Extremely fast feeding strikes are powered by elastic recoil in a seahorse relative, the snipefish, Macroramphosus scolopax.

ABSTRACT: Among over 30 000 species of ray-finned fishes, seahorses and pipefishes have a unique feeding mechanism whereby the elastic recoil of tendons allows them to rotate their long snouts extremely rapidly in order to capture small elusive prey. To understand the evolutionary origins of this feeding mechanism, its phylogenetic distribution among closely related lineages must be assessed. We present evidence for elastic recoil-powered feeding in snipefish (Macroramphosus scolopax) from kinematics, dynamics and morphology. High-speed videos of strikes show they achieve extremely fast head and hyoid rotational velocities, resulting in rapid prey capture in as short a duration as 2 ms. The maximum instantaneous muscle-mass-specific power requirement for head rotation in snipefish was above t

SUBMITTER: Longo SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6053929 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature