN
             | comment, either =)
        
             | hungryforcodes wrote:
             | I upvoted you -- saw the joke :)
        
         | wkat4242 wrote:
         | That wouldn't work. WiFi doesn't work underwater!
         | 
         | You wouldn't want to swim around dragging an Ethernet cable all
         | day, right?
         | 
         | For this reason it was inevitable for us to evolve asa land
         | species.
        
           | whitehexagon wrote:
           | Unless those hands have evolved for communicating over all
           | the fiber optic cables lying around down there.
        
       | tjpnz wrote:
       | See you in 400-million years.
        
         | euroderf wrote:
         | and the fish is thinking, OK they call me a missing link, but a
         | missing link to _what_ exactly ?
        
           | silisili wrote:
           | Perhaps saw the last couple presidents and decided to go back
           | to the ocean and forget that whole evolution thing.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | So you see a fish walking and you take a ... photo?
        
       | pvaldes wrote:
       | It walks exactly like any other frogfish in the family
       | Antennariidae.
       | 
       | Updated: In fact is in a related but different family
       | Brachionichthyidae. An endemism, endangered and interesting but,
       | apart of this, is a typical member of the order Lophiiformes.
        
       | contingo wrote:
       | Many different groups of fish have independently evolved
       | locomotion by "walking" on modified pectoral fins. One of my
       | favorite examples are the bamboo sharks, among which are some
       | pretty recently described species:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiscyllium_halmahera
        
         | andrewflnr wrote:
         | What's the selective pressure there? Is it enough that it's
         | less energy intensive than swimming, and their environment lets
         | them get away with it?
        
           | pvaldes wrote:
           | Is a benthic predator, so I would assume stealth.
        
           | natch wrote:
           | There's the reward conferred by being able to get further
           | into shallow areas and take advantage of the additional food
           | options they might offer over and above what's available in
           | deeper water. Transition zones are abundant with life and
           | thus food.
        
       | brunorsini wrote:
       | Always fascinating to see evolution arrive at similar outcomes in
       | vastly distanced species / environments. Not only the "hands" are
       | so familiar to us, the whole animal resembles an axolotl.
        
       | Maursault wrote:
       | All of the colors we see, whether accurate or not, are digital
       | post-processing lies. It's just not possible to capture images
       | with colors like that underwater. The image of the spotted
       | handfish, however, does seem to be the most honest of the bunch,
       | except for its saturated blue eye.
        
         | wholinator2 wrote:
         | Why not? I mean, in total darkness you're not capturing
         | anything. But it looks like the human has a light for
         | navigation, and the camera gear presumably has the ability to
         | emit light. And that light interacts with the matter in the
         | fish and some of it comes back to the camera. How is it any
         | different that taking a picture with the flash on at night?
         | 
         | And if you're referring to the water, can't you just seal a
         | heavy duty camera and use that? Is there something about Deep
         | water that desaturates all light that passes through even less
         | than a meter of it?
        
       | blakesterz wrote:
       | The original photographer has some really cool galleries on his
       | site.
       | 
       | https://www.nicolaslenaremy.com/-/galleries/themes
        
         | _puk wrote:
         | Thanks for that. Some incredible pictures on there.
         | 
         | It's an astonishingly fast website too, considering how image
         | heavy it is!
         | 
         | Not come across photodeck [0] before, but kudos to them. That's
         | an incredibly pleasant website to navigate.
         | 
         | 0: https://www.photodeck.com/
        
       | nicbou wrote:
       | "spotted handfish" is the Boaty McBoatface of fish names. Well
       | done!
        
         | bitwize wrote:
         | If I had one I'd call him Mr. Splashy Pants. Or maybe Mr. Sandy
         | Hands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGqdjaz2Upg
        
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       (page generated 2023-02-20 23:00 UTC)