October 1, 2012 8:43 am
Watch From Inside a Mussel As It Gets Eaten by a Distended Sea Star Stomach
Image: lore
If you’re a mussel, this is basically your worst nightmare. A set of sea stars descend on a pier, looking for food. When they find a mussel, they go to work. This video is from the viewpoint of a tiny camera, inside a mussel. Watch as the starfish pushes its stomach out of its body, into the mussels shell, “unfolding like a fatal flower,” as the narrator says. From there, the stomach basically just starts digesting the poor mussel on the spot, releasing chemical that will dissolve the mussel’s, well, muscle, turning it into soup. The sea star slurps up the tasty, tasty muscle soup and moves on to its next victim.
More from Smithsonian.com:
They Call Him “The Starfish Guy”
Creatures of the Deep!
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
