Remember the movie Alien, featuring the nearly indestructible extraterrestrial with the grotesque set of extra jaws that projected forward to grab and rip prey to shreds? Well, sometimes life is truly stranger than fiction. It turns out that moray eels, some of the most familiar residents of the reef, have a second, hidden set of jaws that they use in a manner highly reminiscent of the voracious monster in the hit sci-fi movie.New high-speed videos captured by researchers at the University of California in Davis show a second set of jaws located deep in the moray eel’s throat lunging out to pull prey in, after the front set of teeth (the ones we normally see) have clamped down on the eel’s next meal.Read more about this fascinating discovery and watch the video here.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 6:28 pm and is filed under FiNS Fun Facts.