A Fish That Suckles Its Young - as part of the news series by GeoBeats.
Mammals feed their young by milking them, as the babies suckle from the mother.
Surprisingly, a fish has been discovered to feed its young by suckling them too, and even more oddly, suckling occurs inside the mother’s ovary, not outside using mammary glands. Found in many parts of Europe, the European eelpout is also known as the viviparous blenny. It is the first fish to be documented feeding its offspring this way.
The eelpout also has one of the longest gestation periods for its young at six months and gives birth to live babies. “The exact mechanisms behind the development of the young has been a topic of fairly intensive research for the past half century," says Professor Peter Skov of the University of Copenhagen, who has been studying the eelpout.
Skov was dissecting a pregnant female specimen and noticed fish embryos attached at the mouth to the ovarian follicles inside of the mother fish.
He has found a method of euthanasia that allows the embryos to stay attached, and believes that other fish should be studied to see if this trait is discovered in them. .
