Why does a fish mouth look so alien? (7 photos)

Did you know that every fisherman is a little bit of Ellen Ripley? Because every time he hauls in his catch, he hauls a kicking Alien onto the shore. Why Alien? Have you ever seen a fish's mouth in full fighting readiness? No? Well then, look!





How hard it is to look at lips you can't kiss...

Of course, not every fish can stretch its lips that far. But almost all gill-breathing fish have a very strange feature—their mouth can extend forward separately from their head! How is that even possible?



When I saw the New Year's prices on everything.

The fact is that a fish's jaw has many more bones than those of any other creature that crawled onto land. Our heads only have 23 bones, only one of which is movable—the lower jaw. Meanwhile, the skull of bony fish consists of over 100 bones! It resembles a flexible framework of many parts, held together by muscles, skin, and a lot of honesty.





Yes, I came back from the holidays with a couple extra pounds. But I can't figure out what caused it!

Well, a fish's mouth isn't bolted to its skull. It's suspended from it by the bones of the hyoid arch. This type of structure is called hyostyly. When folded, the apparatus looks like a perfectly normal mouth, but once you see its owner shoot out his throat, it's terrifying.



When you decide to fish in a strange spot.

Initially, this chthonic tuning was needed for a very trivial purpose: the mouth extends forward, creating a low pressure, and water rushes forcefully into the gills—a kind of breath of fresh air, allowing the fish to obtain more oxygen. But it turns out that it can suck up not only water but also unsuspecting prey, like crumbs with a vacuum cleaner. Whew! The daily calorie question is solved.



Careful, my dear, you can cut yourself on those cheekbones!

Some fish have stretched their mouths to their maximum length. The record-holder is the largemouth wrasse. When stretched, its mouth is 65% of the length of its head and 30% of its body length. It doesn't even have to swim close to its prey to suck it in!



I vacuum up treats from the fridge the same way. I don't see anything wrong with that!

Having acquired precision weapons, bony fish were forced to relocate their teeth. Leaving them in their original location is impossible—they no longer have a solid jaw; in its place is now a complex construct of levers and muscles. So the teeth have been relocated wherever possible: to the maxillary bone, to the roof of the mouth, or even to the pharyngeal bones—the main thing is to have them!



This is precisely why large predatory fish had to partially abandon their protruding mouth. Only their lower jaw protrudes forward. Otherwise, they simply have nothing to hold onto their prey with! Barracudas and pikes, for example, have this structure.