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.
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?!”
right….crabs not carbs
they observe Adkins diet
Wow, that is really amazing. Creepy, but amazing.
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