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Gars

The Gars

Written by Administrator

Monday, 11 February 2008

Longnose Gar	Shortnose Gar
Spotted Gar	Florida Gar
Alligator Gar

Sixty-five million years ago, dinosaurs ruled the earth, and gars - just like the ones we catch today - swam slowly about the steaming swamps under strange, drooping, fernlike trees. Tough, air-breathing, heavily-armored creatures bristling with teeth, the gars thrived in the tropical climate, killing and eating all of the strange fishes, crustaceans, and small dinosaurs they could catch. Their ancestors had been living here since before there were any dinosaurs, and survived two great extinctions over a hundred million years. The gars' bony armor plating protected them from the dinosaur's claws and teeth, and their air-breathing ability allowed them to thrive in shallow swamps. Their magnificent array of needle-like teeth allowed them to catch and kill almost anything they met.

Then a ten-mile wide asteroid bigger than Mount Everest slammed into our planet near what is now Mexico, at 72,000 miles per hour. The blast of the impact was more powerful than all the nuclear weapons ever created. Tsunamis swept the entire globe. Solid rock was vaporized. Shockwaves and earthquakes levelled all the forests, and global fires raged as clouds of acid blocked out the sun. 70% of all living species went extinct. The great and powerful dinosaurs were wiped out.

But not the gars. Tougher than the dinosaurs, the gars lived on, finning their way through their watery world under a hellish, burning, smog-choked sky. The world was blanketed with death. As these prehistoric gars surfaced to breathe, their ancient eyes no doubt reflected the eerie red sky, and the mountainous yellow clouds. In the many years of darkness and death that followed, the gars somehow survived. They survived, and fluorished - through droughts, and floods, and ice ages. They still survive today.

An impact one-tenth the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs would destroy all of human civilization.

But not the gars. The gars survive. When you catch one, you are holding in your hands a creature greater than any dinosaur, a creature that evolved to survive dinosaur attacks, a creature that is a true living fossil, a living time capsule from the prehistoric world. The gar is a creature that will undeniably survive against all odds, whilst all other fishes and land animals will die, whimpering, and wishing they were as tough as a gar. When you catch one - look into its' eye. All the great masters of this earth, over two hundred million years, have, at one time or another, gazed into the eye of a gar.

But the gar have outlasted them all.

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Last Updated ( Saturday, 28 November 2009 )

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