Marcus served as the first author in this latest study, led by Gilbert and published online Oct. Gilbert carried out most of the structural studies to understand how parrotfish teeth work. Her collaborators from Nanyang Technical University in Singapore – Ali Miserez, an associate professor who studies biological materials with unique properties, and his group – performed mechanical measurements for the study. She led an international team in the study, receiving parrotfish beaks from collaborators in French Polynesia. Gilbert said she “responded enthusiastically” to the challenge. “But how can this fish eat coral and not lose its teeth?”īack at the ALS, Marcus asked Pupa Gilbert – a biophysicist and professor in the Physics Department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who studies how living things produce minerals – if she was interested in studying the parrotfish teeth.
![parrot fish parrot fish](https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3683/12874029094_1dbf366354_b.jpg)
“I was reminded that this is a fish that crunches up coral all day, and is responsible for much of the white sand on beaches,” Marcus said. The hardness of parrotfish teeth measured near the biting surface is about 530 tons of pressure per square inch – equivalent to a stack of about 88 African elephants – compressed to a square inch of space. They mainly feast on the polyps and algae that live on the surface of coral skeletons, and help to clean up reefs. (Berkeley Lab)Ī sea-life video he watched on an oceangoing tour boat reminded him of the role of parrotfish in breaking down coral into fine sand. The denser, enamel-like structure (enameloid) is shown in yellow and green, and the bony tissue (dentin) behind each tooth and surrounding bone is shown in cyan and blue. This image, generated from X-ray micro-computed tomography data collected at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, shows a view of one-quarter of a parrotfish beak. Matthew Marcus, a staff scientist working at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) – an X-ray source known as a synchrotron light source that was integral in the parrotfish study – became intrigued with parrotfish during a 2012 visit to the Great Barrier Reef off of the coast of Australia. The natural structure they observed also provides a blueprint for creating ultra-durable synthetic materials that could be useful for mechanical components in electronics, and in other devices that undergo repetitive movement, abrasion, and contact stress. Now, a study by scientists – including those at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) – has revealed a chain mail-like woven microstructure that gives parrotfish teeth their remarkable bite and resilience.
![parrot fish parrot fish](https://www.thesprucepets.com/thmb/NUgnPGkzWeBQ3ef4yDfvgPLvuXI=/4323x3242/filters:fill(auto,1)/blood-parrot-showing-adorable-face-149480523-5c2a318dc9e77c000151f3c2.jpg)
A single parrotfish can produce hundreds of pounds of sand each year. That’s right: Its “beak” creates beaches. So, you thought the fictional people-eating great white shark in the film “Jaws” had a powerful bite.īut don’t overlook the mighty mouth of the parrotfish – its hardy teeth allow it to chomp on coral all day long, ultimately chewing and grinding it up through digestion into fine sand.
![parrot fish parrot fish](https://wallpapercave.com/wp/wp9542761.jpg)
(Credit: Alex The Reef Fish Geek/Nautilus Scuba Club, Cairns, Australia) Scientists studied the microstructure of the coral-chomping teeth of the steephead parrotfish, pictured here, to learn about the fish’s powerful bite.