A species of fish has an unusual way of eating — it thrusts its jaw out and downwards to nab prey on land.

Krijn Michel at the University of Antwerp in Belgium and his colleagues took high-speed video and made 3D reconstructions of the largescale four-eyed fish (Anableps anableps), which feeds from mudbanks. They found that the fish extends and rotates its upper jaw towards the ground while it turns its lower jaw downwards at a right angle, allowing it to clamp its mouth around its prey.

This mechanism differs from those of other land-feeding fish, which either curl their whole bodies downwards or pivot on their fins towards prey.

J. Exp. Biol. 218, 2951–2960 (2015)