As a dedicated and learned scientist, I wake up one morning and decide today is the day I start work on finding a cure for cancer, dementia, palsy, muscular dystrophy, diabetes, depression and any of a host of other conditions that afflict members of the human race. Or I might put my good brain to work to solve our many environmental problems and come up with the perfect clean energy solution to keep the planet from burning out like a giant candle. I might work to devise ways to save the many endangered species of wildlife on the planet. Or to come up with ingenious plans for exporting Earthly life to other planets.
But I don’t do any of those things because I have a more pressing matter to spend my energy on.
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For many years, I been almost obsessively interested in the mysteries of fish. And so I, along with a team of like-minded geniuses, set to work fitting cuttlefish with oversized 3D glasses to help us understand how they calculate distance when attacking a moving target.
If we are able to answer this question, it will mark the fulfilment of a lifelong puzzle for me. I remember as a boy of eight years old, asking my father, “Daddy, how do cuttlefish calculate distance when they are attacking their prey.” I remember how Dad tried to answer me and how he finally gave up, saying, “Go ask your mother. She might know something about cuttlefish. She’s always reading.”
So with this latest experiment and others to come, we will soon pull back the curtain on the Great Cuttlefish Mystery. But our curiosity won’t end there. In fact, it has just begun. We have so many unanswered puzzles to solve when it comes to other fish such as the Fangtooth, the Whitemargin Stargazer, the Asian Sheepshead Wrasse, the Jawfish, the Tassled Scorpionfish, the Frogfish, the Boxfish and the Psychedelic Frogfish.
I won’t lie. I can hardly wait to find out what’s up with the Psychedelic Frogfish.
That guy needs a pair of 3D glasses for sure.
©2020 Jim Hagarty
