How do walruses efficiently extract the soft tissues from buried prey like clams?
Answer
By pressing their mouth against the prey and using powerful suction
Walruses employ a highly specialized feeding technique for consuming their preferred diet of benthic invertebrates, particularly bivalves like clams. Once the prey is located using their sensitive vibrissae, the walrus does not chew the food conventionally. Instead, it firmly presses its mouth structure against the buried organism and utilizes powerful suction to draw out the soft internal tissues. This mechanism is remarkably forceful; observational studies in laboratory environments have demonstrated the ability of a walrus to create a vacuum sufficient to entirely evacuate small bivalve shells, which are subsequently expelled empty.
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