There is a fish on Earth that loses two dozen teeth a day and grows new ones almost immediately. It is, according to the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a toothy rasp. The unique fish was described by American marine biologists from Rice University.
The toothed greenling is a fairly large fish (the size of individual individuals reaches one and a half meters), inhabiting the northeast of the Pacific Ocean. The main feature of the fish is its teeth, of which it has a lot. There are approximately five hundred large and small needle-like teeth in the mouth of a greenling.
Scientists have noticed that the teeth of the raspberries are very sharp – even in old individuals over 20 years old. How do these formidable ocean predators keep their many teeth sharp? It turned out that it was all about the regular change of teeth.
The authors of the new study captured twenty toothed greenplants and placed them in an aquarium. A special red dye was added to the water, staining the teeth of the fish. Then the fish were placed in a container of plain water, and then in a green dye aquarium. The fish were then killed to examine their teeth. An analysis of ten thousand teeth, left over from 20 greenleafs, showed that fish lose 20 teeth a day, but new ones quickly grow in their place. The ability to quickly grow new sharp teeth makes the survival of these amazing fish much easier.
