Saturday, December 09, 2006

END TIMES WATCH: Eels and Groupers....Working Together

Wow!

This is fascinating. It seems that giant moray eels and groupers in the red sea do occasionally cooperate in hunting. The Grouper will lead an eel to areas where prey has hidden in spots too tight for the grouper. The eel will flush out the prey and the two will alternate eating the spoils.


For scale, here are Pics of mid-size representatives of grouper and moray eel.....but not together...hmph. For that go to the video....here.



The article says this is the first example of interspecies cooperation between predators not involving humans. I'm pretty sure that is not correct. Badgers and coyotes do cooperate in hunting voles and such and I think that I read somewhere that Hyenas cooperate occasionally with some big cat in Africa (but I can't find a link for that). Nevertheless this is really interesting, particularly as the scientist involved seems to think that this may well be LEARNED behavior due to the varying levels of skill displayed between "teams". All the more impressive when one realizes these are little fish brains we are talking about.

Just beyond cool.

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