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Aerial locomotion in marine animals

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Flying fish taxis after taking off from underwater.

Various marine animals are capable of aerial locomotion, i.e., jumping out of the water and moving through air. Some possible reasons for this behavior are hunting, escaping from predators, and saving energy for swimming or breathing. Some of the jumping behaviors initiate gliding and taxiing in air, while some of them end up falling back to water.

Penetrating water surface

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The speed of motion in air is faster than in water because of drag force. The drag force is proportional to density of the fluid. The animal jumping out of water will feel almost no drag, since the air density is 1,000 times less than water density. Usually animals gain thrust for the jumping as how they lift themselves underwater. Some of them are group behavior.

Mechanism

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Jet propulsion

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Jet propulsion generates thrust and momentum by shooting out water jets. Flying squid is known for their behavior of leaping out of the water. Ommastrephinae and Todarodinae are two subfamilies of squids under the family of Ommastrephidae. They utilize jet propulsion to jump out of water as they do underwater, including Japanese flying squid..,[1] Humboldt squid,[2] Neon flying squid, sevenstar flying squid, and Wellington flying squid. Squid flight may be thought to reduce the cost of migration.[2] The acceleration of Sthenoteuthis pteropus in air is 265 body lengths/s2 (24.5 m/s2), which is found to exceed that in water (79 body lengths/s2).

Tail beating

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The fish approach the water surface at high speed (about 10 m/s in large fish; 20-30 body lengths/s) with their lateral fins furled against the body. They get accelerated by beating their tails rapidly, and break through the water surface at a shallow angle to the horizontal. Four fish in ray-finned fish family (Beloniformes) and salmon have this jumping behavior. The ray-finned fish includes needlefish,[3] flyingfish,[4] halfbeak,[3] and sauries. Salmon jump out waterfalls during upstream spawning migrations.[3]

Halfbeak usually swims just near the water surface.
Oncorhynchus tschawytscha chinook salmon fish in river

C-start

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C-start is escape reflex employed by fish. The fish move upward by curving their slender body as a letter C.[5] Most of the fish jump out of water by C-start. Freshwater butterflyfish jumps out of water by curving its body.[6] The fish is known for its enlarged pectoral fins but it falls back to water instead of gliding.[6] Freshwater hatchetfish exhibits a ballistic aerial path.[6]

Porpoising

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Porpoising is high-speed swimming close to water surface with many leaving and re-entering the water nose-first. Dolphin, Penguin, and Seal porpoise in the wild. Dolphin saves energy at high speed porpoising.[7][8] Penguin porpoises in group for long-distance traveling.[9] Seal porpoises as group play[10]

Other

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The mechanisms and jumping patterns of some aquatic animals are not clear. Mobula penetrates sea surface by many photo evidences.[11] Great white shark attacks seals near water surface at Seal Island in South Africa[12]

Mobula jumps out of water.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Muramatsu, K., J. Yamamoto, T. Abe, K. Sekiguchi, N. Hoshi, and Y. Sakurai. 2013. "Oceanic Squid Do Fly." Marine Biology 160 (5): 1171–75. doi:10.1007/s00227-013-2169-9
  2. ^ a b O’Dor, Ron, Julia Stewart, William Gilly, John Payne, Teresa Cerveira Borges, and Tierney Thys. 2013. "Squid Rocket Science: How Squid Launch into Air." Deep-Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography 95: 113–18. doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2012.07.002
  3. ^ a b c Lauritzen, D. V., F. Hertel, and M. S. Gordon. 2005. "A Kinematic Examination of Wild Sockeye Salmon Jumping up Natural Waterfalls." Journal of Fish Biology 67 (4): 1010–20. doi:10.1111/j.0022-1112.2005.00799.x
  4. ^ Davenport, John. 1994. "How and Why Do Flying Fish Fly?" Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries 4 (2): 184–214. doi:10.1007/BF00044128
  5. ^ Weihs, D. 1972. "A Hydrodynamical Analysis of Fish Turning Manoeuvres" Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 182 (1066): 59-72 JSTOR 76303
  6. ^ a b c Saidel, William M., Gabriel F. Strain, and Shannon K. Fornari. 2004. "Characterization of the Aerial Escape Response of the African Butterfly Fish, Pantodon Buchholzi Peters." Environmental Biology of Fishes 71 (1): 63–72. doi:10.1023/B:EBFI.0000043153.38418.cd
  7. ^ Au, D., and D. Weihs. 1980. "At High Speeds Dolphins Save Energy by Leaping." Nature 284 (5756): 548–50. doi:10.1038/284548a0
  8. ^ Weihs, D. 2002. "Dynamics of Dolphin Porpoising Revisited" Integrative and Comparative Biology 42 (5): 1071-1078 JSTOR 3884627
  9. ^ Yoda, K., K. Sato, Y. Niizuma, M. Kurita, C. Bost, Y. Le Maho, and Y. Naito. 1999. "Precise Monitoring of Porpoising Behaviour of Adelie Penguins Determined Using Acceleration Data Loggers." Journal of Experimental Biology 202 (22): 3121–26.
  10. ^ Wilson, Susan. 1974. "Juvenile Play of the Common Seal Phoca vitulina vitulina with Comparative Notes on the Grey Seal Halichoerus grypus" Behaviour 48 (1/2): 37-60 JSTOR 4533561
  11. ^ Albert, Paul. 2007. "The flying mobulas of the Sea of Cortez" Archived 2013-05-04 at the Wayback Machine Underwater Naturalist
  12. ^ Martin, R. Aidan, Neil Hammerschlag, Ralph S. Collier, and Chris Fallows. 2005. "Predatory Behaviour of White Sharks (Carcharodon Carcharias) at Seal Island, South Africa." Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 85 (05): 1121–35. doi:10.1017/S002531540501218X
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