What fish is it? We are talking about the ' Pacific crocodile' or lingco cod ( Ophiodon elongatus ), a fish with one of the mouths with the most teeth in nature. It has about 555 teeth that line its two sets of jaws.
New research has found that despite their large number of teeth, it turns out that they lose them almost as fast as they grow, at a staggering rate of 20 a day.
This predatory fish of the North Pacific measures about 50 centimeters but some can reach up to 1.5 meters and have teeth up to the palate.
Researchers from the University of South Florida kept 20 Pacific crocodile fish in tanks at a University of Washington laboratory in Friday Harbor to study them. They calculated the proportion of small teeth in all the jagged bones in the Pacific crocodile's mouth. In all, they counted more than 10,000 teeth in the 20 captive fish. "
They found that fish lose an average of about 20 teeth a day, where the pharyngeal jaws appeared to lose teeth much faster than other parts of the mouth of this amazing fish.
The researchers published their research in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Reference: The moment of tooth: rate, fate and pattern of Pacific lingcod dentition revealed by pulse-chase EM Carr, AP Summers and KE Cohen
Published: 13 October 2021 Proceedings of the Royal Society B. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.1436
