walking fish

noun

1. any of various fishes able to survive and move about for short periods of time on land, as the mudskipper or climbing perch.

Word History and Origins

Origin of walking fish¹

First recorded in 1860–65

Example Sentences

"Scott Bennett from the Marine Resource Center has worked with me since I studied electroreception in sharks as a postdoc and knows I appreciate weird creatures, so he showed us sea robins, or 'walking' fish with legs as he called them. He told us the stories about how other fish follow them around because they are so good at sensing and uncovering buried prey on the seafloor."

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“I’m not sure the world is aware these fish are amazing genetic models for humans. I tell people we’re walking fish,” says environmental biologist Keith Tierney at the University of Alberta in Canada.

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Mr. Servan-Schreiber is “Scepter,” for the knife-hewn walking stick he totes; Ms. Gannon is “Axolotl,” a salamander nicknamed the walking fish — a coded reference to her love of swimming.

Read more on New York Times

The axolotl, sometimes called the Mexican walking fish, is a cheerful tube sock with four legs, a crown of feathery gills and a long, tapered tail fin.

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But the axolotl—a large salamander also called the Mexican walking fish because it looks like a 20-centimeter eel with stumpy legs—can replace an entire missing limb or even its tail, which means regrowing the spinal cord, backbone, and muscles.

Read more on Science Magazine