What would you think if you were fishing and saw such fish grow under the water?
Frank Nicole of Florida, USA, once photographed a strange fish with teeth in its mouth that are very similar to human teeth. Nicole said she didn't know what the strange-looking fish was called, but she was sure she wouldn't dare swim in the river anymore.
Nicole posted the video of the strange fish on the Internet, netizens talked about it, and some netizens suspected that the fish wore dentures. Fish experts say the fish is called the sheephead seabream, and experts say it doesn't actively attack humans, so it doesn't have to worry about being bitten.
The sheephead seabream, a popular edible game fishing in the genus Perch in the family Seabream, is a large seabream with a flattened body and a high forehead. Most can grow up to 43-45 cm, some up to 1 meter. The sheephead seabream has a silvery body with a wide dark vertical band, which is most pronounced when young fish. Because of its dark stripes on its gray body, which look a bit like a prison uniform, the sheephead seabream is also known as the "criminal fish".
According to the IUCN, the sheephead seabream lives in marine habitats and estuaries in the western Atlantic Ocean, from Nova Scotia in eastern Canada to the coastlines of the eastern United States and Central America, all the way to southern Brazil. Females of sheephead seabream can expel 1100-250,000 eggs during breeding, and once fertilized, the eggs hatch after 28 hours. Sheephead seabream usually mature at age 2 and can live for at least 20 years.
The sheephead seabream is best known for its strange teeth, which are large and flattened and have a very high degree of similarity to human teeth.
In fact, the teeth of the sheephead seabream are very different from the teeth of humans, the human teeth are only one circle, but the teeth of the sheephead seabream have many circles inside and out, the upper jaw has three rows of teeth, and the lower jaw has two rows of teeth, so the bite force of the sheephead seabream is very amazing, and it can bite the shell of the prey. The sheephead seabream's special teeth and strong jaw are also made to adapt to this recipe.
When the sheephead seabream is in its infancy, it mainly eats less toothless foods such as marine worms and mosses, and when they grow to 4.5 mm long, they begin to grow thick and sharp teeth, when it grows to about 15 mm long, all the front teeth grow out and begin to develop into adult molars, and when it grows to 50 mm long, the teeth are like pig iron, which can penetrate animals with carapaces, as well as mollusks such as clams and oysters.
Since the sheephead seabream has an amazing bite force and a wide range of food sources, will it pose a threat to humans?
David Catania, Collection Manager of the California Academy of Sciences Ichthyology, said: "Although the sheephead seabream has a mouth of fierce teeth and looks like a threat to humans, they do not actively attack humans and threaten humans like sharks and killer whales, and they only passively attack their opponents when they are attacked." David Catania also said that the meat taste of sheephead seabream is a favorite prey for anglers, and when handling a sheephead seabream, be careful of being stabbed by their sharp dorsal fin.