Banded Archerfish

• It forms the jet by pressing its tongue against a groove in the roof of its mouth, and controls the speed so that the water bunches into a compact mass just as it reaches the target, multiplying the force of the impact.
• It innately corrects for the refraction of light passing from air into water, which makes the prey appear to be somewhere other than where it really is.
• It learns to shoot by watching other fish do it, and in experiments it has been able to tell individual human faces apart.
• It knocks down insects perched up to three metres above the water, and an adult usually hits with its first shot.
• The power of the jet does not come from its muscles. A kinematic analysis measured some 3,000 watts per kilo at impact, six times more than a vertebrate muscle can deliver. The amplification happens outside the fish: it modulates the speed of the jet so that the water bunches into a single large drop that strikes all at once, the same principle as inkjet printers.
• It corrects for the refraction of light as it passes from water to air. It shoots at an average angle of about 74 degrees above the horizontal, but scores hits between 45 and 110.
• When choosing its prey it rotates its eye so that the image falls on a specific area of the retina, and brings its lips just to the surface before firing.
• It also shoots downwards, underwater, to dig prey out of the sediment.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (fish)

Habitat & environment

Mangroves, estuaries and river mouths of the Indo-Pacific

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxotes_jaculatrix