For mostfishthat can exit the water to feed on land , theskillcomes with a stop : After they becharm their target , they need water to actually swallow up it . This usually mean embroil their food back into the lake or sea , though some animate being have evolve limited methods : the mudspringer holds H2O in its backtalk and uses it to slurp down a repast before slink back beneath the control surface . But in the unofficial “ Coolest Pisces That feed on Land ” competition , not even the mudskipper can beat the snowflakemoray eel(Echidna nebulosa ) .
fit in to astudyrecently published in theJournal of Experimental Biology , snowflake moray eel can swallow prey without any water at all — largely thanks to a second set of jaws in their throats .
These pharyngeal jaw are a fixture of all bony Pisces the Fishes , help them grasp and break up food . But as springy Sciencereports , a snowflake moray eel ’s pharyngeal jaw do n’t just sit in its pharynx and wait for a repast to come to them . or else , they can locomote into the eel ’s mouth , grab whatever nutrient is there , and retreat to pull out it into the gullet .
report lead source Rita Mehta , an associate prof of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California Santa Cruz , put out inquiry on how this outgrowth works in body of water back in 2007 . Then , she start to wonder about its impact on land - feeding .
“ These particular moray eels tend to eat hard - shelled quarry like crabs , and I would see reports in the lit of them affect out of the body of water and lunging for crabs , but it was unclear what happen next , ” she aver in a UC Santa Cruznews release .
So she launched a newfangled study to find exactly how snowflake morays eat in the open tune . Over more than five years , she and her undergraduate research squad trained seven eel to slide onto a political platform to get composition of squid . After analyzing 67 videos of this feeding behaviour , Mehta and her confrere came to resolve that not only did the eels use their pharyngeal jaws to swallow up prey out of water , but tellurian feedings did n’t take any longer than aquatic ones .
you may see this double - jaw military action in all its glory ( or revulsion , if you ’re a squid ) below .
[ h / tLive Science ]
