Real-life "Alien" jaws - Darien Satterfield
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TEDEd Animation
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After stalking a cuttlefish, a moray eel finally pounces. As the eel snags the mollusk in its teeth, its prey struggles to escape. But before it can wiggle away, a second set of teeth lunge from the eel’s throat. This adaptation is called a pharyngeal jaw, and is one of the most common adaptations under the sea. Darien Satterfield shares how this incredible skeletal mechanism works.
Describe a food source that would be unavailable to a fish without pharyngeal jaws, and explain how a fish with pharyngeal jaws is uniquely adapted to gain this hard to access supply of energy and nutrition.
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Meet The Creators
- Educator Darien Satterfield
- Director Zack Williams
- Narrator Addison Anderson
- Music Maxwell Sorensen
- Sound Designer Maxwell Sorensen
- Director of Production Gerta Xhelo
- Editorial Director Alex Rosenthal
- Producer Bethany Cutmore-Scott
- Editorial Producer Dan Kwartler
- Script Editor Alex Gendler
- Fact-Checker Eden Girma
