“Thou hast made . . . the seas, and all that is therein, and Thou preservest them all.”
Nehemiah 9:6
Many books have been written about amazing fish. We have already learned about a few of these fish in the last two articles. Here are a few more.
In Java, a three-inch fish protects itself from enemies above by swimming upside down under a floating leaf drifting in the wind. In this position it is on the lookout for tiny minnows below, darting down and swallowing one or more before returning to its leaf cover.
A snail that crawls along the bottom finds its meals mainly on sponges. It has a companion, a small shrimp, riding on its back. The shrimp snatches bits of food that are stirred up as the snail disturbs the sandy bottom.
Another free rider is the remora. It has a suction cup on top of its head which it uses to cling to the side or bottom of a shark or other large fish. Being lazy by nature, it is quite satisfied to live its entire life in this unusual way, eating scraps of food which drop from the shark’s mouth.
The archerfish gets its name because of the accuracy with which it shoots out a stream of water from its mouth (like the arrow of an archer) and captures an insect resting on a plant, sometimes as far as ten feet away! The sudden dousing from this water startles the insect from its perch and, its wings being too wet to fly, it drops to the water where the archerfish snaps it up.
The anabas of Africa can travel surprising distances overland, seeking a new home when the water dries up in which it normally lives. The Creator has provided this unusual fish with “reservoirs” of water inside its body, enabling it to survive during these travels.
When the female tipona expels her eggs, her male companion immediately catches them in his mouth and carries them around for eleven days before they hatch and swim away.
Croakers have choruses which are not always pleasant to human ears. From May to late September in La Jolla, California, they often begin “singing” about sunset. The volume of their “chorus” keeps increasing for two or three hours with a soft drumming sound in the background -sometimes quite annoying to people living nearby.
The psalmist was one who walked close to the Lord and delighted in the things of His creation. He wrote, “I will remember the works of the Lord: surely I will remember Thy wonders of old” (Psalm 77:11). As you think of the grand scope of His creation, can you say with certainty, “Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord He is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else” (Deuteronomy 4:39)?
FEBRUARY 20, 2005
ML-02/20/2005