The Secret Lives Of The Creatures Beneath Our Oceans | Real Wild

[Music] [Music] for some fish the only home they know is the school and the protection that being just one among thousands to offer against predators but other sea creatures have very specific places where they live and some even build their own homes a cascading wall of catfish scour the seafloor tumbling over each other in turn as they rummage for their prey their home is among the shulk thousands of individuals instinctively and automatically foraging is just one being they seem to think as one move as one react as one being just one among many is how they survive but there are many other ways of living under the ocean some sea creatures build permanent homes where they will pass their lives giant spearing mantis shrimp construct a smooth vertical shaft which there forever excavating [Music] they're multi lens eyes made up of thousands of individual lenses give them a 360 degree field of vision to scout the seafloor their boroughs are their homes for life-giving protection from anything that might attack them and a base from which to hunt they're ambush predators lurking in their lair until a victim passes close enough to spear [Music] [Music] other species of mantis shrimp dig out caves for themselves from which they dart out to stun their prey in this case the victim is a crab which the shrimp holds back to its lair still alive [Music] the mantises home is also an ideal place to keep their eggs safe [Music] the shrimp clutches them to its body for as long as ten weeks until they hatch regularly turning them to ensure that all the eggs get a good oxygen supply from the water it's unusual for sea creatures to care for their eggs broadcast spawning is by far the most common method when it's time to mate the fish come together and release eggs and sperm high in the water column the fertilized eggs are left to drift on the currents until they hatch that tiny hatchlings becoming part of the oceanic plankton yet mantis shrimp are not the only sea creatures to guard the next generation anemone fish lay their eggs on a solid object on the sea floor as close as possible to the anemone which they have made their home that way they can protect the thousands of tiny fish developing in the eggs until they hatch the parent regularly fans the eggs to ensure that fresh oxygenated water reaches them all [Music] the ornate ghost pipefish actually keep their eggs in a pouch until a hatch the specially adapted fins pumping water around them all other sea creatures are not so careful the flamboyant cuttlefish lays a small number of eggs on this occasion anchoring them to an empty shell once they finished laying they have no more interest in them within the individual egg sacs the embryonic young develop into perfectly formed miniature zuv the parent [Music] not many creatures physically construct a living space from themselves under the ocean but most do have permanent residences and often that can actually be another living sea creature and some have evolved so perfectly that they appear to be a part of the animal on which they live the sea whip is actually a colony composed of individual coral polyps that spiral in the current to feed the crab clings to the whip so that it too can feel picking scraps as they land on the sea whip from the moment that the larvae of the crab settles on the sea whip from the plankton this will be its home for the whole of its life [Music] transparent gobies also live on the sea waves darting along the stem when a morsel of food settles on it's hard to see what if anything the host creature gets from this arrangement the c.width probably gains no benefit at all from the presence of these lodgers crinoids are creatures that move around underwater to find the best and highest vantage point from which to feed on particles swept by on the current they often host several different species of specially adapted fish crab and shrimp but take advantage of the coronoid spry meeting position for their own benefits small fish cling to them safe in the protective cage of the sticky arms the coronoid becoming their home their colors blending with those the coronoid provides near perfect camouflage specific species of crabs have also evolved plucking food from the sticky fingers of its host [Music] the crinoid becomes their home for life and the crabs color-coordinate to blend in probably the crinoid gains no benefit at all from its lodgers other larger creatures while not actually physically living on the Crim we make their home in the immediate neighborhood to gain the same advantage and protection drifting and hovering but never actually touching the crinoid the ornate ghost pipefish rarely strays far from its home the coronoid having taken the high vantage point where the food supply is swept by in the current the pipe fishes prey is delivered to its door sometimes a creature is doing little more than taking advantage of a temporary safe haven to rest like an undersea Hotel where the guests are just passing through a comfortable stopover while the inside of a barrel sponge is just such a shelter these huge sponges also have permanent residents of their own tiny squat lobster as the sponge filters water through its porous cells the lobster feeds on any scraps on the sponges surface and spend the whole of their lives on this porous home under the sea squat lobster are only found on barrel sponges their lifecycle is a simple one after mating they spawn and when their eggs hatch thousands of tiny larval lobsters drift in the plankton of those only a lucky few that survived will find a barrel sponge on which to second and to make their home for life [Music] when two creatures live together and both derive a benefit from the arrangement this is known as a symbiotic relationship and the classic example is the anemone fish and the anemone it's a well-documented and easily visible deal the fish develops an immunity to the stinging cells of the anemone and so is safe from predators in its turn the anemone gains benefit from the relationship the fish protecting it from other species that might otherwise attack it and by eating parasites that might be harmful to it [Music] other small fish also seek out the protection of the anemone but give back nothing in return they simply hover close by never actually touching the tentacles but sheltering among them their deal with the anemone is totally one-sided anemones can become like crowded housing projects as not only fish but other creatures move into the undersea condominium [Music] porcelain crabs sit comfortably in their tentacled homes sitting food from the passing current shrimp also move in and make a safe home for themselves on the anemone ah rangu tang crabs have a similar housing arrangement with bubble coal able to slip between the water filled sacks for security [Music] another type of shrimp forms half of one of the most intriguing undersea housing arrangements this shrimp is actually blind it has no eyes and so it shares its seafloor home with a goby [Music] the shrimp is the worker constantly excavating the tunnel in which they both live the goby is the eyes of the partnership tactile messages are passed from the gobies tail in reassuring contact with its housemate [Music] other go bees dig tunnels as their seafloor homes but without the housekeeper shrimp they are the ones who have to keep my tunnel clear each intern digging out mouthfuls of gravel [Music] while one watches the other digs [Music] [Music] but not everyone has a housemate and Jawfish live alone in individual boroughs but they construct by using their mouths as excavators one intriguing aspect of undersea behavior is when one animal appears to literally hitch a ride on another small fish live among the needle sharp spines of an urchin nothing can catch them while they have such protection and as the urchin moves along they can dart out to feed [Music] [Music] and while the urchins only a temporary home for these juvenile fish they have managed to make what appears to be the most inhospitable of locations a safe traveling home the emperor shrimp has become the master of the art of hitching ride as the nudibranch moves it disturbs the sand and sediment of the seabed uncovering the tiny creatures that are the diet of the shrimp when its host stops moving the shrimp hops off to scavenge the immediate area but will never stray far from its undersea home unless it can trade it in for a more attractive model nudibranch SAR slow-moving grazers at the ocean floor their bright colors warning predators that they're poisonous and to leave them alone the perfect safe ride for the shrimp and it's not only the Empress shrimp that has mastered the art of undersea mobile home living crabs also adopt a similar lifestyle making their homes on the bodies of slower moving sea cucumbers [Music] even giant jellyfish drifting on the oceans currents provide a home for juvenile fish sheltering in the safety of their hosts tentacles [Music] if there's no natural undersea feature then anything will do as a temporary home human rubbish can be an added bonus in a world where housing is at a premium an old truck tire on the barren seafloor becomes an oasis of life a home for many different species of fish human beings living in shanty towns will use every scrap of building material to construct shelters and homes the undersea shanty dwellers also make use of every scrap of human rubbish to make a home on an inhospitable sea floor but offers a little shelter a plastic medicine bottle becomes a safehouse a coconut shell a temporary shelter everything can be used as living space by the sea floor shanty dwellers even a broken bottle is better protection than on a tour a painting has been occupied by a frog fish and he was here every time that we visited this site and the neck of a bottle makes a perfectly acceptable home for a blenny prime real estate with a panoramic view octopus will squeeze into anything they can find that offers a safe home another bottle and another octopus peering out from its bay window octopus are the wise owls of the sea nocturnal hunters with large brains they're quick to adapt anything they can find there's a home for themselves even at night the octopus stays in its lair until its spots passing prey [Music] even the lionfish is considered fair game by this cloaked hunter of the night though this time it changes its mind and squeezes back into its home [Music] but this may be the ultimate in ingenuity a beer mug forms the octopus's home and a coconut shell provides the door a lid that can be opened whenever the octopus wants to leave its house and shut down securely when it's in residence bottles coconut shells and old beer glasses octopus use them all as houses and they seem to go to extraordinary lengths to find items of a match in size to provide themselves with the maximum security ever curious the octopus closely examines the camera housing to check out this new arrival in its neighborhood yet even its insatiable curiosity doesn't mean that it discards caution entirely all the while that it's checking out the camera it keeps at least one tentacle in contact with its beer glass hole so that it can retreat there at the first hint of any danger but having realized that the camera is no threat even when we move further away the inquisitive octopus can't resist a second look at what we're up to as we'll see later its behavior like this that could leave an octopus homeless [Music] what deep instinct brings these schooling barracuda always back to circle above the exact same bombing in the vastness of the ocean the answer is that this is their home they seem to have their specific territory and are always there large fish school together at the same location day after day year after year the more familiar you become with any underwater location the more you come to recognize the inhabitants for locals a home doesn't have to be a structure it can simply be a place where of creature is permanently resident clouds of tiny fish all lived close to coral heads into which they can make a synchronized dive anything vaguely threatening appears in the neighborhood and so the coral becomes their home a permanent residence for generations of same species [Music] a home needs to provide two things safety and sustenance and this frog fish's home provides both protection is provided by the perfect blend of the frog fish with its chosen home food comes through an ingenious adaptation around the sponge are small clumps of green weed on which plants eating fish will feed the frog fish has grown appendages on its body that perfectly mimic these clumps of weed to a feeding fish the frog fish appears just a part of the sponge with weed growing from it for months on end this frog fish successfully lived in this one spot on this one sponge so his strategy must have worked there must have been enough small fish that came in to graze on the weed that were fooled by his weedy lures a variation on this theme is to roam around the seafloor still trying to appear like vegetation as both disguise and lure frogfish and masters of adaptation if they choose to make a particular part of the seabed their home they will blend in perfectly effectively becoming a part of their home surroundings this provides them with both the protection of invisibility and the ability to trap their prey which never spot them until it's just too late [Music] just as the frogfish color matches its surroundings so too does the robust ghost pipefish which adopts the exact coloration of a clump of weed on the open sea floor that it has taken as its home to predators to which it would otherwise be a meal it appears to be just another strand of weed not only its shape and color but it's very movement completing the deception and because of this camouflage making it appear to be a part of its home its own prey will stray into the weed seeking shelter not realizing that one of the strands of weed is not what it seems even the scouring catfish must rest and when they do it's always together and always beneath the same overhang despite there being many identically suitable ones in the immediate neighborhood it seems that some deep instinct in the fish leads them back time again to the same spot other creatures take shelter where they can find it array and a white tip shark share a rock ledge an even stranger combination a moray eel and turtle resting together at night and a puffer and a lionfish are uneasy occupants of the inside of a barrel sponge the need for a temporary place to stay can result in the strangest of bedfellows often a creature has not one that several homes in an area more eels are territorial and within that territory will know every cave and crevice where they can shelter often more than one eel will share a nest these can be full service apartments staff not only by a halo of anthea's but also by cleaner shrimps who offer a 24 hour a day grooming service to the Moray [Music] some more eels have made shipwrecks their homes in these man-made environments they can grow to huge sizes the whole of the ship becoming both their home and their hunting ground when a massive steel structure sinks onto the ocean floor it takes no time for it to be colonized as an undersea city algae starts to grow within days bringing fish in to graze on it the Rex provides surfaces for corals to grow which in their turn become living space for fish there are a surprising number of wrecks of all descriptions on the seabed whether they're due to war or storm this plane was once a weapon of war now it's wing has become a coral garden and home to countless fish in an environment where there is never enough living space the cabins and corridors holds and hatchways of sunken ships provides safe shelter and security and soon become crowded crammed with life even the mast of a sunken tanker becomes an undersea high-rise every inch of space being fully talented [Music] sea snakes are actually air-breathing reptiles that have adapted to hunt in the ocean surprisingly their home is not the sea which is simply their hunting ground but on land [Music] although their markings resemble the sea snake eels a fish that spend the whole of their lives underwater they have no specific home as their home is anywhere in the seabed that they choose unlike dry land the seabed is generally a soft medium which is easy to burrow into and for many creatures this becomes their home into which they can sink at any time ribbon eels feed from their burrows in the seabed by day retreating down into them at night snake eels do just the opposite making their daytime home in the sand and staying there till night falls before emerging to hunt under snow to the eel poking out from the seabed is all the home that a shrimp needs providing a cleaning service to the eel but it's only a temporary home sinking further into the sand the eel disappears totally leave me behind some very confused and now homeless shrimp with a final shrug the crater is refilled leaving no clue as to the whereabouts of the eel others also make their homes just below the loose surface of the seabed poised ready to grab anything that swims by above them and just a thin covering of sand is all it takes for stingrays for whom the seabed is not a hunting lodge but a hiding place a place of retreat [Music] merchants act as home to unique types of crab and shrimp sharp spines protect the urchins soft arms but these spines don't bother the crabs that live among them it's hard to see what if anything the host creature gets from this there are so many of these relationships under the sea that few have been studied to discover whether or not the host gains any benefit at all from its permanent residence soft corals also provide a home to species specifically evolved to live on them but there is no benefit at all to the coral from this arrangement as the crab achieves its color match by actually eating the coral polyps so specialized these creatures that their whole existence relies totally on their hosts [Music] [Music] for pelagic ocean roaming fish they know no hope destined to roam forever the great ocean Rangers but while for the whale shark the only home is the warm waters of the vast tropical ocean the shark itself becomes a home for its entourage the pilot fish and the Remora [Applause] and it's not just the whale shock that becomes a traveling home manta rays also have often huge Remora hitching a ride on [Music] even in the coldest seas of the northern oceans the planets second biggest fish the basking shark also has its passengers training from its underside [Music] the safest way of life would appear to be to take your home with you wherever you go the undersea equivalent of your mobile Caravan home and this is what hermit crabs do they have soft bodies and couldn't survive without protection so their whole lives are spent as squatters in discarded shells but even this is not a guarantee of safety when the arch predator the octopus is around [Music] it's powerful tentacles prize it from the shell that it has made its home before the octopus drags the still-living crab down into its lair the octopus is the ultimate house builder of the ocean when it comes to undersea construction they have no rivals this octopus has found a shell which it has married up with half a coconut and has made them its home if needs be the house can be easily relocated even more ingenious is this octopus it has scoured the sea floor for two matching halves of coconut shells when dangers in the neighborhood it simply closes down its roof but it has chosen so well that the chip out of one of the halves is a perfect observation point window onto the sea floor having soft bodies and no protection no armor and no shells in which to hide their bodies are almost all muscle bundles of protein that would make an ideal meal for a predator and so octopus have learned how to make for most of their surroundings to gain maximum protection some grow hairy filaments to blend in with their surroundings they have the ability to seemingly dissolve into the substrate they have skills of camouflage able to change the very color and texture of their skin they can move by Jet Propulsion and as a last resort a cloud of ink disguises their escape but although octopus have all these means of protection their greatest skill is house building first the Builder needs to collect the right materials only when it's checked a shell out for size is it time to take it off to match up with one it's already got waiting then hinge them together the succored arms ensure that both shells are held tight together it would take a strong attacker to prise them apart [Music] excavate the new home until it's clean of sand and rubble and finally check that every last bit of debris has been cleared out before settling in for the night [Music] [Music] but octopus living alone do have to leave the safety of their homes when it's time to mate [Music] and their sex lives could not be more alien to our own the male's produce special packages in which they store sperm waterproof containers for passing the sperm to the female in their mating ritual the male is actually using his arms to pass these packages to its mate why the uses it immediately or stores it until she's ready to fertilize her eggs [Music] short-lived creatures with a lifespan of only a year or two they have just a single breeding season before dying of old age in addition to their unusual mating practices octopus are unique in many ways including having blue blood and three hearts as alien a life-form as could be imagined after mating the octopus returned to the safety of their individual homes [Music] but homes are at a premium on the seafloor and when this homeowner decides to check out the camera it proves disastrous though it was only gone for a short time another octopus living nearby decided it's time to move up market and is quick to move in and take possession a standoff ensues the new tenant has no intention of moving out and the old householder can do nothing but watch the former neighbor settles in to its new home Narus in residence the new occupant intends stay even below the ocean squatters can be a nightmare for homeowners [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you you

Channel: Real Wild

Views: 286,000

Rating: 4.7501626 out of 5

Keywords: nature documentary, full documentary, documentary movie, big cats, wildlife documentary, discovery channel, national geographic, natgeo wild, Nature documentaries - topic, Animals - topic, planet earth, david attenborough, Full Animal Documentary, wild animals, wild animal, dcd rights, under sea homes, under the sea, fish homes, sea documentary, underwater doc, underwater documentary, ocean, ocean homes, under sea home, sea life

Id: -5RayrtLXMk

Length: 51min 51sec (3111 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2019