Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1888 — OCEAN PARASITES. [ARTICLE]

OCEAN PARASITES.

A Shark's Curious Appendage While Swimming. Saturday Review. r If one wbtehes the pools as the tile goes down one may often see the shell which holds a hermit crab decorated with a set of anemone. Tbe anemone, one might suppose, had taken up its position on its own accord when the shell was at rest. Mr. Goose, however, says that in every instance when he detached the anemone from the shell the hermit crab picked it up and held it in its claws against the shell “for the space of ten minutes at a time, until fairly attached by a good strong base.” Is such a strange proceeding simply dictated by a love of finery? A still more enrions case, mentioned by Prof. Mohns, “Baitrage zur Murerfauna der Insel Maurities,” includes one to a different conclusion. He tells ns of two distinct genera of crabs in the Mauritius which have a habit of firmly grasping a sea anemone in either claw and carrying them about. The professor does not attempt to explain the habit, but it seems to us that it may very likely be a ruse, under cover of which to approach their prey, just as wild fowlers endeavor to steal up to ducks or swans in the “watches” or pieces of open water in the middle of frozen floods, by carrying a laurel or pine bough in their hands. One animal will make use of another simply as a means of locomotion. A good example for this is the sucker fish of the Mexican Gulf, which adheres by means of a sucker situated on the back of its head to the belly of a shark. Prof. Mosley write*: “The sharks were often seen attended by one or more pilot fishes, as well as bearing the suckers’ attached to them. I often watch with astonishment from the deck the curious association of three eo widely different fish as it glided round the ship like a single compound organism.”