Lesley Baines, age 8, of Sprague, Man., Canada, for his question:

HOW DO FISH JUMP IF THEY HAVE NO LEGS?

A frog hops along because it wants to get from here to there. A kangaroo jumps for the same reason. These creatures jump or hop instead of walk because their skeletal and muscular systems are designed for this particular mode of locomotion. Everything about a fish, however, tells us that it is designed for smooth movement through the water. Nevertheless, sometimes a finny fish must leave its underwater world for one reason or another and take to the air.

Fish, of course, cannot jump as you or I can. They just don't have the proper equipment. After all, jumping takes long legs and lots of the right kind of muscles. But just as we have flying snakes that don't really fly, and singing crickets that don't really sing, we have jumping fish that don't really jump.

Generally speaking, fish leave their watery abode for one of two reasons: to catch their dinner or to avoid being another fish's dinner. More than likely when the fish are "jumping," they are just swimming fast enough underwater to break through its surface to catch a tasty tidbit. Once in a while, however, a fish must swim for all its might to escape being caught by another fish. So the flying fish has perfected this escape ploy.