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Fangtooth — printable fact sheet
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Fangtooth
Anoplogaster cornuta
Anoplogaster cornuta has the largest teeth of any fish in the ocean relative to its body size, and they present the animal with an obvious geometrical problem: the two lower fangs are so long that if the fish simply closed its mouth, they would drive straight through its own bra…
Did you know?
- Fangtooths can survive at pressures over 200 times greater than at sea level, thanks to their specially adapted bodies.
- Adult fangtooths eat mainly fish and squid; the juveniles, which lack the fangs, filter crustaceans with gill rakers instead, so the animal completely changes its feeding mode as it grows. Its skin is covered in tiny prickly scale plates that give it a rasp-like texture. Fangtooths are among the deepest-living fish regularly caught in trawls and are recorded below 5,000 m. They survive on infrequent meals, and their capacity to swallow prey close to their own size is the deep sea's standard answer to the problem of never knowing when the next meal will come.
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