Ever wondered what's happening inside a fish's mouth when feeding?
Check out our new paper, just published in @eLife, thanks to A. Brunet, A. Filippo and S. Van Wassenbergh @UMR_MECADEV @Le_Museum
elifesciences.org/articles/73621
🧶1/11
We can't see inside the buccal cavity without specific techniques, so we developed an #Xray based method to follow the water flows inside the fish's mouth.
2/11
We also designed water tracers, just for the experiment. They needed to be of around the same density as water but also visible on Xray. So we inserted foam on a nickel rod... BY HAND 😮
3/11
The fish swallowed the food, surrounded by water tracers, in front of a biplanar Xray system @UAFunMorph lab
4/11
The 3D reconstruction revealed that water tracers and food tracers followed a different path
5/11
During the intake, the water tracers spread in the entire buccal cavity, whereas food tracers followed a straight trajectory, suggesting an inertia-driven sorting mechanism
6/11
In carp, the pattern looks like a “diverging flow”
7/11
But in tilapia, the pattern suggested a ”central jet”...
8/11
...which was confirmed by our CFD model
9/11
What happened if the food got trapped in the branchial basket?
Periodical bidirectional water flows occurred:
The food was resuspended and carried more centrally towards the esophagus, thanks to the inertia-driven filter and flow patterns described in the intake.
10/11
This new technique unveils a diversity of food transport mechanisms among species, fostering further research to explore water flow patterns, crucial for suction feeding.
Check out the whole story here: elifesciences.org/articles/73621
11/11
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.