Just above the gills, which form of course its natural
hereditary breathing apparatus, the climbing perch has invented a new
and wholly original water chamber, containing within it a frilled bony
organ, which enables it to extract oxygen from the stored-up water
during the course of its aerial peregrinations. While on shore it picks
up small insects, worms, and grubs; but it also has vegetarian tastes of
its own, and does not despise fruits and berries. The Indian jugglers
tame the climbing perches and carry them about with them as part of
their stock in trade; their ability to live for a long time out of water
makes them useful confederates in many small tricks which seem very
wonderful to people accustomed to believe that fish die almost at once
when taken out of their native element.
The Indian snakehead is a closely allied species, common in the shallow
ponds and fresh-water tanks of India, where holy Brahmans bathe and
drink and die and are buried, and most of which dry up entirely during
the dry season. The snakehead, therefore, has similarly accommodated
himself to this annual peculiarity in his local habitation by acquiring
a special chamber for retaining water to moisten his gills throughout
his long deprivation of that prime necessary. He lives composedly in
semi-fluid mud, or lies torpid in the hard baked clay at the bottom of
the dry tank from which all the water has utterly evaporated in the
drought of summer.
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