Diet and Feeding Habits
The Queensland lungfish is primarily nocturnal, and is essentially carnivorous. In captivity it will feed on frogs, earthworms, pieces of meat, and pelleted food. In the wild its prey includes frogs, tadpoles, fishes, a variety of invertebrates, and plant material. No quantitative dietary data is available, but anecdotal observations clearly indicate that the diet of the lungfish changes with development. This is proven to be correlated with a change in dentition.
Lungfish larvae are bottom feeders. They eat micro crustaceans and small Tubifex worms, occasionally supplementing their diet with filamentous algae. Soft foods such as worms and plants are partially crushed with a few quick bites and then swallowed. In the adult lungfish, movement of the prey in and out of the mouth is accompanied by strong adduction of the jaws. This crushing mechanism is coupled with hydraulic transport of the food, achieved by movements of the hyoid apparatus, to position the prey within the oral cavity. The Queensland lungfish exhibits the most primitive version of these biomechanical feeding adaptations and behaviors.
Read more about this topic: Queensland Lungfish
Famous quotes containing the words diet, feeding and/or habits:
“I learned from my two years’ experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one’s necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.... Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We went on, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the soldier, binding up his wounds, harboring the stranger, visiting the sick, ministering to the prisoner, and burying the dead, until that blessed day at Appomattox Court House relieved the strain.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“Out of my discomforts, which were small enough, grew one thing for which I have all my life been grateful—the formation of fixed habits of work.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)