Behold the Gloriously Weird Spotted Ratfish. It Has Teeth on Its Forehead for Sex

New findings call into question one of the core assumptions about teeth. Adult male spotted ratfish have rows of teeth on top of their heads, in addition to those in their jaws. They use these teeth to grip females while mating. @karlycohen.bsky.social More: www.washington.edu/news/2025/09...

New species alert! A Pascua goby from the Coral Sea. This genus now contains four species. Two from the Eastern Pacific and two from Australia, with more than 5,500km separating them. Lots of fun describing my second new species. #TeamFish #Fish doi.org/10.3390/fish...

Behold the gloriously weird Spotted Ratfish. It has teeth on its forehead for sex. The teeth line a cartilaginous appendage called a tenaculum that in males can be erected and used to grasp a female during mating 🧪

Bumping to the Fishes! and Science feeds🐟🧪

Super excited to share our new paper, out today @pnas.org 'Teeth outside the jaw: Evolution and development of the toothed head clasper in chimaeras' @karlycohen.bsky.social 👻🦈 🦷 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Super cool!! What a weird fish #TeamFish

Coolest fish is a ratfish and they have teeth on the head for mating. @karlycohen.bsky.social's most recent with a great Ray Troll piece of art. 🧪🐡 www.washington.edu/news/2025/09...

Article link here! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New paper is officially out! Ratfish have a second jaw on their foreheads - CT + histology show they’re real teeth, built from the same tissues and signals as oral teeth. www.washington.edu/news/2025/09...

The incredible @shirel.bsky.social fills the room tonight for the FHL teaching us about how manta rays feed

Of course there would be no paper w/o my co-authors @fishyologist.bsky.social, Allyson Evans, Thaddaeus Buser, @calliehcrawford.bsky.social, @emilykane.bsky.social, and Matt Kolmann. HUGE thanks to NSF for funding, @fishguy.bsky.social for the FHL fish class, & Scripps and OSU for their fish.

One reason I love this project is because of how many different tools and techniques we used. Field collections, high-speed feeding videos, CT scans of the jaw bones and muscles, scanning electron micrographs of the teeth, and lip histology....truly a tour de force of fun science.

New fish paper! We found that Clinocottus globicpes eats anemones (weird!) using a novel wrestling behavior + strong jaws that likely started as adaptations for tearing algae. It also has thick skin that protects it from stinging cells. @jzoology.bsky.social 🐟🧪 DM for PDF. doi.org/10.1111/jzo....

How could I forget to tag @karlycohen.bsky.social!!!

Hey look! Glowing fishes evolved over and over again. Lots of color of glow. @emilycarr.bsky.social led a team that included 5 FHL folks @jmhuie.bsky.social @lampichthys.bsky.social and @karlycohen.bsky.social. The oldest glowy fish is an eel at 100MYA. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

So excited to see this paper out! @jmhuie.bsky.social and I began looking at glowing fishes during the pandemic. @emilycarr.bsky.social turned it into amazing science! A great story about the evolution of glow www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Jack Rosen's paper on biting fruits and seeds is out in @royalsocietypublishing.org Interface. 3D models of pacu and piranha jaws cutting different prey. Pacus are 'better' at fruit. Maybe eating seeds drove the evolution of frugivory from piscivory. 🧪 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

@aineander.bsky.social: talented scientific artist with a kind soul! April runs the UChicago PaleoCT lab. Her beautiful work in scientific illustration/visualization helps researchers translate complex scientific concepts to visual media such as illustration, animation, & 3D prints aprilneander.com

@stephanopteryx.bsky.social: studier of bird bones/anatomy and all round great person! Stephanie's current postdoc at UF involves 3D imaging the anatomy of bird lungs. Her previous PhD work on water bird wing shapes is available here: doi.org/10.1093/iob/...

@mariacavallejo.bsky.social: A paleoherpetologist dedicated to old dead frogs. She is extremely smart, kind, & fun! She recently finished her PhD uncovering the stories fossil frogs have to tell, and won an award from the UF Biology Department for best student paper: doi.org/10.1093/zool...

@leaveylab.bsky.social: evolutionary biologist with a go-get-em attitude, I'm yet to see a task she wasn't willing to conquer. I worked w Alice on #diceCT frog legs, & now she's shining in her postdoc on chameleons! She's been busy publishing her PhD research: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Happy 💕International Day of Girls and Women in Science💕 I'd like to highlight a couple of the women who inspire me! See thread ⬇️

Our REU summer program just went live. Here is the application form... etap.nsf.gov/award/499/op... And here are the project descriptions... fhl.uw.edu/research/sum... There is a short time line on this. Please pass it to any interested undergrads.

Bringing in the whole team to figure out what armor is. @fishguy.bsky.social @schulzscience.bsky.social @karlycohen.bsky.social and Misty Paig-Tran who isn't here in BlueSky?

If you are looking for armor diversity this is the talk to be at! @karlycohen.bsky.social is now showing is armor shape and material diversity in armadillos. #SICBioinspired #SICB2025

Thanks to everyone who participated in our #SICBioinspired symposium today! @karlycohen.bsky.social and I had so much fun hearing from all of you. Thanks also to @biologists.bsky.social and @anatomyorg.bsky.social and @sicbjournals.bsky.social for supporting everyone here today! #SICB2025

#SICB2025 BIMS(Black In Marine Science ) & ICB collaborated on the first ever BIMS issue featuring: free to read The Joy Factor: Redefining Leadership Excellence at Black in Marine #Science through Joy-Centered Leadership Practices By Lynnette Adams, Tiara Moore, doi.org/10.1093/icb/... & more

Talk number 2 is up at 2:00pm in Marquis C. If you love knitting or elephants you should stop by! #SICB2025

We are back for our afternoon session! Come join us this afternoon in Marquis C for some more awesome #SICBioinspired talks! #SICB2025

Now Astrid Layton gets students working on bioinspired design in engineering spaces. #SICB2025 #SICBbioinspired @sicbjournals.bsky.social

Happening now! Form, function, and mechanics of composites! @schulzscience.bsky.social #SICB2025 #SICBbioinspired @sicbjournals.bsky.social

Happening now! Form, function, and mechanics of composites! @schulzscience.bsky.social #SICB2025 #SICBbioinspired @sicbjournals.bsky.social

Next we have @schulzscience.bsky.social starting at 2 PM in Marquis C! If you are looking at the paper program this is a schedule change you don't want to miss! #SICB2025 #SICBioinspired @sicbjournals.bsky.social

We are starting back up again strong with Brian Woronowicz talking about tail movement and function in rats

We are starting back up again strong with Brian Woronowicz talking about tail movement and function in rats

Jessica presents us a framework to help find the colleagues to answer your questions! Aiding conversations across the fields of biology and engineering

How we ask think about our questions has major impacts on the kinds of data we collect and share

Up now is Jessica Tingle using conceptual frameworks for jump between biology and engineering! #SICB #SICBinspired @sicbjournals.bsky.social

Julia Teeple is using #bioinspired models to understand why armadillo tiles have been hexagons for the last 38 million years. Answering complex questions with #SICBioinspired models! #SICB2025

Sebastian Kruppert talks to us about the importance of soft robotics and how do we make soft materials move #SICB2025 #SICBinspired @sicbjournals.bsky.social

#SICB2025 check out @karlycohen.bsky.social profile, talk and cool dental dynamics art from Karly’s IOB paper’s cover #art on our Fine Art Am account(profits got to SICB student funds) fineartamerica.com/profiles/sic...

Armadillo taper affects are not stiffness, making the whole thing bendy but not too bendy

Starting back up with Julia Teeple talking about the mechanics of Armadillo armor! Join us in Marquis C #SICB2025 #SICBinspired @sicbjournals.bsky.social

#SICB2025 thanks for a great discussion at our DPCB Ask an Expert Booth. We’re thrilled to have so many wonderful experts the rest of the week! Come chat with us about stays, R, morphometric, trees and more!

The manufacturing of these things is actually wild! The sensors are small and thin enough to be mapped over a drone without affecting flow around the wing at all! #SICBioinspired #SICB2025

They are using strain sensors to encode acceleration in flying drones! Like an insect wing. Hopefully this will prevent drones from crashing when encountering large gusts of wind 🛩️🦋 #SICBioinspired #SICB2025

Sarah Berbreiter at @carnegiemellon.bsky.social uses biology as inspiration for some really awesome micro robots and sensors! #SICBioinspired #SICB2025

Next up is Sarah Bergbreiter improving robotic systems by looking to biology! Looking at neural systems and networks in flight mechanics to build better robots #SICB2025 #SICBinspired @sicbjournals.bsky.social

First up from the Friedman lab is @reallyoldfish.bsky.social talking about hidden trophic diversity in a Carboniferous ray finned fish #SICB2025