Name: Copella Arnoldi - Le Characin Arroseur
Uploaded: 2025-03-30T04:47:03.000Z
Duration: 2 min 54 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Close by overhanging leaves, pairs of Copella arnoldi gather.

These tiny fish have a huge challenge ahead of them.

The female is ready to spawn, the eggs visible through her skin.

Sometimes pausing, sometimes darting back and forth with urgency.

What is about to happen is a most remarkable spawning achievement.

Prompted by the male, the two fish leap together high out of the water where they cling to a hanging leaf.

They hold on for about three seconds before first the female, then the male drop back.

And each leap adds more eggs to the cluster.

Their way of life hasn't changed since the Stone Age.

The male's fully expanded pectoral and abdominal fins act as suckers, allowing the pair to hold on to the leaf.

They continue until there are about 50 eggs, all covered with gel to keep in the moisture.

Then begins the job of preventing the eggs from drying out in the hot sun.

As he smacks the water surface with his back fin, water splashes onto the leaf above.

He's amazingly accurate and continues until the eggs hatch.

By the next day, they have already developed eyes.

And the following day, prompted by the water splashes, the eggs begin to hatch.

The fries enter the river with the falling water drops of their father's splashes.

As they hit the water, the young fish seek out a hiding place among the leaves.

Young Copella arnoldi have inherited a bizarre but successful strategy for spawning above the waters of the flooded woodland that now becomes their protector.