Nature-Faking?

William Hale Thompson, onetime mayor of Chicago, inspired a deal of derisive amusement among the "know-it-alls" when he announced a plan to take cinema pictures of tree-climbing fish in the South Sea Islands (TIME, March 3). The New York Tribune hastened to classify him with the well-known Doctor Traprock, Baron Munchausen and others of similar notoriety. But the ex-Mayor has science on his side, though his geography may not be infallible.

The zoologists say that Anabas Scandens, a species of acanthopterygian (having-spines-in-the-fins) fishes of the family Anabantidae, is popularly known as the climbing fish, because it actually does climb trees to a height of six or seven feet. Its habitat is India and the East Indies. It is about six inches long and has a peculiar spiny covering on its gills which enables it to retain water in the interstices. Thus it can live a long time out of water, travel on dry land for a long distance and can catch on to the bark of trees and climb.

Other "fish stories" that may seem mythical, but are nevertheless matters of scientific record are:

P: South Sea crabs which climb cocoanut trees at night, cut down the nuts with their shears and come down to eat the meat of the nuts which have burst in falling. The planters are compelled to protect their trees with collars of tin about six inches wide, on which the crabs cannot get a foothold.

P: Pike and small fish of the perch variety often wiggle through damp grass for long distances between ponds.

P: A certain fish, by accurate sharpshooting with drops of water, is able to knock flies from overhanging branches and devour them in the water.

P: The arara, a flat flounder-like fish of northern Brazil, has its tail equipped with a sharp spike containing a kind of poison. When the fish senses danger it raises the spike perpendicularly. Natives walking in the shallow waters of the region have been pierced, poisoned to death by the weapon.