Hello everyone, it's time for "Tao Brother Blind Vernacular", today and everyone nag a very interesting topic, animals eat fish, will they be stuck with fish bones like people? They don't have a doctor, so if they get stuck, how do they solve it?
Before solving this problem, let's first give you a popular science, how did the fish thorn thing come about. Why do some fish have spines and some have very fewer spines?
Fish bones, also known as intermuscular bones, sound like fish bones, but in fact, it is a calcified ligament, for example, similar to the relationship between human nails and bones, although the nails are not soft, but no one will treat it as a bone.
The reason why some fish have evolved intermuscular bones is because their muscle strength is insufficient, and they need to use a thing as a connection between muscle groups and muscle groups, thereby strengthening their motor function.
From this point of view, the more thorny fish are relatively weaker, and the position in the ecological chain of nature is relatively more bottom-end (not absolute). In terms of seawater and freshwater classification, it is obvious that freshwater fish have more spines, because marine fish have gone further on the evolutionary path, whether in strength or offensive or enemy resistance, they do not have to rely on small fish bones to provide muscle group explosive power.
At this point, foodies should be very clear, marine fish have no spines, but the muscles are more chai and rougher, because of the strength. River fish have more spines, but the flesh is noticeably more tender because of the less muscular strength.
But it is because of such a small intermuscular bone that many people have unpleasant memories. Eat well, snap, a thorn stuck, swallow vinegar, swallow rice, really can't go to the hospital, should be a lot of people have experienced it.
So are all animals helpless against fish bones?
Let's start with mammals.
Humanity is also among them, so let's start with ourselves.
The reason why human beings have been "bitter fish in the world for a long time" is that the initial equipment does not match, and it cannot be upgraded later for various reasons.
Starting from monkeys, we humans have not had a good way to take fish bones, because in essence, ancient apes are vegetarian, originally lived in trees, can pick what to eat, hungry on the line, so our initial equipment, the organs used for eating and digestion are matched with wild fruits, plants and some small thornless animals.
Fish did not appear in the diet of ancient apes for a long time, and even today, monkeys and orangutans, who are also primates, rarely prey on fish.
But as we all know, the later evolution direction of human beings "deviated", different from all other organisms, began to light up the intellectual technology tree, expand brain capacity, at this time, the original flowers and grasses can not provide enough energy, need to ingest a lot of protein to maintain the high consumption of the brain, can be reasonably judged, ancient apes from "plant food" slowly evolved into "omnivorous" is at this stage.
Protein is meat, and people start eating meat. Either to hunt, or to go fishing, compared to dozens of monkeys holding sticks and stone chips to hunt land creatures, only a sharp branch can be forked fish, it is easier to meet daily protein needs, so it is reasonable to say that we humans eat fish more than other animals, earlier.
So why haven't they evolved matching, powerful fish-eating organs and digestive tracts?
By coincidence, 1.3 million years ago, monkeys learned not only to use tools, but also to use fire.
Cooked food can be very effective in reducing the difficulty of chewing, the original tough and woody animal muscles, roasted with fire, tender, chewing is not difficult, our digestive tract naturally has no reason to evolve more robust, and it is inevitable to be stabbed by fish thorns.
After all, this is a digestive organ that was originally used to adapt to the fruit of the leaves.
In fact, not only us humans, but also many mammals are quite afraid of fish bones.
For example, cats and dogs.
When I was a child, everyone read "Kitten Fishing", so subconsciously I always thought that the cat was a good predator of fish.
This statement is problematic, it is true that cats eat fish, but cats are not born with fish as their staple food. In other words, the cat's habit of eating fish is habitual.
The ancient Egyptians who first tried to domesticate cats, because they lived on the Nile River, often fed cats some fish caught in the river, and over time, cats also developed the habit of eating fish and catching fish, but in essence, cats' esophagus and digestive organs are the same as humans, and there is no special evolutionary mechanism for fish bones, even today, it is not news that cats eat fish and are stuck.
Therefore, if you do not take fish as the main feeding object, it is difficult to develop a suitable digestive tract for the evolution of fish bones, and it is not surprising that you are stuck by fish bones. But then again, such animals rarely take the initiative to hunt fish without human interference, and there is no need to worry about them.
Next, let's talk about the fish-eating animals.
Let's say birds.
Many large birds not only love to eat fish, but their main food source is fish, so their digestive tract seems particularly targeted to us.
Everyone has seen penguins, right? Cute and cute, right? But in fact, it opens its mouth like this —
Can't see? Take a closer look at --
See this row of barbs? These barbs guarantee that once you catch a slippery fish, you will never let them slip away.
Then from the above figure observation, penguins do not have the same teeth that we humans use to chew, after getting a hand, they generally choose to swallow live fish whole, which can avoid small and sharp fish bones embedded or scratched the digestive tract, once into the stomach, due to the presence of stomach acid, the main component of calcium fish bones is not so terrible, in general, within ten minutes to 1 hour, it will be softened.
Other birds that feed mainly on fish are basically the same routine, swallowing in one bite, and then leaving everything to stomach acid.
Whether it's the Abyss Giant Mouth Cormorant —
Or guanyin fairy pet white stork ——
Or the wine sack rice bag pelican -
They are all stuffy, fish thorns or something, it is estimated that they will not have the opportunity to hurt them in this life.
Of course, some people may have seen the big brown bear in the animal world standing in the middle of the stream catching salmon, and after eating it, it was a mess.
In fact, bears eat fish is essentially this way of eating, but the size of salmon is still too large compared to the bear's mouth, and sometimes, the bear will bite it in half, half and half raw.
There are also some animals, which use a much more elaborate strategy, choosing to chew slowly, such as otters and some small cats in the wild.
These animals have extremely dense barbs on their tongues, and these barbs do not only limit themselves to fixing prey, as mentioned in the enterprises mentioned earlier, but help them scrape off the flesh of the fish, and many of the fish spines are scraped off in the process.
And the molars of this type of animal are more developed, and after a scraping, they will be chewed repeatedly until even the flesh is chewed to pieces and then swallowed.
Pay attention to the distribution of otter teeth, the front end of the canine teeth are extremely sharp, the rear end of the molars used to grind food is also very powerful, can be called a more perfect configuration to eat fish.
When it comes to eating fish, how can we not mention the same kind.
Most fish do not stay in the mouth for a long time, in other words, they are also "whole swallow party", but some fish still have a good trick at the bottom of the pressure box when facing the thorns of food (not only fish bones, but also hard fin bones, etc.).
For example, the wolf eel, is the ugly buddy below —
His lips and oral skin have evolved to be extremely tough, like a refined leather armor, not to mention a fish thorn, even the sea urchin thorn can not hurt it in the slightest, sniffing like a melon seed, just this, can you be afraid of small fish thorns?
Of course, often walking by the river, how can you not get wet shoes? Fish bones are not completely lethal to all animals, such as the following one —
It is called the hoe-snouted silverfish, although it is a marine fish without small flesh spines, but its dorsal fin support bone is unusually sharp -
Many seals and fur seals are vulnerable to injury or even death when they are not careful when they eat.
The fur seal is actually a "whole swallow party", but it does not have human-like limbs, and when catching large fish that cannot be completely stuffed in one bite, in order to tear into small pieces, it can only bite, and then violently shake its head, using this shaking inertia to divide the prey. In the process, experienced fur seals bite the abdomen, avoiding the dorsal fin part to prevent accidental injury.
Please note that the dorsal fin spines are always outward
But if the fur seal is inexperienced, or if the prey is struggling with dying, the sharp dorsal fin spines are dangerous. In December 2020, a dead New Australian fur seal was spotted on the beach in Cape Conlan, southeastern Australia, and it had a large fish spine stuck in its face.
For example, the ray below, the mouth is densely covered with large and small fish bones, there are more than 60, looking at it hurts -
The red part is the scanned fish bones
Finally, natural selection, survival of the fittest. Although fish bones are a very annoying thing for predators, so far, there is no rigorous scientific investigation that shows that fish bones can be called protection skills, that is, fish did not evolve fish bones to increase the risk of predators.
First, raw fish bones are not as hard as cooked fish bones, and are relatively more flexible;
Second, no creature would choose to use the strategy of "revenge after death" to increase the probability of reproduction of its own population;
Third, for predators, whether there are fish bones or not, it does not prevent them from eating fish, after all, eating fish, there may be injury or death, but if you do not eat fish, you will definitely starve to death.
Well, I am a Tao brother who loves fishing and can talk, today I will talk nonsense to this, like to pay attention to me.