Invertebrate Fights
In my last blog post I wrote about fish fights: fish fighting fish, and fish fighting divers. The post featured some curious animal behavior footage:
But not only fish are throwing down underwater, invertebrates fight too. Since I am in the very lucky position to be diving a lot, often with a camera, I come across more unusual natural history than most underwater image makers; it takes a lot of dives to see rare animal behavior events, and you need to always bring a camera to capture it.
First comes some very unusual footage I got a while ago in Apo Island: A smaller sea cucumber grazed on the sand, and then moved onto what it probably considered to be a rock, but which was in fact a bigger sea cucumber. The larger animal let out a massive amount of water from its digestive system to get rid of the annoying smaller cucumber. It knocked it over with a fart!
I narrated the piece of curious natural history like a fight on TV … I think this is a piece of interesting biology, as well as something quite funny. There is no conflict in using humor and showing marine biology:
Sea Cucumber versus Snail
Another fight involving a sea cucumber, but this time the cucumber uses the sticky threats which it can expel from its anus. These are a major deterrent for any attacker, like a snail in this case. The threats are covered in a type of biological glue, and possibly venomous as well. I assume – I am not sure – that the snail tried to eat the cucumber. It was quickly deterred. This footage is from a night dive in a typical “muck” diving area, with only sand and no corals. It’s a part of my recent documentary “MUCK”, and I set the video to start right before the sea cucumber – snail fight:
Hermit Crabs
This is some footage I shot in very shallow water – a tide pool. Tide pools are very interesting, due to their transient nature. Any animal trying to feed in it only has a limited time for the task. These hermit crabs weren’t too happy to share the same tide pool. Hermit crabs are so well armored with the mollusk shell on their backs that fights between them never do much damage. Still, some interesting crustacean grappling:
I hope these videos were fun to watch,
Best Fishes,
Klaus
