For many animals, ending up in a predator’s abdomen means all is misplaced. However not for Japanese eels.
In a research printed Monday within the journal Present Biology, scientists filmed juvenile Japanese eels staging Houdiniesque feats of escape from inside a predatory fish. After being swallowed and deposited into the fish’s abdomen, the younger eels swam up the hunter’s esophagus and escaped by means of a gap in its gills, a lot to the fish’s displeasure.
That is the primary time scientists have been in a position to see precisely how a prey species escaped a predator’s abdomen. Researchers now marvel if different slender-bodied species use the identical lifesaving approach.
