Latimeria

Imagines, I

Latimeria is a living fossil. A kind of Coelacanth (I pronounce this Keelacanth—) it has a lung which, being a huge deep sea fish, it doesn’t need. The female does not lay eggs, but keeps them in her body for the five years needed for the babies to gestate and they are born alive: in miniature form.

It has four main limbs and four others - a total of eight fins - and the four main limbs are in the positions needed for four-legged ambulatory motion (difficult with fins, however!)

According to what I have read, observed females’ eggs had only one male as the suitor, suggesting a level of monogamy among these fishes which is unusual for creatures of this “evolutionary stage.”

They are as you might expect carnivorous which in their environs is pretty much necessary for their size. We have no idea precisely what their missing relatives who lived closer to land might have eaten, and how much time they spent rolling in the mud, breathing air under the brilliant sky.

But one thing is certain — these boys are lindy.