The Evolutionary Significance of Blinking in Amphibious Fish

Scientists are studying mudskippers, an amphibious fish that blinks its bulbous eyes, to understand how blinking emerged from the water with our ancestors. The ancestors of modern land tetrapods crawled out of the water some 375 million years ago, necessitating some pretty dramatic physical adaptations, from locomotion to sensory perception. One thing we observe in almost all land tetrapods, but not closely related aquatic animals, is blinking, suggesting that the behavior emerged as part of the suite of land-dweller adaptations.