Skip to main content
Advertisement

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Special issues
    • Subject collections
    • Interviews
    • Alerts
  • About us
    • About JEB
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Workshops and Meetings
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Outstanding paper prize
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Alerts
  • Contacts
    • Contact JEB
    • Subscriptions
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

User menu

  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
Journal of Experimental Biology
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

supporting biologistsinspiring biology

Journal of Experimental Biology

  • Log in
Advanced search

RSS  Twitter  Facebook  YouTube  

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Special issues
    • Subject collections
    • Interviews
    • Alerts
  • About us
    • About JEB
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Workshops and Meetings
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Outstanding paper prize
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Alerts
  • Contacts
    • Contact JEB
    • Subscriptions
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
Inside JEB
Many head designs, one super slurp
Kathryn Knight
Journal of Experimental Biology 2018 221: jeb180315 doi: 10.1242/jeb.180315 Published 12 April 2018
Kathryn Knight
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: kathryn.knight@biologists.com
  • Article
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Embedded Image

Fish have a remarkably diverse array of head designs, from snail-crushing redear sunfish to dainty zebrafish that feed on plankton and wide-mouthed bewhiskered catfish, but they all have one thing in common: they all suck. Corrine Jacobs and Roi Holzman, from the University of Tel Aviv, Israel, explain that fish rapidly expand and open their mouths to slurp up water, sweeping in any tasty morsel within range, ‘yet it is unclear how variable suction flows are across species’, the duo says. Together, Jacobs and Holzman filmed water being sucked into the mouths of fish ranging from oscars, knifefish and goldfish to tetras and even an amphibian (the tiger salamander) to find out how much their slurps differed, and they were amazed to find how little variation there was.

No matter how large or small the fish's mouth, they rarely slurped in water that was more than a mouth's width away and the suction always peaked at the instant when the fish's mouths were at their widest gape, although the fish with the largest mouths always produced the fastest gush of water. So, instead of adapting their suck to suit their diet, all fish – and probably other suction feeders – use pretty much the same style of slurp despite their vast array of head designs. And Jacobs and Holzman suggest that the reliability of a fish's slurp may have allowed them to experiment with other head designs as they evolved to vacuum up different dinners.

  • © 2018. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd

References

    1. Jacobs, C. N. and
    2. Holzman, R.
    (2018). Conserved spatio-temporal patterns of suction-feeding flows across aquatic vertebrates: a comparative flow visualization study. J. Exp. Biol. 221, 10.1242/jeb.174912.
Previous ArticleNext Article
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

This Issue

 Download PDF

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on Journal of Experimental Biology.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Many head designs, one super slurp
(Your Name) has sent you a message from Journal of Experimental Biology
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the Journal of Experimental Biology web site.
Share
Many head designs, one super slurp
Kathryn Knight
Journal of Experimental Biology 2018 221: jeb180315 doi: 10.1242/jeb.180315 Published 12 April 2018
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Many head designs, one super slurp
Kathryn Knight
Journal of Experimental Biology 2018 221: jeb180315 doi: 10.1242/jeb.180315 Published 12 April 2018

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Alerts

Please log in to add an alert for this article.

Sign in to email alerts with your email address

Article navigation

  • Top
  • Article
    • References
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF

Related articles

Cited by...

More in this TOC section

  • Cancer-defying blind mole rats are super DNA repairers
  • No-pressure thumbs could be key to hand evolution
  • Giant clams make most of urea thanks to lodger algae
Show more INSIDE JEB

Similar articles

Other journals from The Company of Biologists

Development

Journal of Cell Science

Disease Models & Mechanisms

Biology Open

Advertisement

Editors’ choice – Breath-holding locusts don't keep spiracles open when they exhale


Photo credit: Stav Talal.
Diapausing butterfly larvae keep their spiracles open while exhaling during discontinuous gas exchange; however, a recent study from Stav Talal and co-workers reveals that adult locusts do not. Instead they repeatedly open and close their spiracles in time with contractions of the abdominal muscle to expel air from the body.


JEB in the news – Sheep hair curl secret in cells


Photo credit: Anita Grosvenor.
Why does hair curl? By looking at curly merino sheep wool, scientists from New Zealand and Japan have discovered that the hair cells lining the outside of the curl are long (orthocortical cells) while the cells on the inside of the curl are another type (paracortical cells), which are short, making the hair bend to give it a curl. This JEB Research Article was reported in the New York Times and ABC news.


Commentary – Robotics-inspired biology

Robotic devices are increasingly generating ideas for experiments on living animals. Nick Gravish and George V. Lauder explore this new twist on the inspiration that biologists have traditionally taken from mechanical systems.


JEB symposium 2017 – The biology of fat

Delegates at the 2017 Journal of Experimental Biology symposium ‘The biology of fat’ share their experiences and highlights of the meeting. We have also recently published a special issue featuring review articles based on the talks at this meeting.

Articles

  • Accepted manuscripts
  • Issue in progress
  • Latest complete issue
  • Issue archive
  • Archive by article type
  • Special issues
  • Subject collections
  • Interviews
  • Alerts

About us

  • About JEB
  • Editors and Board
  • Editor biographies
  • Travelling Fellowships
  • Grants and funding
  • Workshops and Meetings
  • The Company of Biologists
  • Journal news

For Authors

  • Submit a manuscript
  • Aims and scope
  • Presubmission enquiries
  • Article types
  • Manuscript preparation
  • Cover suggestions
  • Editorial process
  • Promoting your paper
  • Open Access
  • Outstanding paper prize
  • Biology Open transfer

Journal Info

  • Journal policies
  • Rights and permissions
  • Media policies
  • Reviewer guide
  • Alerts

Contact

  • Contact JEB
  • Subscriptions
  • Advertising
  • Feedback

 Twitter   YouTube   LinkedIn

© 2018   The Company of Biologists Ltd   Registered Charity 277992