Crazy Fish Heads
Epibulus insidiator, the slingjaw wrass, “possesses the most extreme jaw protrusion ever measured in fishes.” Individuals can protrude their jaw up to half the body length to capture crabs, shrimps, and small fishes. This occurs through multiple structural novelties, as the video above can attest to, involving fundamentally reorganizing the way the bones and ligaments interact in the jaw linkage (Westneat 1991).
At the American Museum of Natural History website, you can view and interact with fish skulls that illustrate how the bones move in this process.
Date Posted: November 15, 2009 at 2:30 PM
November 16, 2009 at 2:36 PMklb8s
Awesome typo, Dr. M. I had to read it twice, thinking… “where would they get carbohydrates, and why would they need stealth to get them?!”
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November 16, 2009 at 3:05 PMDr. M
right….crabs not carbs
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November 16, 2009 at 3:05 PMDr. M
they observe Adkins diet
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November 21, 2009 at 9:02 PMDeLene
Wow, that is really amazing. Creepy, but amazing.
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November 22, 2009 at 3:29 PMThe craziest fish jaws ever (video) [A Blog Around The Clock] » iThinkEducation.net!
[...] (via Deep Sea News) [...]
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November 23, 2009 at 8:31 AMWandering Ponies #1 « Save Your Breath For Running Ponies
[...] one of my favourite sea creatures ever (for the obvious reasons), and a clip found by the boys at Deep Sea News. The jury’s still out on whether this particular, erm, talent will help him score with the [...]
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November 23, 2009 at 10:51 AMJonathan Eisen
I note, this video was out there on YouTube for a while, but then Peter Wainwright, who made it, showed it in the class I teach with him and I tweeted about it, and it went viral — see my post for more detail — http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2009/11/and-sling-jaw-wrasse-makes-it-to-espn.html
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