One of the evolutionary peculiarities of my favorite lab animal, the zebrafish, and of cypriniform fishes in general, is that they lack teeth. They lost them over 50 million years ago, and don’t even form a dental lamina in development. So this photo of a cypriniform, Danionella dracula, gave me a bit of a start beyond just the nice fangs and the ghoulish name.
The story doesn’t give much detail, but I’m going to have to look into this. Those are not true teeth, but spiny outgrowths of bone directly from the jaws.
“And I’m going to rip those spiny outgrowths of bone out one by one”…or so goes the hatemail. Any word from the death threat posse lately?
Spiny outgrowths of bone? It has obviously regenerated from being left to die on the surface of Krypton.
[/geek]
Interesting. Evolution works in fascinating ways. It would be nice if someday you could be able to lay out the sequence and timing of the hox genes necessary for this to happen.
PZ,that one looks scary…
*drunk comment warning*
Ok,I found god,I really have…..he looks rather old and a little worse for wear,but he IS god,no doubt…
His name is ….Keith Richards.
Oh,WAIT,
there is another god,right here,his name is…Eric Clapton.
Now what??
Can I be a polytheist?
Please?
Cyprinids are food for real fish. Like cichlids. Not that I’m biased…ooh, I am!
That is so cool.
(Sorry, no puns, jokes, or geekery here. Just fishlove.)
As a non-biologist, what strikes me most about this fish is the apparently deformed eye. Is this a preserved specimen?
It’s another Panda’s Thumb phenomenon; the same useful functional structure is being formed by a different developmental route. Now you can ask the creationists why an intelligent designer wouldn’t just give the thing teeth if it needed them :)
Thinking of weird marine biology moments, last night on Channel 4 Heston Blumenthal served his guests lampreys garnished with their own deep-fried notochords. Craig Revel-Horwood almost had a nervous breakdown. We also got to hear the line “I’m probably the first chef to put a testicle in Germaine Greer’s mouth”.
Sorry for the off-topic post, but oh !*@$.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29628516/
What’s up with the wrinkly eye?
I have crossed oceans of time to grow my bone fang…
And fishlove is not geeky?
It’s probably a dehydrated specimen prepared for scanning EM. So, the eyes would not be deformed. They are merely dehydrated to some extent.
Stephanurus
Thanks, Stephanurus.
Yes, that is one dead fish: killed, fixed, freeze-dried, and coated with a thin layer of metal so that it can be observed in the vacuum chamber of a scanning electron microscope. The collapsed eye is entirely artifactual.
The BBC story on this is reasonable…
Who wins in a fight between Danionella dracula and a large octopus?
Yeah, but does it taste nice with chips?
A large enough octopus wins against anything except a sperm whale.
Can anyone explain how evolution can account for two perfectly formed, shaped, and placed bone protrusions? If this fish had no teeth and natural selection favored fish with protruding jaw bones (mimicking teeth), how does that produce these two particular protrusions? Why only canine-like teeth and why only two?
Maybe a primer in teeth evolution is in order. The evolutionary factors that produced teeth could be in play here.
Fish are awesome. Not only do they put teeth (the only anatomical element worth biting on) on just about every bone in the bloody skull, but some of them also have bones that essentially mimic teeth. I’m sorry if this sounds judgemental, but I have such a hard time understanding people who find science boring. This fish species has essentially “made” “false” teeth. If you find that boring, then I’m very sad for you.
Natural selection.
Shape and position vary, and those with the best shapes and positions end up having the largest number of surviving fertile offspring because they were able to get the most food at the least expense.
Such bone spikes also occur elsewhere: Frogs lack teeth in the lower jaw*, so such spikes evolved several times independently, for example in hemiphractids. Then there are the magnificent pseudo-toothed birds…
* Except for the tree frog Amphignathodon, which really did get them back.
Which leads me to another question: do cypriniforms lack all teeth, or just the marginal ones (those on the actual jawbones)? Because that, too, occurs elsewhere.
Theodore:
Number of teeth is apparently not just two. See the pictures and especially what looks like some kind of scan (jazzed up X-ray?) image here.
Ed from Not Exactly Rocket Science did a write-up about it here:
http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/03/newly_discovered_fish_crosses_peter_pan_with_dracula.php
Who wins in a fight between Danionella dracula and a large octopus?
The article said this creature is 16mm long.
If so, not so scary as the photo makes it.
I don’t know. I don’t know that much about these guys. I’m more than happy to check into it, but it will take me a minute.
Oh, and:
Pseudo-toothed Birds!
Pseudo-toothed Birds!
Pseudo-toothed Birds!
Okay, I’m done now.
ONE! one vampire feesh! ah-ah-ahhhhh!
Them’s fightin’ words, True Bob.
My RL surname is Lithuanian for ‘Crucian Carp’, so if you’d ever thought there was something fishy about that Brownian fellow…
Reminds me of my 2nd girlfriend. She’s married now.
It’s almost as if no intelligence were involved…
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Stagyar zil Doggo: Thanks for the close-up image. That explains a lot. Without seeing the other “teeth” I was perplexed. I can see evolution factors producing teeth-like bones, making them sharp , and positioning them, but I couldn’t understand why “only* sharp teeth evolved.
Proof of Evolution! Proof of evoltion! A fish with teeth?
No. I demand to see the followitg creatures, now. Else I’ll ban science teaching in all the stupid states.
A fish with fur, to keep it warm.
A rat with radar.
A snake with nipples.
An amoeba with a penis.
A gay tree.
A poisonous black bird.
An ant with a built-in laser.
A true baby butterfly.
What other creatures would readers like to see, but can’t because evoltion is false?
Oh, and there’s a wink in there somewhere.
I am biased and think cypriniforms are quite awesome. The lab I work in studies the morphological novelties associated with the group, including the protrusible jaws. I wonder what sort of implications this has for the feeding with both the oral and the pharyngeal jaws (my area of interest). I’m thinking I am going to have to suck up to someone and try to get my hands on some of these fish.
milt:
Presumably, … to someone else.
The X-ray image in Ed’s post (links in #22 and #23 above) appears to show the upper jaw as distinct from the skull, and possibly connected with a hinged joint in the middle. Is that indeed the case?
Also, what are the two openings (one circular and one oblong) just in front of and above the eye?
A poisonous black bird.
They’re black and orange and live in New Guinea.
Several species from different genera, too, all looking alike, convergent evolutes. Very cool.
And another thing we can’t have:
A pig with X-ray vision!
Why? Becuase Darwin says we can’t.
Well I can’t wait to see all the cool creatures we’ll get when evoluion is finally disproved!
@31 – Oh, they exist, you just need to seek them with all your heart. Radar rat! http://editinternational.com/images/gallery/06-frontglove_low.jp
Nice description with more pics here:
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/item.php?news=2047
Poisonous “blackbirds”? Well, yes. Here is a great post about them on grrl scientist’s site, “Living the Scientific Life”: http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2008/12/the_evolution_of_poisonous_bir.php#more And for those who want a beautiful (and briefly very sad) post on birds and evolution I also like this one:
http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2008/12/when_is_a_honeyeater_not_a_hon.php
Crows aren’t *quite* poisonous, but they’re darned close. Which is why nothing in its right mind eats crows.
AnthonyK
I so enjoy sitting back and seeing how my mind does not work.
If you didn’t exist, we would have to invent you.
JC
JackC
Well, I don’t and you did so there!
(insert blowing-raspberry emoticon).
Or vice versa.
I forget.
@31: Dr Evil’s sharks, and a crocodaisy.
‘You don’t scare me with your fluffy white cat and this goldfish pond I am suspended over”
“You should be scared Mr Bond, those goldfish were crossed with Danionela dracula, Bwaaahaaahaaaa! Now DIE”
@4: You fool, everyone knows that Lemmy is God!
The so-called X-ray is a cleared and stained specimen like that on PZ’s home page. Red is bone and green is cartilage. If this is a male-only characteristic, then we are possibly talking contact organs. Contact organs are usually bony spines produced on scales, surface bones, boneless head areas, and fin rays in a number of minnow species males during breeding season. They occur in other fish groups as well. Find a picture of a breeding male stoneroller, Campostoma, for example.
An interesting read, Herr Prof.
I’d like to read more on this.
Cheers.
I don’t drink, Spine.
Maybe a primer in teeth evolution is in order. The evolutionary factors that produced teeth could be in play here.
I highly recommend Neil Shubin’s “Your Inner Fish”
others have found it useful as well:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2125,Fish-out-of-water-Your-Inner-Fish,Neil-Shubin
@David:
do cypriniforms lack all teeth?
no. In fact, they have often been classified via their pharyngeal teeth.
I’ve seen more recent evidence indicating that that method is now being displaced by molecular methods, though.
I wonder what sort of implications this has for the feeding with both the oral and the pharyngeal jaws (my area of interest).
have you seen any of the recent papers on how pharyngeal teeth can be modified by diet?
oh, and MY favorite fangfish is this one:
Anoplogaster
which is a midwater (around 400m) fish that is jet black, and actually typically comes up alive from deepwater trawls. I’ve been bitten by them several times; have teeth like needles. They are around 10-15 cm long typically.
PZ – your favourite lab animal is the zebrafish??? Now I really want to get that job I just applied for in a zebrafish lab.
AnthonyK @ #35:
You mean you haven’t heard of the Kryptonian pig, Squee-El?
AnthonyK @ 31,
I can’t find the snake with nipples, but I found a snake with a placenta. Can I get half point?
Ichthyic @ 48,
“They are around 10-15 cm long typically.”
The fish or the teeth?
Asherot @53, the fish, as I discovered in a few seconds.
John @ 54,
Thanks mate but I wasn’t really confused.
I’m fairly certain Ichthyic wouldn’t be gracing this comments page if the teeth of this Leviathan were 15cm long.
Take a look here. These fry up tasty. The babies a couple of inches long are colored like a dead leaf.
http://www.angelfire.com/biz/piranha038/rhaphiodon.html
In South America, piranha get the reputation. I’ve never been bitten by one, but know several people who have. I’ve been bitten several times by small Hoplias. I have a nice slide of one hanging on my finger with blood running down.
http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&rlz=1T4GWYE_enUS311US204&q=Hoplias&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=PGO5SZfOD4TGMtSQhZkI&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title
I’m fairly certain Ichthyic wouldn’t be gracing this comments page if the teeth of this Leviathan were 15cm long.
holy crap! that thing would have put teeth all the way through my arm if they were THAT big!
lessee… the teeth are actually about 2.5cm long max (big enough, eh?) so if it had 15 cm teeth; to scale that beastie would be around a meter long!
something to actually be afeared of.
;)
btw, the unusual thing about anoplogasters is that they do typically come up alive from deepwater trawls, while most other deepwater fishes don’t seem to make it.
they are also reflex biters, so that anyplace you touch them they will automatically flex their bodies such so they can sink their teeth into you.
having one a meter long?
no thanks!
Ichthyic @ 58
“having one a meter long? no thanks!”
Oh, I don’t know. It’d fun to put a few in the lake at the Holy Land Experience theme park…
Neil Shubin’s Your Inner Fish, chapter 4, has a fascinating section on Ostracoderms. They’re primitive fish from 500 million years ago. Examine their skull closely:
Once upon a time, skulls were made of teeth!