Why do animals rarely get stuck eating fish? Do they have any special fish-eating tricks?

Fish is delicious and tender, not only humans like to eat it, but there are also many animals that eat fish in nature. Although the fish is good, there are a lot of spines. If you are not careful, it is easy to be stuck in the throat by the fish bones. I think everyone has more or less fear of being dominated by fish bones!

Most of the fish we eat are freshwater fish. In fact, fish bones are only found in lower freshwater fish. Fishbone, the thin and pointed fishbone, is the common name for the intermuscular bone of fish. The purpose of these small fishbone is to make up for the lack of muscle strength and provide support and force points for the muscles. Some freshwater fish and marine fish that have evolved more advanced have few spines, and some can be said to be almost spineless.

When humans eat fish, they get stuck by the fishbone. So, do wild animals also have this trouble when they eat fish? How do they solve the fishbone, any special tricks?

In nature, there are many animals that can eat fish, and their eating methods are also different. When they eat fish, they will also face the problem of fish bones. How do they solve it?

For animals that rely on fish as their main food, they eat fish without getting stuck by thorns, such as penguins, cormorants, brown bears, and otters. For animals that can eat fish, but do not use fish as their main food, such as cats, humans, etc., there is a risk of being caught by eating fish.

Brown bear: mainly to swallow, supplemented by bite

Alaskan brown bears are very good at fishing, especially migrating salmon. Every year, when the salmon migrate to the upper reaches of the river to breed, the brown bear will wait for the rabbit in the river, eliminate a large number of passing salmon, and store energy for hibernation.

The way brown bears eat fish is also relatively simple and rude, usually supplemented by biting and mainly swallowing. Usually, the fish is taken a few bites first, bite into a size suitable for swallowing, and then swallowed directly. In this way, brown bears can reduce the possibility of fishbone contact with mouth and esophagus, and the esophagus of carnivores is generally harder. In the stomach, the stomach acid of the brown bear can directly soften and digest the fishbone without causing damage to the stomach. It can be seen that this way of swallowing and chewing, coupled with the powerful stomach function, makes it stress-free to eat fish.

When the food is plentiful and there are too many fish to finish, some brown bears will be selective and only eat the fattest part of the fish belly, as well as the skin and internal organs of the fish, and these parts have almost no fish bones.

Birds: Swallow a fish whole

There are also many birds in nature that feed on fish, such as kingfishers, herons, cormorants, penguins and so on.

You must know that birds have no teeth. When eating, they usually rely on a hard beak to bite the food and then swallow it directly. Therefore, when birds catch fish, they also swallow the whole fish in one bite, shoving it in like noodles. Moreover, the digestive tract of birds is also very hard, and they will swallow some small stones and store them in their stomachs to help grind food. Even hard stones can't hurt their stomachs. What's the small fishbone. When the fish is in the stomach, the gastric juice can slowly digest the fish. Birds swallow the fish whole, the fish meat wraps the fishbone, and there is no problem of the fishbone getting stuck in the throat during the swallowing process.

The fish that penguins eat are generally small, but the cormorants are so powerful that they can swallow 1 kg of fish at a time!

Otters: chewers

Some rodents, such as otters, eat fish slowly. They chew bones, fish bones, fish scales, fish meat, internal organs, etc. to shreds before eating them, so there is no need to worry about fish bones.

All of the above are animals that take fish as their main food. These animals basically do not have the trouble of eating fish and getting stuck.

Cats that "bring their own fish-eating tools"

Cats are also good fish eaters, but they are also afraid of fish bones. After all, they often walk on the shore, so how can they not wet their shoes, and cats who often eat fish will sometimes get stuck in their spines, but they have a lot more ways to do it than humans when they get stuck.

Domestic cats eat fish, usually cooked fish. After the fish is cooked, the bones will become hard, and the fish meat and fish bones will be easier to separate. Cats, on the other hand, have a specially constructed tongue, covered with dense barbed spines. When eating fish, the "barbs" on the tongue can remove the fish meat from the fish bones and eat it into the stomach, so cats generally do not eat fish bones. Even if the occasional fishbone gets ingested by mistake, they have a way.

Because the structure of the cat's esophagus and digestive system is also very special. Even if the fishbone is swallowed by mistake, their stomach acid can digest many small spines, and the cat's esophagus wall is relatively long, and the esophagus wall has muscles that control nausea, which can easily spit out the unpleasant food or foreign bodies that are swallowed. . Therefore, once a fishbone enters and feels uncomfortable, the cat can also spit it out through the regurgitation muscle.

Cats in the wild can only eat raw fish. The bones and flesh of raw fish are not easy to peel off. Cats usually chew the fishbone and swallow it. This way of eating, although it is easier to get stuck by the fishbone, but with the special body structure just mentioned, there is no need to worry too much about being injured by the fishbone.

However, in general, eating fish with relatively large and few bones is really not a big problem for cats. However, if it is a small fish with a lot of fish bones, it is sometimes difficult for cats to withstand it. Their special tongue and digestive system are also difficult to scrape off all those fine fish bones or vomit them out on their own, and the fish bones will inevitably get stuck. Dilemma in the throat, very uncomfortable. Therefore, in order to prevent your cat from being caught by fish bones, try to feed it fish with fewer bones.

summary

Natural selection has created many fish-eating animals, all of which have the ability to digest fish bones. Some have digestive systems that can digest fish bones; others have thick teeth enough to chew up fish bones.