Fish with 'human' teeth caught in North Carolina

[pvaldes]

Let me guess by the title... a super common Sparidae?

Yep, nothing strange them. Every marine biologist, alive or past, know that sea breams that eat mainly shells have this set of teeth to tear and crush.

A much more interesting trivia is that this animal is hermaphrodyte so the journalists have lost their only chance to write something like 'mutating bisexual fish with human teeth and wearing a prison uniform, discovered'.

[chansiky]

  > that eat mainly shells have this set of teeth to tear and crush

I was thinking when I saw the images that there must be some sort of convergent evolution going on. I would love to know what the similarities in our mastication patterns are with these fish. I wonder if our purported history with consuming bone marrow have anything to do with this similarity?

[david-gpu]

> this animal is hermaphrodyte so the journalists have lost their only chance to write something like 'mutating bisexual fish

I've heard bisexuality defined as sexual attraction towards both males and females. If your species is hermaphrodite, you arguably cannot be bisexual because there are neither males not females to be attracted to.

[brailsafe]

This strikes me as an awfully cynical take. Most people aren't marine biologists it turns out.

[crazydoggers]

This article is making it sound like this is some new amazing find. These fish are well known… there’s even a town named after them!

Yes, the teeth look human. Convergent evolution:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution

[mas-ev]

I'm conflicted when it comes to things being reposted and framed at new on the internet.

To many it is new. However, it's not new to me so it feels more click baity.

[grendelt]

All sheepshead I've ever caught (Galveston, TX) look like that. They regularly swim around below the piers and use those teeth to eat/bite off barnacles on the pilings. Not sure what's newsworthy here, BBC.

[timonoko]

Most terrifying fish to catch, because bites fingers off. But edible.

[bryanrasmussen]

but this may the only chance you have to actually reply "because it bit my finger so" to the question "why did you let it go?"

[simmerup]

Is that not a photoshop? The teeth look like they blur into the mouth

[aikinai]

It’s real, but not sure why it’s news. It’s weird, but a known fish. There are a lot of photos if you Google sheepshead fish.

[pvaldes]

This is its normal aspect

[Farfromthehood]

Common fish. They eat shellfish. They taste like crab.

[headmelted]

The shellfish taste like crab or this merdonkey does?

[McMiniBurger]

can humans use those teeth as replacement?

[pvaldes]

Not. Even if we could solve the rejecting issues (and we have fully solved the technology for breeding sea breams since decades), they are too small. Not really suitable for adult people.

And not useful for children, that would lost and replace their teeth in any case.

The structure of the teeth root is also different, and the mandible is much more acute triangular than ours. Not useful to replace part of a missing mandible in my opinion. Specially when you can just made a ceramic piece of the right size and shape and do a bone self-transplant.

[crazydoggers]

Try google:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archosargus_probatocephalus