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Unusual Defence Mechanisms

Yithian

Yithian

Parish Watch
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7 Impressive Animal Defense Mechanisms
  • 1. THE LIZARD THAT SHOOTS BLOOD FROM ITS EYES
  • 2. THE HAIRY FROG THAT BREAKS ITS OWN BONES
  • 3. THE NEWT THAT TURNS ITS RIBS INTO SPIKES
  • 4. THE TERMITE THAT BLOWS ITSELF UP
  • 5. THE FISH THAT SLIMES ITS ENEMIES
  • 6. THE SEA CUCUMBER THAT SHOOTS ORGANS OUT OF ITS ANUS
  • 7. THE OPOSSUM THAT PLAYS DEAD (involuntarily!)
Descriptions & Videos:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/12258/7-absolutely-insane-animal-defense-mechanisms

 
Fulmars vomit a foul-smelling and impossible to remove liquid when roused; if you get it on your clothes, the best thing to do with them is throw them away.
 
James_H said:
Fulmars vomit a foul-smelling and impossible to remove liquid when roused; if you get it on your clothes, the best thing to do with them is throw them away.
Click to expand...

Assuming this ability evolved prior to interactions with mankind, I assume that the smell is enough to disorient attackers and its potency and lingering nature ensure that the predator's hunting potential is now impaired as prey can smell them coming.

You may kill me, but I could be your last meal.
 
Yes, I'm sure they may well do.

(Whilst retaining the ability to project certain foul odours and noxious fluids for those extreme circumstances where sarcasm does not work)
 
Yithian said:
  • 6. THE SEA CUCUMBER THAT SHOOTS ORGANS OUT OF ITS ANUS
Descriptions & Videos:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/12258/7-absolutely-insane-animal-defense-mechanisms
Click to expand...

This one at least is worth highlighting.

Like starfish and sea urchins, sea cucumbers are echinoderms, and they can regenerate lost body parts if necessary. This comes in handy when they're threatened. The sea cucumber will expel its internal organs, which are sticky and sometimes contain a toxic chemical that can kill predators.

Is this artistic licence? I am not entirely convinced that a sea cucumber has an anus.
 
Yithian said:
This one at least is worth highlighting.

Like starfish and sea urchins, sea cucumbers are echinoderms, and they can regenerate lost body parts if necessary. This comes in handy when they're threatened. The sea cucumber will expel its internal organs, which are sticky and sometimes contain a toxic chemical that can kill predators.

Is this artistic licence? I am not entirely convinced that a sea cucumber has an anus.
Click to expand...

The plot thickens.

Not only do sea cucumbers possess an anus, they also breathe through it.

And sometimes other creatures take up residence within it. Prepare to have your mind boggled:

In 1975, Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow was diving off the Banda Islands in Indonesia, when he collected a leopard sea cucumber—a cylindrical relative of starfish and sea urchins. It was a large and stubby specimen, 40 centimetres long (16 inches) and 14 centimetres wide. He dropped it in a bucket of water, which he placed in a refrigerated room.

Sometime later, a slender, eel-like fish swam out of the sea cucumber’s anus.

It was a star pearlfish, and it wasn’t alone. Another wriggled out. And another. After ten hours, 14 pearlfish had evacuated the animal’s bum, each between 10 and 16 centimetres long. Another one stayed inside.

There are many species of pearlfish. Some live independently, but several make their homes in the bodies of shellfish, starfish, and other marine animals. Indeed, they got their name after one individual was found inside an oyster, dead and embedded within mother-of-pearl.

But sea cucumbers are their most infamous hosts. Having found one by following its smell, a pearlfish will dive into the anus headfirst, “propelling itself by violent strokes of the tail,” according to Eric Parmentier. If the sea cucumber objects and closes down its anus… well, it still has to breathe.

Oh yeah, sea cucumbers breathe through their anuses. By rhythmically expanding and contracting their bodies, they drive water through the anal opening and into a branching, lung-like structure called the respiratory tree. This process creates gentle currents that a pearlfish can use to find its hosts. It also creates a vulnerability, because a sea cucumber that’s clenching its butt is also holding its breath. When it exhales, as it eventually must, it dilates its anus, allowing the pearlfish to thread itself in. This time, it goes tail-first, bit by bit, breath by breath.

Some species just use the sea cucumbers as shelters. But the Encheliophis pearlfishes are full-blown parasites that devour their host’s gonads from within.

Pearlfish are typically found alone, and adults have been known to kill rivals that try to infiltrate the same host. Still, as Meyer-Rochow found, the fish can sometimes be more sociable—or at the very least, tolerant. No one knows why. It’s possible that when sea cucumbers are rare, the fish are forced to share a host. Alternatively, they could have gathered to breed. “If indeed the 15 fish entered for sexual reasons, one cannot help but think of the orgy that must have taken place inside the sea cucumber,” Meyer-Rochow says.​

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/05/10/how-this-fish-survives-in-a-sea-cucumbers-bum/
 
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Quokka mothers, when threatened by a predator, will often throw their babies on the ground to distract the predator and save their own lives.
 
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