Sentences with phrase «fang blennies»
Nonvenomous fang blennies and other small fish capitalize on the venom's success by mimicking venomous fang blennies» colors and patterns.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/
«By slowing down potential predators, the fang blennies have a chance to escape,» says Fry.
Fangs on a fish are strange enough, but even weirder is how one toothy group — fang blennies — defends itself from attackers.
Forces of natural selection nudged nonvenomous fang blennies toward colors and stripes similar enough to those of their venomous cousins to discourage attacks from an educated predator.
After a recent flurry of news that fang blennies mix an opioid in their venom, a question lingers: What do they need with fangs anyway?
In the May 27 SN: Genetic intruders, seeing Chaco in a new light, an artificial womb, Mars» origin revisited, domestication of the horse, glimpsing Earth's glacial past, what's in a fang blenny's bite and more.
A venomous fang blenny has yet to nail him, but he hears that others have felt little more than a toothy nip.
ON POINT The two big teeth in the lower jaw of this fang blenny (Meiacanthus grammistes) have a groove for venom delivery.
«For the fang blenny venom to be painless in mice was quite a surprise,» says study co-author Bryan Fry of University of Queensland.
When the researchers did a proteomic analysis of extracted fang blenny venom, they found three venom components — a neuropeptide that occurs in cone snail venom, a lipase similar to one from scorpions, and an opioid peptide.
Another surprise from the study was the evidence suggesting that fang blenny fangs evolved before the venom.
Not exact matches
Yet when Casewell, Fry and colleagues put together an evolutionary family tree for the blennies, the one genus with both fangs and venom branched off amid four genera that are all fang and no toxins, Casewell, Fry and colleagues report in the April 24 Current Biology.
Since blenny fish are only about two inches long, these «fangs» would be less than intimidating if not for the venom within.