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Profs and Pints DC presents: “When Fish Walk,” a fascinating look at those species that do just fine outside water, with Noah Bressman, a professor of fish biology at Salisbury University and researcher of amphibious fish.
When you mentally picture a fish, you probably envision something that lives in an ocean, lake, stream, or even a fish tank. What you might not know is that there are hundreds of species of fish that come onto land—not amphibians, but something way cooler.
Come learn about the wacky world of walking fish with Noah Bressman, who has spent more than a decade researching them and authored a TED-Ed lesson on them. He got sucked into the world of amphibious fish research in college when he found one alive in a hallway and asked, “How did you get here?!” It set him off on a scholarly journey that, like the fish’s, has been one long strange trip.
He’ll discuss why some fish, and not others, come onto land, as well as where they go when they get there. You’ll learn the various ways what creatures with the bodies of fish move about outside water.
It turns out that fish come onto land for a variety of reasons. Some hop out of the water for a second to avoid predators. Others hang out in damp logs for a month or two eating crickets. Some can even burrow into the mud and survive in a brick for years, waiting for some rain.
While you won’t find any fish on the floor in Penn Social, you’ll get introduced to some local amphibious fishes that might literally be in your backyard. They include the invasive northern snakehead and the noble little mummichog.
If you ever hear a joke that begins “A fish walks into a bar,” you’ll know how plausible that scenario might be. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: Atlantic mudskippers on shore in Gambia. (Photo by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen / Wikimedia Commons.)
