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EveryFish

Pharyngeal teeth

Teeth in the throat, behind the gills' arches, that carps and cichlids use to crush and grind food.

A diagram drawn by EveryFish.

Also: throat teeth, pharyngeal jaws

Many fish have a second set of teeth in the throat, on the bones of the last gill arch. Carps, including rohu, catla and goldfish, have no teeth in their mouths at all and chew with these pharyngeal teeth against a hard pad. Cichlids have strong throat jaws that work separately from the mouth, which helped them evolve into hundreds of species with different diets in the African lakes. Moray eels go further: a second pair of jaws shoots forward from the throat to pull prey in. Fish teeth in the mouth range from the parrotfish's fused beak to the needle teeth of deep-sea predators.

See also

Species flock Plant-eating fish Gill rakers

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