Abstract
If you go fishing and cast your lure out across a pond, settling it skillfully by the lily pads, you may see the water drop out from under your bait with a sucking whirlpool as you engage with the most popular sport fish in the world, the largemouth bass. Almost all popular recreational sport fish species (bass, salmon, trout, pike, grouper, snapper) feed by attacking their living prey with powerful suction, expanding their mouth and pharynx rapidly to suck the prey in before biting down and swallowing. This behavior is of great interest to scientists and recreational fishers alike because it is a dramatic, predatory event (Fig. 1) that is at the crux of survival for both predator and prey. It involves a complex system of bones and muscles to expand the head, is a widespread and ecologically successful strategy among aquatic animals, and is a major source of the excitement and allure of recreational fishing, one of the largest and most effective economic engines for environmental conservation of freshwater and marine habitats. In addition, suction feeding has been challenging to understand from the perspective of biomechanics (the study of how organisms work) because it is such a fast and complex behavior. In PNAS, Camp et al. (1) report a major advance in our understanding of how suction feeding works, using cutting-edge imaging technology and analyses of muscle mechanics to identify the source of the power that drives suction feeding in our feisty friend from the pond, the largemouth bass.
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