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If there’s one place you don’t want to stick your finger in, it’s the mouth of the Pacific lingcod. These fearsome fish, which can grow up to one meter in length and weigh up to 80 kilograms, have about 500 needle-like teeth sticking out from their jaws strong enough to crush crustaceans.
Having so many sharp predators allows these ambush hunters to subdue everything from slippery squid to heavily armored crabs. How Lingcod kept his formidable teeth sharp has long been a mystery. However studyPublished in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B in October, Pacific claims that lingcod replaces about three percent each day, keeping its teeth sharp and shiny. For a lingcod, 20 teeth are changed per day. If you change your teeth at the same rate, you can lose and gain a new tooth every day – ah!
Much of what scientists know about changing teeth in fish comes from sharks and other fish with unusual teeth, which have multiple teeth in their jaws that are constantly being renewed. But shark teeth are significantly different from those found in most fish; Therefore, the lingcod findings may help scientists better understand the phenomenon of tooth replacement in fish.
About 20 percent of Pacific lingcod has fluorescent green or blue flesh, and scientists not sure why this is. fish count smart seafood selectionand it is delicious when pounded and fried. But otherwise, they are pretty average. Karly Cohen, PhD candidate at the University of Washington and co-author of the study, says their teeth are similar to many other fish, which is one of the reasons they “serve as a really nice model for studying teeth in fish.” new work.
Ms. Cohen and her colleagues held 20 lingcod at Friday Harbor Laboratories at the University of Washington to determine the frequency with which lingcod replaces their teeth and tracked how many teeth they lost and regrowth over several days. The fish were placed in a seawater tank infused with a red dye that stains their teeth, then returned to their normal aquarium for 10 days. At the end of 10 days, fish were placed in a tank containing green dye, then euthanized and examined. Teeth present since the start of the experiment were both red and green, while new teeth were only green.
After collecting and examining a total of 10,000 teeth, the scientists were able to determine how quickly the lingcod lost and reappeared its teeth, and which teeth were replaced most frequently.
“It’s absolutely insane to have so many teeth replaced,” said Emily Carr, an undergraduate researcher at the University of South Florida and lead author of the study. Counting 10,000 teeth alone, Ms. Carr noticed that tooth replacement did not occur as frequently in the jaws of lingcods.
The lingcod, like most fish, has two sets of jaws: oral jaws and pharyngeal jaws. Their mouth jaws are used to catch and crush prey, while their pharyngeal jaws positioned in their throats are used to chew food and move it from their mouths to the stomach. Ms. Carr and her colleagues found that teeth are replaced more frequently in the back of the mouth, where most chewing and crushing takes place.
The way the lingcod changes its teeth is likely very important to their hunting strategy, says Kory Evans, a fish ecologist at Rice University in Houston. “The duller the lingcod’s teeth, the harder it is to hold onto its prey. So having the ability to shed and replace teeth is very important.” To do this as a lingcod, Dr. Evans said, “you need sharp pointed teeth and all your teeth need to be in place.”
The researchers also found that, as in humans, tooth change is predetermined in the lingcod, meaning that the teeth are replaced by the same type of teeth, and the teeth do not grow any further over time.
Ms Cohen and her colleagues hope their work will help scientists unravel the mystery of the world of fish teeth and inspire others to investigate more fish species. Dr. Evans said he hopes some entrepreneurial researchers will examine it more closely. sheep-headed fish.
“They have these weird, hideous, humanoid teeth, and I need to know what’s going on there,” he said. “People deserve to know.”
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