WOW i never knew that!

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chloe

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Apr 16, 2008
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wasnt sure where to put this so, its going here, but mods feel free to move it.

im just watching HOOKED: catching monster fish, and they were catching pacu. then they opened the bought and they have the same teeth and jaws as us! it was creepy.

now i know this may sound really silly, i just never seen pacu teeth, thought id just share that with u lol
x
 
Yeah they not only fruit but also nuts that fall from the overhanging branches and they are able to chew through the outer shells of them.
 
If you do a google image search with "pacu", one of the pics that comes up is this totally freaky picture of the jaws. It's crazy.
 
lol cam. but those r from the thing i was actually watching last night.
i just never even thought about it tbh, i spose u just think their teeth would be the same as other fish (apart from GTF, barracuda that kinda thing lol) but then when u think that obv they need blunter teeth for nuts and fruit, so it makes sense its just something that had ever occured to be.
 
chloe;3240829; said:
lol cam. but those r from the thing i was actually watching last night.
i just never even thought about it tbh, i spose u just think their teeth would be the same as other fish (apart from GTF, barracuda that kinda thing lol) but then when u think that obv they need blunter teeth for nuts and fruit, so it makes sense its just something that had ever occured to be.
Click to expand...

Actually, there's something even more interesting happening here.

Pacu being characins have missed out on the second pair of pharyngeal (throat) jaws that cichlids and marine wrasses and parrot fish have. These pharyngeal jaws allow these families to use their throats for crushing purposes and their mouths just for gathering the food.

So, you'll often find that the wrasses, parrot fish and cichlids will not appear to have crushing teeth on their first set of jaws even if they're known to eat very hard prey or food items.

Now the pacu not having the throat jaws has had to evolve the simplest way to overcome their need to crush hard food items - by evolving a set of deeply rooted, and very heavily built teeth and strong jaws.

A different method for solving a similar problem.

Cool, eh?
 
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