Hi everyone, James here. This week's podcast is a compilation.

It's all the little bits from the last year of Fish, which didn't quite fit in a show,

but they're kind of self-contained little nuggets, and we put them all together for a little best-off show.

I really hope you enjoy it. We'll be back next week with a normal show, but in the meantime, happy new year.

Something that people think is impossible is fly.

It's constantly claimed that they defy the laws of physics, and it's because an entomologist in 1934 wrote a book in which he said,

I have applied to insects, the laws of air resistance, and I've arrived at the conclusion that their flight is impossible.

And it's not impossible, obviously. But the way they do fly is not by flapping their wings up and down.

It's by flapping them back and forth. So they go from front to back, and it's kind of like the motion of rowing.

Oh, cool. I think. Imagine if you put your hands out and your palm faces the ground, and then you move your arms forward

with your palm facing the ground, and then when you get your arm in front of you, you flip your hand over so your palms facing upwards,

and you move your arm back, and then they fly with that motion.

So they're doing backstroke?

It's like you must have a really weird backstroke, Dan.

It's a bit more like the butterfly.

Yes, it is more like the butterfly.

But it's not.

Oh, okay.

And that creates kind of vortexes which reduces pressure above their wings and means they can fly.

But isn't that cool?

That's very cool.

They float like a butterfly.

...