"Unraveling the Mystery of the Little Fish's Unbelievable Mouth"
Originally Published 1 year ago — by Defector
The hingemouth, a small brown fish found in central west Africa, has a truly bizarre feeding apparatus that includes a trunk-like mouth that extends from its forehead to suck up food from the ground. Researchers spent five years investigating this unique mouth structure, which they named the proboscis, and found that it allows the hingemouth to thrive in its swampy habitat by breathing air and feeding on detritus. Despite its extreme anatomical reorganization, the hingemouth proves that evolution can lead to wild diversity beyond conventional notions of success.