you should watch the original video of the gulper eel on the EvNautilus Youtube channel. The scientists’ reactions are golden. They have a lot of fun videos tbh :)
“Is it engorged or is it…like that?” “Lookathislittleface!”
Gulper eels (also known as pelican eels) are such cool creatures. Their most notable feature is, of course, their giant mouth – but interestingly, they’re thought to mostly eat small crustaceans. Their lower jaw has a huge pouch of skin on it that looks like of like a pelican’s- hence the name.
Similar to how baleen whales gulp seawater and filter their prey out from it, gulper eels are thought to gulp mouthfuls of prey and water simultaneously into their pouch, and then slowly press the water out through their gill slits until they’ve got a mouthful of food to swallow. It looks like that’s what we’re seeing in this video – it starts with the eel having a full pouch of water, and at the end, you can see the regular size of the gulper eel without it’s maw inflated by water.
For all gulper eels look scary, they actually have tiny teeth and are only found in very deep water (this video was filmed at a depth of around a mile). So if they squick you out, you never need to worry about running into one in real life.
And, yes, the commentary on this from the observing scientists is gold.
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