These Fish Use Their Legs (Yes, Legs) to Taste | Science Friday

Your legs may help you get around, but what if they could also help you sniff out a snack? That’s a trick achieved by a fish called the sea robin. The fish, which lives on the seafloor, has an unusual appearance, with wing-like fins and leg-like appendages that it uses to walk along the ocean bottom. But in work published this week in the journal Current Biology, researchers report that those legs are also chemical sensing organs that can taste for prey buried under the sand.

Dr. Nicholas Bellono, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, first learned of the unusual fish on a visit to the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where he was planning to obtain squid and octopus for another research project. MBL workers [Scott Bennett] showed Bellono and colleagues the sea robin, and explained that they have a reputation for being able to locate hidden prey—to the point that other organisms will follow the sea robin, hoping to get in on the meal.

The intrigued researchers brought some sea robins back to the lab, and began a series of experiments to better understand their prey-sniffing abilities. Hear the Science Friday segment here.

More coverage of this research report, whose co-authors include MBL Whitman Scientist and former Grass Fellow Amy Herbert, is here:

This Fish Evolved Legs That It Uses to Taste Stuff on the Seafloor | The New York Times

Sea robins are fish with ‘the wings of a bird and multiple legs like a crab’ | CNN

‘Crazy little fish have a lot to tell us’: sea robins use ‘legs’ to taste way to prey | The Guardian (UK)

Researchers Discover How a Fish With Legs Uses Them To Find Food | Discover