An Interesting Fish!

from way of life:



There is an
interesting fish that lives in South America
called the splash tetra (Copella arnoldi). It is
a small elongated fish about 3 inches long and
lives near the banks of slow-moving rivers with
heavy vegetation. The male finds a suitable leaf
hanging over the water and waits for a female to
join him. They then position themselves side by
side and leap out of the water at exactly the
same time and stick to the leaf. The female lays
6 to 8 eggs and the male fertilizes them, and
they drop back into the water. This process
continues until they have laid and fertilized
about 200 eggs. The female then leaves, but the
male stays there for three days using his tail to
splash water onto the eggs every 10 or 15 minutes
so they won't dry out. He does this until the fry
hatch and fall into the water. There is only one
fish in the world that does this neat trick. I
would like someone to explain how this amazing
process could have evolved. First of all you
would have to evolve a male and female tetra fish
with the amazing capabilities of breathing
underwater and reproducing offspring and such,
all of the incredible complexity of the fish at
the genetic level. Then you would have to evolve
the splashing business. Assuming one fish learned
to jump out of the water and stick to a leaf, how
did two of them learn this at exactly the same
time? It would have been necessary that they
perfect the trick the very first time or it would
have been meaningless. If only the male jumped or
if only the female jumped or if they both jumped
but did not lay eggs and fertilize them or if
they jumped and laid and fertilized eggs but the
male didn't keep them wet -- nothing would have
happened. And how did that incredibly clever and
gymnastic pair then pass this amazing process
along to their offspring who were not around to
observe it?