Ask Lepidosiren

[opabinia]

JET, an applications developer from Texas, asks, "Does the crayfish go down in one big bite?"

That's a great question, JET. Here's all you need to know:

Lungfish Protocol of Ingestion

1. Detect food by visual, tactile, and/or olfactory means.
2. Close in on food by chemoreception and tactile stimuli.
3. Produce astonishing vacuum to draw food item into mouth.
4. Crush and chew food item, coating it in mucus. Extrude partially-chewed item and repeat as necessary until item is uniformly macerated and coated.*
5. Swallow item.
6. Blow water from mouth ("sneeze") to clear remaining debris.
7. Look for more food.

*This is what makes things interesting. Lacking a fancy digestive tract, the lungfish must partially digest food (mechanically) in its mouth.