Amazing Struggle

[Travis L. Stevens]

This is just absolutely amazing. Most of us remember seeing the movie about the shark versus the octopus, mantis shrimp jabs in slo-mo, and many other amazing videos. But this struggle of Nature is awe inspiring. While a little barbaric, it is worth looking a little more scientifically into. The thread can be found here - http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=914125 But here is the first post.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8006199#post8006199 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Gonodactylus
O.K., thanks to "Beerguy" the video has been converted to flash and is now available at:

http://www.reefcentral.com/vid/bluering

I do want to stress that this fight was not staged just for the fun of it. We are interested in whether some stomatopods have evolve resistance to the venom that Hapalochlaena uses and/or have developed other mechanisms to deal with this toxin. After several minutes the stomatopod ate the blue-ring with no obvious ill effects. One of my graduate students is trying to figure out how.

Roy

 

[Russ Braaten]

Considering their size difference, I would not expect a different outcome, The mantis kept the mouth away and has a shell to help protect it. Many animal poisons can be eaten safely.

Get a smaller mantis and the octopus will win.