What can fish mouths teach us about engineering clog-free filters?

Filter-feeding fish accomplish a feat that human technologies cannot: species including goldfish, menhaden and basking sharks filter tiny algal cells or shrimp-like prey from huge volumes of water without clogging their oral filters.

Since fish have been filtering particles for more than 150 million years longer than human beings, we suspected fish may have evolved filter designs that use unknown processes to remain unclogged. So we decided to investigate.

Our research, recently published in Nature Communications , combines approaches from biomechanics, medicine and ecology to explore how these fish retain and transport prey inside their mouths. Our goal is to provide ideas and data that could improve aquaculture, conservation and industrial filtration.

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Taxonomy

• Filtration