So far I’m showing the Handfish does in fact swim but apparently greatly prefers to walk. Then the Tripod Fish apparently doesn’t walk at all but instead just stands there waiting for food. That’s all I’ve looked up so far.
Depends how you define fish, I guess. There is technically that one branch of sea life that left the oceans, adapted to walk on land, and eventually diversified into all life as we know it. If those qualify, I’d say chinchillas are very swimless, since getting soaking wet is awful for their fur and not good for their health. Along similar lines, you could argue snakes or worms.
You could also make arguments for sea slugs and assorted mollusks – which all have ways of moving around, but not ones involving wagging fins around. Do a youtube search for clam swimming or scallop swimming if you want an interesting rabbithole to go down.
If a fish is any aquatic animal with no shell, you start to enter seacucumber, anemone, or seapig territory.
In modern cladistic taxonomy everything that shares a common ancestor with the last common ancestor of all fish is also a fish. So mammals, birds, reptiles, all of these creatures are fish. And obviously a lot of those can’t swim so there are a ridiculously large number of swimless fish.
Comments
Yes. Some fish don’t swim in a traditional sense and instead just crawl on the sea floor
So far I’m showing the Handfish does in fact swim but apparently greatly prefers to walk. Then the Tripod Fish apparently doesn’t walk at all but instead just stands there waiting for food. That’s all I’ve looked up so far.
Yeah, they’re called dead.
Unless you count my ex’s pet goldfish who just… floated there like it paid rent.
Seahorses come pretty close to
Depends how you define fish, I guess. There is technically that one branch of sea life that left the oceans, adapted to walk on land, and eventually diversified into all life as we know it. If those qualify, I’d say chinchillas are very swimless, since getting soaking wet is awful for their fur and not good for their health. Along similar lines, you could argue snakes or worms.
You could also make arguments for sea slugs and assorted mollusks – which all have ways of moving around, but not ones involving wagging fins around. Do a youtube search for clam swimming or scallop swimming if you want an interesting rabbithole to go down.
If a fish is any aquatic animal with no shell, you start to enter seacucumber, anemone, or seapig territory.
Batfish.
Yes, a tortoise.
Red lipped batfish comes to mind. And kinda FrogFish, but they swim if you piss ’em off.
What do you call a cow that can’t walk?
Ground beef.
That’s the closest I can bring you to answering the original question.
Batfish can swim to a degree but they spend most of their time walking around on the ocean floor.
Male deep sea anglerfish are tiny and permanently fuse themselves to females’ bodies, after that they aren’t swimming anywhere.
Do crabs count as fish ? Penguins are I know that 🙂
In modern cladistic taxonomy everything that shares a common ancestor with the last common ancestor of all fish is also a fish. So mammals, birds, reptiles, all of these creatures are fish. And obviously a lot of those can’t swim so there are a ridiculously large number of swimless fish.
The fish that evolved to survive on land are called tetrapods and include everything from frongs, to lizards to birds and us.
There are fish called darters that don’t have the organ that lets them hold position in water. They sit on the bottom and kinda hop around.