Dabbling Cotingo

While the dabbling cotingo may look fierce with its "teeth", it is harmless to any fauna bigger than about 2 cm. The "teeth" are actually "buccal tentacles" and extensions of its lips, and help it sense and filter food. While the lips and buccal tentacles have microscopic rasps, they are only good enough for feeding on soft-skinned fauna and decaying fauna.

The dabbling cotingo feeds on dipping its neck into the water, smelling underwater with its "horns", moving towards the area with food, and then filtering out the food with its buccal tentacles. While the buccal tentacles usually face inward, they can be moved outward in order to grasp the prey and push it into the mouth. The filter formed by the buccal tentacles allows the dabbling cotingo to drain its mouth of brackish water before swallowing its food. This is a useful adaptation because the dabbling cotingo has no physiology to excrete excess salt in its diet.

It must spend eleven hours of the day feeding, for its prey is small, not particularly nutritious, and has a scattered distribution. The dabbling cotingo swims with flippers, all of which have pinkish gills on them. It can breathe and detect smells through these flippers, similarly to its antennae, but to a lesser extent. Its limbs are so adapted to swimming that it has little ability to move on land.