Fig. 3. An archer fish predictive start imaged at 500 frames s^-1. Within 22 ms, the fish rotated its anterior body by 43.6° towards the later point of impact of a dislodged prey insect and then accelerated to a 1.225 m s^-1 take-off speed. The silhouette of the fish is shown every 2 ms. The background color indicates the two distinct kinematic stages of the response, an initial bending phase (stage 1, dark blue) and a straightening phase (stage 2, light blue). Subsequent frames show the actual take-off. The location of the stretched-straight center of mass (CM, red asterisk) is indicated in each frame and the yellow dots show the points digitized in each frame for later analysis. The first two dots were used to define the turning angle and the position of the relatively stiff anterior body part to which the CM is adjacent.