Diet
A sturgeon's taste buds are located on the outside of its mouth. This, along with the barbels, allows it to see if a possible food source is edible before sucking it up into its mouth. As adults, the white sturgeon’s diet somewhat varies. This is dependent upon the river systems it lives in. In the Columbia River system, dead fish, crustaceans, and mollusks are all popular prey. Lampreys, primitive eel-like fish, come into rivers to spawn at the same time as the white sturgeon, and are a popular food source at that time. Smelt is another food that is abundant around spawning time. Shad come into the Columbia River system in throngs of several million each spring. The extremely large shad runs are often cited as an example of why the lower Columbia River has such a large population of Sturgeon. Like the smelt, these fish often die, and the remains are an easy meal for sturgeon.
Read more about this topic: White Sturgeon
Famous quotes containing the word diet:
“I learned from my two years’ experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one’s necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.... Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)