Watch helplessly from a mussel’s shell as it is slowly & inexorably consumed

This may be the coolest sea star predation video of all time. Watch helplessly from the mussel’s shell as the sea star’s stomach extrudes and begins to digest the mussel alive! Via Chris Mah.

Echinoderms: Sea Star Time-lapse: Eating Mussel from Shape of Life on Vimeo.

16 Replies to “Watch helplessly from a mussel’s shell as it is slowly & inexorably consumed”

  1. I’m not an underwater videography expert, but I suspect a change in light source. Since you can see the reddish pink spots on the sea star, they’re probably using a nice bright white light source. Then they switch to the mussel-cam, and I doubt you can fit much of a light source inside that shell. :)

  2. Sounds interesting and necessary. Too much misunderstanding going on down there.

  3. eeeeyewe. That’s awesome. I know what predator I’m going to pretend to be the next time I order mussels at a restaurant.

  4. That is very cool. I wonder how long they had to wait for a sea star to eat the mussel with the camera in it?

    At about 2:15 as the stomach is pulling out, there is a little shrimp-like arthropod that gets pulled into focus from the foreground. That little dude was happily swimming about in the starfish stomach acid and probably stealing nutrients. It reminds me of the critters that showed up in the deep antarctic ice a few years ago.

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