The jet knocks the prey off and the fish race to capture their dinner.
Archer fish, any of seven species of Indo-Pacific fishes of the family Toxotidae (order Perciformes) noted for their ability to knock their insect prey off overhanging vegetation by "shooting" it with drops of water expelled from the fish's mouth.
The "porpicides," as Mr. Cotter and colleagues called them in a paper last year, are mystifying: they confer no clear advantage to the dolphins, which seldom compete with porpoises for the same prey off California.
Troops of males often work together; some chase monkeys through forest canopies while others wait in nearby trees to swat their prey off branches, and yet others follow on the ground, leaping on fallen monkeys and battering them to death.
Others have suggested that it could be used as a weapon, a tool to stir the ocean floor in search of food, a means of propping the whale's head on an ice floe to sleep, or as a spear to catch fish although how the narwhal would get its prey off its tusk and into its mouth remained a riddle.
Archerfish are freshwater fish that spit jets of water as far as 2 meters to knock potential prey off twigs suspended above the water (ScienceNOW, 7 September 2004).
It mainly captures prey off the bottom, but also opportunistically takes free-swimming prey.
It picks its prey off leaves and twigs, sometimes hovering to do so.
