Raptorial jaws in the throat help moray eels swallow large prey

Rita S. Mehta () and Peter C. Wainwright
Additional contact information
Rita S. Mehta: Section of Evolution and Ecology, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, California 95616, USA
Peter C. Wainwright: Section of Evolution and Ecology, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, California 95616, USA

Nature, 2007, vol. 449, issue 7158, 79-82

Abstract: Up in the mouth Most fish capture their prey by opening their mouths, sucking them in and then processing them with 'pharyngeal' jaws, a second set of jaws, derived from the gill skeleton, that lies deep within the throat. Moray eels, though, have a problem. Despite being rapacious predators, they are too long and narrow for conventional suction mechanisms to work. So instead of sucking food down to the pharyngeal jaws, these jaws project forward into the mouth cavity and seize the prey — an innovation that may have contributed to the success of morays as reef predators. It all sounds rather spectacular, so it's worth watching the movie on http://tinyurl.com/2ybys3 .

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06062 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:449:y:2007:i:7158:d:10.1038_nature06062

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature06062

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().