TIMES RECORD • February 15, 2023
I was thinking of how silly it is that when we humans try to make a kissy face, we often end up sucking our cheeks in to make fish lips. And yet, most fish don’t really have lips that look anything like this. In reality, fish have a variety of mouth types, very few of which look much like our silly imitation of them. As with many animals, fish mouths are specific to what they eat. There is a wacky array of mouth types including everything from a small sucking mouth that doesn’t have anything like teeth and is designed to eat things like algae, to a large toothy mouth that is made for crunching through the shells of its prey. ~ Susan Olcott