Stunning video shows Tigerfish leaping out of water, devouring entire bird [VIDEO]

Stunning video shows Tigerfish leaping out of water, devouring entire bird [VIDEO]

An aggressive African freshwater tigerfish can be seen jumping out of water to prey upon a swallow in flight.

Barn swallows may be flying over the waters in South Africa to the famous Jaws tune that invokes fear in all who hear it. A recent study has caught what researchers say are the first scientific observations of a fish launching itself out of the water to catch birds in midair.

Fish preying on birds is not unheard of, but scientists wouldn’t call it a regular thing, either.

“There are more than 14,000 freshwater fish species in the world,” wrote Nico Smit, director of the unit for environmental sciences and management at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa, in an email. “[But] of those, only about five species are known to prey on birds, so I definitely don’t think it is a widespread behavior.”

But African tigerfish are an entirely different story. During a 15-day survey in February 2010, Smit and his colleagues saw these fish—which inhabit a storage lake for the Schroda Dam in South Africa—actually leaping out of the water to catch barn swallows. The team reported their findings in a study published last month online in the Journal of Fish Biology.

Smit goes on to say that tigerfish make a regular meal out of barn swallows during the summer when the birds are available. “[The fish] have been incredibly well adapted to hunt the flying birds as part of their daily routine.” Researchers counted up to 20 successful attempts on flying barn swallows by tigerfish in one day over the course of their study.

The skill these fish possess in order to capture birds in the air is pretty impressive. Smit says that tigerfish have to spot a fast-flying swallow from the water, be faster than the bird, make up for refraction (when the angle of light changes as it goes from air to water) and then jump out of the water to grab the bird.

“I think this research also illustrates that we still actually know incredibly little about the behavior of freshwater fish in Africa,” Smit said. “The fact that this amazing behavior has escaped documentation for so long surely means that a lot more needs to be discovered.”

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