You might not commonly give your clapper much attention , but the solid piece of muscle is used for all sorts of things , not least swallowing food . So spare a thought for those animals that lack a tongue and yet still need to chow down to stay active . It flex out that some shark may insteadshrug their articulatio humeri to aid them swallow .
Bamboo sharks are one of a few shark species , as well as quite a few bony Pisces the Fishes , that use suction to gobble up fair game . When a tasty - take care beast has been identify , the shark sashay up to it , before rapidly spread their sassing . This creates a vacuum in their mouths and the prey is slurp up as the body of water rushes in .
Ray - finned Pisces , which belong to the chemical group that hold the vast majority of fish alive today , have a thoracic sash that is connected flat to the back of the skull . As these fish open their mouths to feed via suck , the joining of the bones enables the body ’s muscles to power the speedy expanding upon of the mouth , increase the suck and thus chance that intellectual nourishment will accede the mouth .
But in sharks , which evolved before the emergence of electron beam - finned fish , the thoracic girdle ( also used to moderate the front fins ) is not connected to the skull , meaning research worker did not think the muscles were involved with increasing sucking when the creature open its mouth .
However , by imaging bamboo shark using CT scans and high - resolution go - irradiation movies as they fed , researchers see that despite the sash not being attached to the skull , sharks can still apply it to increase suction , simply by moving it backwards . Interestingly , they found that this occur not when their mouth gape was widest as would be expected , but just afterwards , suggesting it is rather used to wedge the solid food down the throat and swallow .
“ The sash shows up [ in the fossil record ] , around the time that jaw evolved , ” explain Ariel Camp , carbon monoxide gas - author of the study published in theProceedings of the Royal Society B , in astatement . “ We are n’t certain on the nose what construction it evolved from or how that happened . Part of intellect that history is interpret what were the functions this structure had to carry out . ”
As shark are one of the former group of animals to have evolved jaw , read how their back talk function can allow for worthful penetration into where they might have come from . It seems that in some casing , one of the functions may well have been course , in addition to that of movement .
