Rainbow Trout With a Mouth Full of Teeth!

[MsgMills]

Curious to know exactly what the problem in the genes is with this fish....... Remember the Old Saying...."Boy the Fish are Bite'n today"....lol

[adam7456]

*** UPDATE ****

I didn't receive any responses back from the emails I sent with pictures of the fish so I went down to the Fish & Wildlife main office to find someone to talk to.

The answer I was given was the fish was indeed a rainbow trout and the teeth are normal. What makes the teeth look out of place is that the fish has a Saprolegnia fungus infection that has eaten away the flesh around the mouth. With no gum line the teeth appear huge when in fact they are normal size.

[adam7456]

This is interesting. After I got my answer in person I checked my email and had a response from one of the fish biologists.

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I am a fisheries biologist who does research on trout. It does seem
like the fish does have some necrosis around the mouth that might be
making the teeth appear more prominent. However, I do agree that this
fish does have larger teeth than usual and the teeth on the tongue are
quite surprising. I have forwarded the pictures you sent to several
other trout biologists and they have not seen anything like it either.
I have not yet heard a response from the manager of the federal trout
hatchery where this fish was raised. It would not surprise me if he
doesn't see this on occasion. I would speculate with him raising
millions of trout that he may occasionally see strange things like this
fish.

This fish is undoubtedly just a rare morphological variant, however not
something that needs further investigation from our department. Just a
good fish story that you can tell and you have the pictures to prove
it!


Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

[riverrat12]

RECORD!!!????

[adam7456]

I got back two more responses about the fish. It sounds like I caught one pretty rare trout.


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See the comment below from our Geneticist. As you can see it is probably just a freak of nature. Keep in mind we rear 2,000,000 trout per year. I have been involved with rearing salmonids for over 15 years and have never seen one like this. I would say 1 out of 30,000,000 is just a very rare occurrence. If we continue to see more of these, we would need to do some research to determine if there is a genetic problem, some environmental factor causing the problem, or something else.

We appreciate you bringing this to our attention.

James Gray
Project Leader
Wolf Creek NFH


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My best guess is that this fish has some type of defect (obviously). Defects are abnormalities in skeleton, body form, and body functions. Abnormalities may result from genetic or environmental causes and in the case of this fish, it is unclear what caused this defect. There are many environmental factors such as disease and diet that could produce such abnormalities. On the other hand genetic abnormalities often occur when genes are missing, in excess, mutated or in the wrong location (translocation). A few genes can directly cause an abnormality, however, these are rare. Usually, these genes are recessive, meaning two must be present to cause an abnormality. For example syndactyly, which refers to the fusion of the two toes of the foot in the Aberdeen Angus breed of cattle is caused by a recessive gene. Thus while this fish probably has some type of defect, it is difficult to discern whether it is environmental or genetic and probably more difficult to figure out what exactly caused the defect in the first place

Sorry I can't be of more help

Greg


Gregory R. Moyer, PhD
Regional Geneticist
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Warm Springs Fish Technology Center
5308 Spring Street

[Slimy Deck]

This is a terrific and informative thread. Thanks for sharing it all with us Adam!