6 Remarkable Ways Animals Catch Their Food

thanks to Skillshare for supporting this episode of scishow [Music] and the animal kingdom it's eat or be eaten so over millions of years predators and prey have existed in a perpetual evolutionary arms race to escape the jaws of death whether by starvation or by you know the jaws of the creature that wants to consume them that means there are quite a few animals and who have developed the skills and Anatomy to hunt for their food and some pretty novel ways beyond just speed and sharp claws we're talking about things like manic dancing in bubbles yeah bubbles so here my friends are six animals with some pretty weird hunting techniques frog fish despite the name have nothing to do with frogs say our fish though and they don't often swim instead they use their fleshy fins to walk along the sea floor and also unlike most fish they actually fish for their meals using both camouflage and a baited rod the camo part is called aggressive mimicry they blend in for the purpose of predation not protection frog fish are almost impossible to spot on the reefs rubble or sand where they lay and wait but to make sure their meal comes close enough that they don't have to like do anything to go get them they also have a modified dorsal fin spine which can act as a fishing rod with bait to lure called an Eska is unique to each species and can look like anything from a tiny shrimp to a worm to something just vaguely fishy when another fish gets too close the frogfish rapidly opens its jaws expanding its mouth cavity to up to 12 times its original volume in less than 10 milliseconds this creates suction that pulls the nearby water in including whatever's in that water like a fish the bait even works in the dark that's because lots of marine creatures are attracted to vibrations in the water even when they can't see what's making them but there is at least one species with an S cadet glows thanks to light producing bacteria and in the not so rare event that the frog fish's lure actually gets nibbled off it can regenerate it in four to six months female bola spiders are also aggressive mimics they lure male moths to their doom by pretending to be a potential mate but that now what makes their hunting strategy so awesome bola spiders are technically classified as orb-weaving spiders but unlike their relatives they don't actually weave any webs that's because the moths they prefer to eat have wings that are covered in detachable scales and those are what often ends up stuck to a web rather than the whole bug so instead these spiders take a string of their silk and excrete a big glob of glue onto the end of it that's capable of sticking to the moths bodies this weapon is how they got the name bola spiders it looks a lot like a bolus a ranged weapon consisting of heavy weights connected by a long strip but they don't throw their bolus like people do they swing them to snag their target and that means their reach is limited by the length of the string so to ensure they get enough to eat the spiders infuse their bolus with pheromones that smell like female moths each species of bolus can mimic the scent of at least one species of moths sometimes 2 or 3 and some can vary the species over the course of a night to maximize their potential catch when the right male moths catch a whiff they head straight for the bolas expecting a potential mate instead they get eaten by a spider humpback whales don't have any fancy weapons to catch their meals with but they do have big old brains so instead they use Nets made of bubbles to trap their prey humpbacks are baleen whales which means that instead of teeth they have curtains of bristles that act as strainers so they can feed on small fish krill and other tiny ocean creatures since there's some of the largest animals living on earth they have to eat a lot of this teeny-tiny food and it turns out corralling their prey into dense swarms with the power of bubbles is a super efficient way to do that to us bubbles might seem flimsy but to a tiny animal underwater a wall of air bubbles acts as a physical barrier that's tough to see through and basically sound proof so these whales create bubble nets and then fly up through the bottom to gulp a big mouthful of trapped and perhaps confused prey the bubble nets are made by teams of two or more whales and can be over 40 meters in length though to really pack the prey and they can be as small as two meters across most do spirals to create their nets and then swim up through the to take big gulps a few animals in southern Alaska do a weird double loop they do a single loop to make the corral and then smack the end of their tail against the water surface which scientists think might stun a lot of the prey they just gather then the whales make a big upward lunge to actually eat them making intricate small circles is no easy feat for an animal that's at least the size of a bus but humpback whales have some anatomical advantages that make them highly maneuverable their long pectoral flippers which are the longest of any whale generate a lot of lift and they're covered in large bumps called tubercles that reduce drag to help them grip the water better giving the whales a remarkably tight turn radius for an animal so big there's another marine animal that uses bubbles to hunt but in a very different way the pistol shrimp their bubbles create literally stunning shock waves instead of regular pincers pistol shrimp have a giant claw that can be almost half as long as their whole body the immobile larger part of this claw acts like a socket for a perfectly shaped part of the smaller swinging piece the shrimp can pull back this piece and lock it into position to store up a bunch of elastic energy then to strike it just releases and closes the claw that causes the water inside the socket to fly out at speeds exceeding a hundred kilometers an hour fast enough to cause a massive drop in the moving waters pressure that super low pressure allows a bunch of tiny micro bubbles already present in the water to expand and quickly combine to make one big bubble but in a thousandth of a second this bubble collapses due to the pressure from the water around it this is called cavitation and it creates a brief but intense heat a flash of light and a powerful shock wave that can outright dismember some small creatures and it's more than enough to stun the small fish crabs and other shrimp that the pistol shrimp eats the shrimp's also use the sound of snapping to communicate with one another so much so that when you go diving in areas where they live you can often hear a constant cacophony of their snaps in the unfortunate event that the shrimp loses this stun gun of a claw it can grow it back kinda the other pincher actually transforms into one over several malts ensuring the shrimp gets its gun back as quick as possible what a handy skill stoats are a kind of weasel found all over the northern hemisphere as well as New Zealand where they're an invasive species they are voracious hunters known to attack prey up to ten times their size and they're particularly fond of rabbits stoats have the endurance to chase rabbits down but they have another more entertaining way to catch I'm dancing the deadly dance of stoats has been observed for centuries and has made the little predators notorious especially in Europe I mean we call it a dance but they're really just bounding around like little maniacs slipping over themselves right in front of a rabbit the rabbit seems to be so confused by the dancing that it just sits there which to be fair you probably would too if a stranger wandered up to you and like started break dancing or something that allows the stoat to get closer and closer and closer until it's near enough to leap on the rabbits back and bite it in the neck for smaller prey the bite would sever the spinal column but for rabbits it takes several bites to do enough damage to nerves and blood vessels to make the animal die from shock while this damps hunting has lots of anecdotal evidence to back it up not all scientists are convinced that the stoats dance with the intent of confusing their prey they're sometimes observed dancing without a rabbit in sight so some think it's just a form of play or even a side effect of a parasitic nematode that lodges itself behind the stoats eyes there haven't been any studies directly confirming the dancing behavior comes from infection and dancing for fun doesn't mean they don't dance for their dinner to proponents of the dance hunting hypothesis point out that just because you don't see a bunny doesn't mean there isn't one there humans don't have the stoats keen sense of smell or hearing and a target could be visible to them that's obscured from a person's elevated point of view finally we turn to what might be the most successful hunter in the entire Animal Kingdom Homo sapiens humans of course have developed far more sophisticated hunting tools than other species but when you strip away all those there remains one technique that's actually still pretty weird for the animal kingdom running or rather the ability to run prey to the point of exhaustion while barely breaking a sweat proverbially anyway because we definitely you sweat when we do it and that's one of the traits that allows us to hunt this way about two million years ago long before the first bow and arrow the ancestors of modern humans started evolving the adaptations needed for endurance running this includes stretchy tendons in the legs and feet which can store and then release tension with each step to make our strides more energy efficient they also developed bigger glutes and a flexible waist which allows us to keep balance while we throw ourselves forward but as great as it is to be able to run far it means nothing if there's no way to dump all the excess heat that builds up from working out that much that's probably why we sweat so much we have two to four million sweat glands that ensure we can sweat away excess heat while on the move it may also be why we're nowhere near as hairy as our relatives less fur makes our sweating more effective than other species that sweat like horses a lot of other mammals cool down by panting and that while effective can't be done while sprinting because short shallow breaths don't provide enough oxygen for that kind of exertion so being able to disperse heat well while running allows humans to chase down fast prey in sweltering conditions when most other predators would have to rest and even when that prey can sprint fast enough to get well ahead of human hunters they soon have to stop to catch their breath and cool down giving people a chance to catch up a few cycles of sprint rest sprint and most animals overheat or are just too exhausted to flee again some cultures in the world today still use this strategy to catch their meals continued proof that humans are pretty awesome hunters with or without our projectiles and pointy sticks and if you're looking to improve some of your own food making skills you might be interested in this skill share class on knife skills by chef Ellen a carp like did you know that most of us have probably been holding knives wrong our entire lives and that there is in fact a way to dice an onion so fast you don't have time to cry carp teaches you everything you need to know to chop vegetables like a pro and without chopping your own fingers in the process and if you already know how to slice and dice Skillshare has plenty of advanced culinary class - along with more than 20,000 other classes about practically anything you can think of right now Skillshare is offering scishow viewers two months of unlimited access to all their classes for free just check out the link in the description [Music]

Channel: SciShow

Views: 559,019

Rating: 4.9246826 out of 5

Keywords: SciShow, science, Hank, Green, education, learn, animals, animal, whale, whales, humpback, frogfish, aggressive mimicry, mimicry, esca, spider, spiders, bolas spiders, moths, pheromones, baleen whales, bubbles, bubble, bubble nets, tubercles, pistol shrimp, mantis shrimp, shrimp, cavitation, stoat, weasel, rabbit, homosapien, human, run, endurance, running, sweat, glands

Id: BQi7oRQKVeI

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 09 2018