The jets of water fired by the archer fish are "tuned" to shoot down prey with maximum force over a variety of distances.

Prof. Stefan Schuster, from the University of Bayreuth in Germany and his colleagues discovered that archer fish consciously tweaked the jets of water over time.

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This peculiar fish adjusts its mouth opening to shoot it down its prey with precision. Archer fish normally attack small insects resting on leaves at water's edge,.

Archer fish are able to shoot down their prey from more than two meters away.

"I've never seen anything in which they use a nozzle that changes its diameter. The most standard approach is adjusting the pressure," Schuster said.

The scientists concluded the fish knows how to manipulate the dynamics of a water jet.

Researchers found out through video clips that the reason the fish manages to shoot accurately is because of patience and practice and not through the use of other tools. Archer fish keeps very still while it releases a jet of water at its target.

Schuster and co-author Peggy Gerullis were able to train two archer fish to hit targets at distances from 20 cm to 60 cm away. The targets were two small spheres that helped the researchers compute for the forces involved.

When a fish was accurate, it was rewarded with a small fly.

"You can easily train a fish to shoot at anything you want. They are perfectly happy as long as something edible falls down."

The difficult part of the experiment was managing and fixing the angles. The researchers had to be able to convince the fish to spit from a certain position and angle.

Despite the challenges, the team was able to find out that the jet of water fired by the fish formed before impact -- no matter the distance from the prey.

"It means that the physics the fish is using is much more complicated than previously thought," Schuster commented.

High-speed cameras were able to capture the fish's spitting in detail.