Sunday, April 22, 2012

Cockles and the Starfish who like to eat them! A nice gallery of escape responses!

Here's a neat escape response that was captured on Flickr between a Florida cockle and the sand star Astropecten! Images captured by "The LivingSea.com"  Plus some video of Pacific cockles being chased by sunflower stars!


Here, we see Astropecten articulatus in contact with the cockle (Trachycardium egmontianum) A Beaded Sea Star picks up the scent of a mollusc nearby

The cockle is alerted! And it extends its large muscular foot to begin its escape! Florida Prickly Cockle extends its foot to leap away (Trachycardium egmontianum)

 The foot pushes the cockle away!
 Mollusc uses its foot to escape predation

And aWWAAAAYYYY it goes!
 A Florida Prickly Cockle avoid predation (Trachycardium egmontianum)
And away!
Bivalves methods to avoid predation

On the Pacific coast, different species of predatory starfish (in this case the sunflower star Pycnopodia helianthoides) also feed on cockles.. an identical response is observed..


Here's a really nice one


Here's one that literally does a judo like flip on Pycnopodia!


here's a decent one with a wacky sound track..


Here's a variety of responses to both cockles AND scallops!  (the scallops are the one that "jet" away using their excurrent siphons)

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