u/Accurate_Tip3742 — reddlx

I've spent the last few months obsessing over fish facts, and I genuinely can't stop thinking about archerfish.

These things spit precise jets of water to knock insects off branches above the surface — and they automatically compensate for the way light bends at the water's surface. No training. Just instinct.

A few others that broke my brain along the way:

Four-eyed fish: their eyes are split into two sections, letting them see above and below the water surface simultaneously
Electric eels: they can discharge up to 600 volts, using low-voltage pulses to sense their environment and high-voltage bursts to stun prey
Lungfish: they can survive buried in dried mud for up to 4 years, waiting for rain
Yellow boxfish: its boxy shape looked so aerodynamically efficient that Mercedes-Benz modeled an entire concept car after it in 2005, mimicking both its low-drag body form and its rigid honeycomb-like exoskeleton for the car's body structure
Anglerfish: when a male finds a female, he bites into her body and slowly fuses with her completely, bloodstreams merging, until he becomes a permanent attachment. A single female can carry multiple males on her body at once

I kept falling down these rabbit holes while building Fishly, a fish ID app I built mostly to satisfy my own curiosity. The core idea was simple: snap a photo of any fish and get not just the name, but the full story — habitat, behavior, and yes, their weird superpowers.

If you're curious, it's available on App Store and Google Play

What's the most surprising fish fact you've come across?