DEADLY TRAPS

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12471, 12 June 1926, Page 16

DEADLY TRAPS

In the sea we have at least two expert trappers. One of these is the wartlet anemone, which is found near low-water mark on most rocky coasts. It doesn’t make a trap in the sense that the ant-lion does. Its own stomach is the pit. It lives usually on rock that has a thin covering of sand, particles of which it fastens to its own body. The tentacles, however, are very juicy-looking. They spread out in a most obvious fashion. A crab sees them, decides they are good to eat, and get hold of a bunch. Instantly the tentacles curl up and round, and the crab is drawn towards the anemone’s mouth—where, if it puts up a fierce resistance, it receives a shower of stinging darts whose poison produces a state of coma—making its end at least a little less unpleasant. The angler fish practises a very similar method of trapping. It is an extraordinary-looking creature this—with a short bodv and an enormous head, and a mouth a quarter as wide as the fish is long. Projecting from the head are several long, thin wormlike filaments. In action tne fish itself lies buried in* the sand. The filaments are protected and they are dangled in such a way that crabs and small rock fish cannot resist investigation. But immediately the “bait” is touched, the angler opens his mighty jaws, shakes the sand from them—and it is a very agile crab or fish that escapes.