Flounder
- Flounder is also the name of a character from Disney's The Little Mermaid.
The flounder is an exceptionally odd looking fish which provides a counter-example for anti-evolutionary arguments. The flounder lies on its sides on the ocean floor. The eye that would face the floor has been brought to the side opposite to the floor by evolutionary changes. It is a grotesque change. The flounder is of a dark color with both eyes being on the same side gauged to look upwards at an angle about one-fifth forward from perpendicular. The size of the flounder varies from five to fifteen, and sometimes to twenty-four inches in length, the breadth being about one-half the length. Their feeding ground is the soft mud of the bottom, near to bridge spiles, docks, and other bottom incumbrances, and they are sometimes found on bass grounds. They feed on the spawn of fishes, and on mussels and insects.
Winter flounder
The flounder is cited by Richard Dawkins in one of his books Unweaving the Rainbow as an example in favor of the theory of evolution. The reasoning given by Dawkins goes like this. The flounder found a niche at the sea floor - either by accident or was driven to it by competition. Having a vertically flat shape that had already evolved, the optimal way for a flounder was to lie on the sides and look for food. Any mutation that provided a slight advantage in this direction will get selected over time since those flounders that have that advantage - a slightly shifted eye that was stuck in the mud - will survive better and leave more progenies.
Over many generations this evolutionary process played upon a gene that controlled the position of the eyes and wrought this monstrous change. This could not have happened without a maleable gene that could be moulded and luckily there was one.
Fishing and cooking
The time for fishing the flounder is the spring and fall months. In the summer he may be taken, but his flesh is soft and unwholesome. He will bite at almost anything used in salt water for fish bait, and in fishing him you may use any kind of tackle. A small hook is however necessary - No. 8 being the usual size. Flounders are an excellent pan fish; but they should be cooked as soon as possible after being taken. They are very plentiful on the shores of Long Island Sound, in New York Bay, and in the inlets of New Jersey. The Boston market is abundantly supplied with them from the numerous fishing grounds of that neighborhood.
Flounders--a la creme - From the 1881 Household Cyclopedia
Scale, clean, and wrap your fish in a cloth, boil it gently in plenty of water well salted; when done drain it carefully without breaking, lay it on your dish and mask it with cream or white onion sauce.
