THE DEVIL FISH

Taranaki Daily News, 14 December 1926, Page 2

THE DEVIL FISH

NATURALISTS SCEPTICAL. i NOT AS BAD AS HE IS PAINTED. i A great devil-fish, bo we read, appear* ' ed off Sicily the other day and attacked ,a group of fishermen, who escaped only joy chopping off the creature’s strangling i-entacles. There have been many stories of a monster squid or octopus, even before Victor Hugo’s “Toilers of the Sea." But naturalists have always been rather sceptical (writes “A Naturalist” in the Daily Mail). In Mediterranean lands, and even in the Channel Islands, the flesh of a certain kind of octopus is quite a luxury. The common kinds are used as a fertiliser, and great numbers of the animals are hooked or raked out of the rock crannies at low tides. They may run to Bft or 10ft in arm span, and are traced to their lairs by the litter ot shells they leave about. For the octopus is an untidy person and a great crab eater and has an artful way of dealing with hie prey. Very much like a spider, he lies in wait in his rock cleft. When a crab comes sidling along the octopus stretches out a long tentacle, very gently grasps the unsuspecting crab or lobster, and draws it to his bosom, where he keeps it, perhaps with a collection of others, till luncheon time. He is apparently not always hungry, and likce to be able, like Mrs. Gamp, to “put his lips to it when so disposed.’' Sometimes, however, he falls on his victim in the most unmannerly and voracious way—his table manners are shocking—tears of! its limbs, and devours its flesh as if he had never had a decent meal before. The octopus has, like many other animals, the power of disguising hims '? by assuming protective colouring, and it is not always easy to see him, so like is he to the rock. The giants may be terrible enough. The ordinary sort is not really so terrible as the story writers make out. The French fishers make very short work of them, and even the little girls helping with the nets handle them with ft contemptuous nonchalance that ,shows how little fear a bather need have. In deep water the big one might be a serious menace, but the octopus is rarely met with far from a rocky shore. The octopus has a powerful parrot balk and one vulnerable spot, his neck. It is a mere “waist” between head and body. However deadly hie embrace, a pinch there brings him to reason as no other argument will.