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I hope I never see this while floating tubing the LAB.. 
when this fish sucks you in, like a big Alien, that's a moray!
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Here's the text from the FB "Evolution" page:
The jaws-within-jaws has become synonymous with Ridley Scott's "Alien", but what was dreamed of first in fiction was recently found in real life. Moray eels have been found to utilize a second set of jaws (named pharyngeal jaws) to seize their prey - a feature that had not been seen in vertebrates before.
Many fish hunt using suction, drawing both water and prey into their mouths. But the moray eel has little ability to generate suction, and faces another problem in eating large prey. They have overcome this by first biting with the oral jaws, then latching on with the pharyngeal jaws. This mechanism is a solution to the same problem faced by snakes, who overcame it by separating the left and right sides of the jaw. Mary Chamberlin, a director at the National Science Foundation cites this as an excellent example of convergent evolution, when the same biological trait occurs in unrelated species. It is fascinating to see how this solutions have been created for the same problem.
JDF
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when this fish sucks you in, like a big Alien, that's a moray!
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
Here's the text from the FB "Evolution" page:
The jaws-within-jaws has become synonymous with Ridley Scott's "Alien", but what was dreamed of first in fiction was recently found in real life. Moray eels have been found to utilize a second set of jaws (named pharyngeal jaws) to seize their prey - a feature that had not been seen in vertebrates before.
Many fish hunt using suction, drawing both water and prey into their mouths. But the moray eel has little ability to generate suction, and faces another problem in eating large prey. They have overcome this by first biting with the oral jaws, then latching on with the pharyngeal jaws. This mechanism is a solution to the same problem faced by snakes, who overcame it by separating the left and right sides of the jaw. Mary Chamberlin, a director at the National Science Foundation cites this as an excellent example of convergent evolution, when the same biological trait occurs in unrelated species. It is fascinating to see how this solutions have been created for the same problem.
JDF
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