THE DEVIL FISH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19722, 13 December 1926, Page 16

THE DEVIL FISH

NATURALISTS SCEPTICAL NOT SO BAD AS HE IS PAINTED A great devil-fish, so we read, appeared off Sicily the other day and attacked a group of fishermen, who escaped only by chopping off the creature’s strangling tentacles. There have been many stories of a monster squid or octopus, even before Victor Hugo’s “Toilers of the Sea.’’ But naturalists have always been rather sceptical (writes “A Naturalist” in the “Daily Mail”.) In Mediterranean lands, and even in the Channel Islands, the flesh of a certain kind of octopus is quite a luxury. The common kinds are used as a fertiliser, and great numbers of the animals are hooked or raked out of the rock crannies at low tides. They may run to Bft or 10ft. in arm span, and are traced to their lairs by the litter of shells they leave about. For the • octopus is an untidy person and a great 1 crab eater and has an artful way of dealing with his prey. Very much | like a spider, he lies in wait in his rock cleft. When a crab comes sidling along 1 the octopus stretches out a long ten- | taele, very gently grasps the unsuspecting crab or lobster, and draws it ito his bosom, where he keeps it, perjhaps with a collections of others, till ; luncheon time. He is apparently not always hungry, and likes to be able, like Mrs Gamp, to “put his lips to it when so disposed.” Sometimes, however, he falls on his victim in the most unmannerly and voracious way —his table manners are shocking—tears off its limbs, and devours its flesh as if he had never had a decent meal before. The octopus, has, like many other animals, the po-wer of disguising himself by assuming protective colouring, and it is not always easy to see him, so Like is he to the rock. The giants may be terrible enough. The ordinary sort are not really so terrible as the story writers make out. The French fishers make very short work of them, and even fhe little girls helping with tho nets handle them with a contemptuous nonchalance that 1 shows how little fear a bather need 'have. In deep water a big one might |be a serious menace, but the octopus is rarely met with far from a rocky shore. ; The octopus has a powerful parrot •beak and one vulnerable spot, his neck, 'it is a mere “waist” between head and jbody. However deadly his embrace, a ; pinch there brings him to reason as no j other argument will.