Those humans have a story about a great archer called Robin Hood. His enemy shoots an arrow into the exact centre of the golden heart of the target. Robin then takes his mighty yew bow and fires an arrow with such precision that it splits the bad guy’s arrow right through the middle. Huh! Mere fry’s play!
Monday
Robin didn’t have to deal with refraction and he didn’t have to deal with the ballistics of a flying fluid. I not only deal with these things on a daily basis, but I’ve mastered them both. Here I am, lurking among the roots of the mangrove trees, and there, 10ft away on an emergent root stands a damselfly. A second later it’s in my mouth. How? Because I shot the bugger.
Tuesday
I shot him down with a flying globe of water. My tongue formed a tube against the roof of my mouth and with a mighty contraction of my gill covers I fired the water with perfect accuracy. He was off his perch and in the water before he could work out what hit him.
Wednesday
Don’t think it’s easy. Fish form schools and that’s where we archerfish get our education. When we’re young we swim together and shoot down stuff as a team. Lord, how often I used to miss. But you learn on the job, and soon enough I was an independent deadeye.
Thursday
Light bends as it hits the water and again when it leaves. To shoot underwater into open air you need to calculate the angle of refraction and then compensate for it. That takes a bit of doing, but it’s the key to our way of life. It’s all in the eye. We have large eyes and, unlike most of us fish, we use them together: binocular vision, to appreciate life in three dimensions. I rotate my eyes till I have the target perfectly in line and then I fire.
Thursday
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Firing isn’t easy either. I don’t hose them down with a long stream of water, because I’m not connected to the mains. Instead I fire a missile. It’s about timing: the water I fire travels faster at the back than at the front. By the time it hits the target it’s all come together as a single bullet. You may think that won’t work at every distance. But here’s the beauty of it – I can vary the relative speed of water as it leaves my mouth. Near or far, I always hit ‘em with a coherent fluid missile.
Friday
Think about it. We base our lives on learned behaviour and, what’s more, we make and use tools, the tools in question being water. If you ever held a low opinion of piscine intelligence, abandon it now.
Saturday
Accuracy is my life. And I believe I’ve made an accurate choice of husband to accompany me to the spawning grounds among the coral. There’ll be 100,000 eggs to fertilise. Wish at least one of them luck: a marksperson of the future.
Banded archerfish CV
Lifespan a couple of years
Eating habits six-legged targets
Hobbies toxophily
Sexual preferences I don’t have sex, I spawn, but a nice banded marksman certainly helps the process
Photograph by Tane-Mahuta/Getty Images