gastric mill

Like its fellow enantiornithines, and unlike modern birds, it does not appear to have a digestive organ called a gizzard, or gastric mill, that helped it crush up its food.

Inside their stomachs are little teeth that together form what is known as a gastric mill.

Using the gastric mill for communication frees up the ghost crab’s claws for fighting and defense and even allows the animals to communicate during battles, enabling them to broadcast their size to intimidate rivals.

In the presence of certain neuromodulators, a neuron that contributes to the pyloric subcircuit might switch teams, joining the gastric mill subcircuit instead by changing the tempo at which it fires.

It is among the Malacostraca, however, and especially in the Decapoda, that the “gastric mill” reaches its greatest perfection.