Here is the first trial of Bisquick’s new enrichment! This is the Wurm Ball. The general idea of enrichment is to make Bisquick’s life as interesting and fun as possible, and that includes new ways of offering him food! This is a slightly modified ping pong ball which I then stuffed with red wigglers (his favorite). So instead of just eating the worms as I toss them in he can engage his brain in how to get the worms out of the ball. I started off with a few big holes as you can see, and it was unsurprisingly very easy for him to figure out the general gist of it. This was his first interaction with it, so it’s really neat to see him investigate the ball in the beginning. Trail II will use a pingpong with more worms and smaller holes, that is if I can get the worms into smaller holes. I do apologize for the shaky camera, I’m not 100% used to using my DSLR for video applications.
For those of you who have not yet met Bisquick he is a species of freshwater stingray (Potamotrygon motoro). Although he is currently small and cute this species (as well as many others) grow to incredibly large sizes; this combined with the fact that they are venomous means they are not for inexperienced keepers. I strongly encourage the average person to merely visit the stingrays at their local aquarium rather than going out and purchasing one.
I didn’t know how badly I needed to see a ray manipulate a ball with its flap-flaps. Such a clever fish.
Like to keep things tidy? The bluespotted jawfish can relate! This colorful fish keeps busy digging, building and remodeling its den, using its mouth to shovel and arrange sand and bits of coral. Now if you don’t mind, it really must get back to work.
These are, in my opinion, the most majestic animals currently on this earth.
Here’s a video of them mating from my old PI Roger Hanlon.
omg lol a whole paragraph of this got deleted (the paragraph with the answer to your question). They can grow up to a meter in total length, or about 50 cm if you only measure the mantle. WHICH IS CRAZY and swimming with one of these animals is #1 on my bucket list.
This fascinating animal is now on the list of protected species. Quite rightly of course. Of all the squid-species the “Chambered Nautilus” is the only one with a beautiful outer shell. This shell is used for jewelry (decoration) which is a popular souvenir for tourists. Bizarre! The Nautilus lives at great depth (200 m) but must go to the surface to eat. This makes it extremely vulnerable to its main predator: humans.
Diver shot an incredible footage of two octopuses fighting. The brawl lasts for almost a minute before the larger specimen overpowers its rival, killing it with a bite from its fearsome beak before dragging its lifeless corpse away into the darkness.
6 days old, already more than 8000 views on youtube !
is it cannibalism ?
Many sources talk about cannibalism. The dailystar use for example the title: “INCREDIBLE footage shot by a scuba diver shows the moment an octopus killed and ate its rival during an underwater fight to the death”.
To me, the video is not crystal clear: the larger octopus definitely uses its beak to administer the final blow, but after that it seems more likely that its transports the dead corpse. If you watch closely, the corpse is located at the tips of the tentacles, not inside the octopus’ mantle. So not cannibalism.
In [most] cases, the predator octopus was much bigger […]. Once captured and dead, the prey was transported to the den which in turn was plugged with stones of different sizes. The predator began to eat its victim by the tips of the arms.
So even if we didn’t witness actual cannibalism, the act could have happened afterwards.
Is cannibalism disgusting/pure barbarism ?
In our case, I would definitely say no. It is actually very intelligent and down-the-earth. Indeed: 1) the other octopus is already dead anyway, 2) octopuses are higher per-gram in protein than mussels, 3) opening mussels and capturing other small preys is tricky and energy consuming.
So it seems logical not to let the corpse drift on the floor for someone else to eat, but to eat it oneself. Right ?
Anonymous
