WATCH: Weird, Blind Walking Cavefish May Hold Evolutionary Secret, NJ Scientists Say

Newark, NJ – What’s blind, can walk up waterfalls and may hold the key to understanding how fish evolved to walk on land?

Researchers with the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark recently announced that they have identified unique anatomical features in a species of blind, walking cavefish in Thailand that enable the fish to walk and climb waterfalls in a manner comparable to tetrapods, or four-footed mammals and amphibians.

The discovery of this capability - not seen in any other living fishes - has implications for understanding how the anatomy that all species need to walk on land evolved after the transition from finned to limbed appendages in the Devonian period, which began some 420 million years ago, researchers claim.

Watch the NJIT video about the discovery below.

The group of NJIT researchers, which included Brooke E. Flammang, Daphne Soares, Julie Markiewicz and Apinun Suvarnaraksha, shared their data in an abstract that can be seen online here.

According to a university news release, Flammang and Soares, assistant professors in the NJIT Department of Biological Sciences, were assisted with the research by Markiewicz, an NJIT post-baccalaureate research volunteer in the Flammang lab at the university. Investigator Suvarnaraksha is a member of the Faculty of Fisheries Technology and Aquatic Resources of Maejo University in Thailand.

“[Cryptotora thamicola] possesses morphological features that have previously only been attributed to tetrapods,” Flammang stated. “The pelvis and vertebral column of this fish allow it to support its body weight against gravity and provide large sites for muscle attachment for walking.”

“This research gives us insight into the plasticity of the fish body plan and the convergent morphological features that were seen in the evolution of tetrapods,” she added.

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Video by NJIT