What
is it?
PEACOCK FLOUNDER
Flatfish might not have taken the
most obvious path to an unobtrusive
existence on the seabed, but they
surely took the most innovative.
While the skates and rays went
about slowly flattening themselves
in a sensible top-to-bottom kind of
way, the ancestors of the flatfish- such as this peacock flounder –
took to laying down on their sides.
This simple innovation would have
produced immediate results, but it
required some tricky refinements.
An eye pointing down into the sand
isn’t much use to anyone, so the
skull had to be remodelled drastically
and lopsidedly, so that both eyes
point ‘upwards’. The result is a face
that only a mother could love – had
she not simply cast her eggs on the
currents to fend for themselves. SB