Some Alaskan trout use flexible guts for the ultimate binge diet
Imagine having a daylong Thanksgiving feast every day for a month, then, only pauper’s rations the rest of the year.
University of Washington researchers have discovered Dolly Varden, a kind of trout, eating just that way in Alaska’s Chignik Lake watershed.
Organs such as the stomach and intestines in the Dolly Varden doubled to quadrupled in size when eggs from spawning sockeye salmon became available each August, the researchers found. They were like vacuums sucking up the eggs and nipping at the flesh of spawned-out salmon carcasses. (more…)