Pacific Red Lionfish Blows Jets Of Water To Snare Prey, Pterois Volitans Study Shows (VIDEO)

Since their introduction to the Atlantic Ocean in the 1980s, Pacific red lionfish (Pterois volitans) have gobbled up native Caribbean and western Atlantic reef fishes, reducing their abundance by up to 90%. Researchers think one of the secrets to the lionfish's success is a predation strategy unheard of in other fish predators—blowing jets of water while approaching prey to disorient them.

The squirting water (seen in the video) overwhelms the target's lateral line, part of a fish's nervous system that detects vibrations and warns of approaching objects, the team reports this week in Marine Ecology Progress Series. Prey often end up facing the hungry lionfish, increasing the chances of head-first strikes and lowering the risk of the lionfish getting stuck by backwards-facing spines. The team first observed this behavior while monitoring lionfish populations off Lee Stocking Island in the Bahamas.

Only 18% of observed lionfish in the Atlantic blew these jets, while about half of the observed lionfish employed this strategy in the Pacific. Researchers think unsuspecting Atlantic prey are easier for lionfish to catch without having to resort to this spitting behavior.

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Original article:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/02/video-huffing-and-puffing-for.html?rss=1

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• In this handout picture released by Awashima Marine Park, a 1.6 meter long Frill shark swims in a tank after being found by a fisherman at a bay in Numazu, on January 21, 2007 in Numazu, Japan. The frill shark, also known as a Frilled shark usually lives in waters of a depth of 600 meters and so it is very rare that this shark is found alive at sea-level. Its body shape and the number of gill are similar to fossils of sharks which lived 350,000,000 years ago. (Photo by Awashima Marine Park/Getty Images)

• A shark swims in a tank at the New York Aquarium on August 7, 2001 in Coney Island, New York City. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

• A June 11, 2009 file photo provided by Elasmodiver shows scientist Eric Hoffmayer of the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Lab in Ocean Springs, Miss., taking fin measurements of a whale shark in the Gulf of Mexico, about 55 miles off the Louisiana coast. Hoffmayer says whale sharks, the world's biggest fish, are particularly vulnerable if they get into the oil slick. That's because, rather than moving up to the surface and down again, they eat by swimming along the surface, sucking in plankton, fish eggs and small fish. (AP Photo/Elasmodiver, Andy Murch, File)

• In this handout picture released by Awashima Marine Park, a 1.6 meter long Frill shark swims in a tank after being found by a fisherman at a bay in Numazu, on January 21, 2007 in Numazu, Japan. The frill shark, also known as a Frilled shark usually lives in waters of a depth of 600 meters and so it is very rare that this shark is found alive at sea-level. Its body shape and the number of gill are similar to fossils of sharks which lived 350,000,000 years ago. (Photo by Awashima Marine Park/Getty Images)

• Home And Away actor Jon Sivewright launches the new Adventure experience Grey Nurse Shark Feed Dive at Manly's Ocean World on December 18, 2006 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Patrick Riviere/Getty Images)

• This Saturday, June 26, 2010 photo released by Bruce Sweet shows a juvenile great white shark swimming in the Atlantic Ocean about 20 miles off the coast of Gloucester, Mass., in the rich fishing ground known as Stellwagen Bank. The shark was pulled up by Gloucester-based Sweet Dream III, tagged, and returned to the sea. (AP Photo/www.SportFishingMA.com, Bruce Sweet)

• A shark swims in a tank at the New York Aquarium August 7, 2001 in Coney Island, New York City. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

• A shark swim inside a fish tank as a diver, left, cleans the glass at the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town, South Africa, Wednesday, Aug 31, 2011. The Two Oceans Aquarium hosts group activities for school children and students which include the identification and observation of fish and other species. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)

• In this picture taken on September 3, 2011, an environmental activist releases a baby black-tip shark into the sea as part of an operation organised by the sharks protection group Dive Tribe off the coast of the southern Thai sea resort of Pattaya. On average an estimated 22,000 tonnes of sharks are caught annually off Thailand for their fins -- a delicacy in Chinese cuisine once enjoyed only by the rich, but now increasingly popular with the wealthier middle class. (CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP/Getty Images)

• This undated photo released by The Galapagos National Park of Ecuador shows a diver alongside a whale shark in the Galapagos Island, Ecuador. (AP Photo/The Galapagos National Park of Ecuador)

• This undated photo released by The Galapagos National Park of Ecuador shows a diver alongside a whale shark in the Galapagos Island, Ecuador. (AP Photo/The Galapagos National Park of Ecuador)

Comments

[liarfire]

12:37 PM on 03/03/2012

Im always curious about the tactics of animals in the wild...i have this idea that human deception towards each other as a means of defrauding people or exploiting them effectively eating off of them is why as a species whole we are degrading.. many people think this is dog eat dog a natural way of life...survival of the fittest idea has been trained into us. and using examples in the wild seem to give evidence to this..but not many species eat their own kind.. But humans consistently abuse murder and live off each other using similar tactics to lie cheat and steal. yet this behavior is causing the destruction of ourselves and the planet....I would like to think it does not have to be our trajectory of extinction or be condemned to the fate we seem so obsessed in fulfilling. there are many examples in nature of highly cooperative species that do little harm to themselves and surroundings and live in a harmony with other species as well as the planet...lets hope we can grow up finally and use our amazing potential for real change and progress.....

[Gerald OHare]

10:03 PM on 03/10/2012

Chimps kill each other and Lions will kill the offspring of another male. Cats play with their food before they kill it. Crocs will bite the legs off of other crocs. A black widow spider does kill her mate and then eats him.

[brutusmojo]

08:20 PM on 02/28/2012

cool stuff to be had here,fascinating.

[felide]

03:04 PM on 02/28/2012

as far as EXOTIC PETS go, if you must keep parrots , reptiles , amphibians, fish, rember this.. CAPTIVE BRED , is the right way to go NOT. WILD CAUGHT ..!! . consider this, a bird or turtle hatched by humans and raised in a pet store is most likley less afraid of human contact and will adjust to the'' pet'' role better. it will USUALLY not have the diseases and parisites of a wild counterpart .) an exotic animal caught smuggled into the united states and then sold as a pet however , well , no.1 mini ecosystem of parisites and bacteria you will be bringing into your home and exposing your family to. no.2 exotic pets taken from the wild are ofter done so illeaglly and in poor health as a result. many die before you buy the one that goes home with you, and the pet you buy sometimes dies soon after you get it. and no.3 a wild caught animal will somtimes '' ) lose the will to live in captivity. the animal that was in a beautiful rainforest a month ago and in a cage now may stop eating pull out it's feathers and bite each hand it sees . and frogs and turles even snakes taken from the wild sometimes have to be forcefed because the change of enviroment is such a shock to their system . a captive bred though pet knows nothing else..

[nomadrdw]

08:05 PM on 02/28/2012

25 years of importing frogs and turtles from legal shippers and i have NEVER ONCE gotten a frog or turtle that didn't eat very soon after being set up in its environment.
millions of parrots are killed each year in Australia because they are a danger to crops. several different types of parakeet and the galah are killed in the millions each year. there is always another side to the story. ALWAYS.
many hundreds if not thousands of Island natives now make a decent living by working with certified collectors and companies collecting exotic fish for the aquarium trade, and they are conserving these creatures in the wild in their own self interest.

[kejavas]

05:19 AM on 02/28/2012

GOD sure created some unique creatures.

[Jack Glastra]

06:01 PM on 02/28/2012

Riiiiiiiight....

[kejavas]

10:14 PM on 02/28/2012

yes, 100% correct. Right. Exactly, precisely.

[jragga]

11:19 PM on 02/28/2012

Who created God then? If something must "be created" to exist, doesn't that cancel out the God theory... Something would have to create God and something would have to create the God that Created the God... Trust me, I've examined this in many ways and have come to the conclusion that the Universe has always existed in one form or another. It's the Solar Systems that are born and destroyed only to be Born again all through natural processes.
As for the big bang theory, I've theorized that the Universe is a huge empty void with objects colliding and moving around throughout. The Big Bang would have more than likely just been two enormous objects that collided with enough mass and energy to start the process of all the planets and galaxies you see now. Maybe they had been draw together for eons only to finally collide 16 billion years ago or so and spawn all of this.

[kejavas]

05:00 AM on 02/29/2012

GOD is I AM. You can find that in HIS written word, passed down through the ages consistently. The truth is not a theory. The creator was before time, before anything else. HE created man. Natural process, evolutionary process was created by a creator. Someone (or thing as you say) created natural process. Those processes were created to protect life.

[den942]

09:06 AM on 02/29/2012

If the "Big Bang" theory is correct, what blew up and where did it come from?

[Cruel Justice Awaits]

01:33 AM on 02/28/2012

Dayam! Nature! You scary!!!

[callaluna]

12:42 AM on 02/28/2012

My brother had a Lion Fish in his salt water tank many years ago. Perhaps it was because he kept his fishes well fed, but the Lion Fish never attacked anything. He just floated around majestically in the tank. He lived a long time and when he died, my brother was heartbroken. I recall my brother telling my six year old daughter to keep her hands out of the tank because the fish was poisonous but he used to put his hands in all the time to move things and clean the glass. The fish never bothered him. Perhaps he just had a very unusual fish. But they definitely don't belong on our side of the world. I'm more concerned with all the Pythons and other constrictors that idiots release in the Everglades. Snakeheads are being found everywhere and they eat everything. Importing these exotics should not be permitted.

[Joan Polsino]

06:23 AM on 02/28/2012

We are working towards that end. We want all exotic pets tagged like they do dogs so we can trace the owners and prosicute.

[callaluna]

10:32 AM on 02/28/2012

Excellent! I'm sure you know that the Snakeheads are here because they are a delicacy in many parts of Asia. Their fry were placed in lakes as a potential food source by Asians who were new to our country and didn't realize that the Snakehead has no natural predator here. Snakeheads can walk on land, making them extremely dangerous to nearby waterways. They escaped and are now becoming a nationwide plague.

[nomadrdw]

08:07 PM on 02/28/2012

and how do you propose to tag a frog that is only an inch long? how about the billions of tropical fish that are imported each year? not the answer.

[genbirch]

12:09 AM on 02/28/2012

We should be leary of the phrase, 'meant to be'. Imagine a giant chicken coop that serves the worlds human population. Then imagine letting a family of wolves inside. Whoops! I guess it was meant to be. How about a family of cockroaches in your old apartment building, Whoops - meant to be . . .

We do spend beaucoup bucks on the invasive species problem. Do you suggest that the lionfish issue isn't worth any part of that budget?

[erezangel]

12:06 AM on 02/28/2012

that is kinda cool.

[juststeve35]

10:13 PM on 02/27/2012

Nature itself is unafraid of the human-caused invasion of a non-native species...

She will prevail and turn the lemons we give her into sweet tea!

No reason for us to be concerned...

[ogre123]

10:57 PM on 02/27/2012

Please change your flag to "Ostrich", and keep hiding your head in the sand.

[steves1709]

11:50 PM on 02/27/2012

Perhaps, after a few decades of screwing up fish populations, nature will strike a balance with these fish. With any luck, none will become extinct. Too bad the Chinese don't use them as a delicacy instead of shark fins. Due to their modest adult size and nasty venom filled spines, I doubt they'll be a major human food source.

[ogre123]

12:08 AM on 02/28/2012

True about the market for these (Lobster was considered a "trashfish" until we got a taste for it). Evidently, the Lionfish is quite tasty, and there is an effort underway in areas that they have invaded to put them on the menu. Shrimps are also small....

[nomadrdw]

08:10 PM on 02/28/2012

apparently they are very good to eat, they can carry a bacteria that caused paralysis in people.

[Bopcolarry]

09:46 PM on 02/27/2012

This stuff about Lionfish is such Old News, even that Prehistoric Shark knows about it...

[xxdestroyerrxx]

10:32 PM on 02/27/2012

BOOM ROASTED.

[No7]

09:38 PM on 02/27/2012

..that's nothing...our politicians blow jets of hot air for the same purpose....

[lovableme1]

09:13 PM on 02/27/2012

ok.. how many hundreds of thousands of dollars were wasted on this?

[valgaavmiko]

09:45 PM on 02/27/2012

Hush. Go read your children's books.

[Catalina hime]

10:40 PM on 02/27/2012

Too many.

[spydrworks1067]

07:43 PM on 02/27/2012

Evidently, lion fish are meant to be survivors and evolve. Trying to eradicate them is not really going to succeed in the long run. Nature provides them with this flexibility.

Their prey will evolve or they will eventually die out. In the mean time, they are a potential food source and some could be caught and put back in the aquarium industry.

[ogre123]

08:52 PM on 02/27/2012

The lionfish has natural predators on the Indo-Pacific, but not in the Caribbean, where they have become endemic. Divemasters in Cozumel are attempting to train the few remaining groupers to recognize these fish as prey, but they have an uphill battle. We have been diving in Indonesia, and have seen more in the Caribs in recent years than where they are native. They are indeed beautiful fish, but they don't belong on this side of the globe. Perhaps if we could learn to enjoy them as food, they could be eliminated as effectively as most of the other native species the we have gotten a taste for....

[spydrworks1067]

09:17 PM on 02/27/2012

"They are indeed beautiful fish, but they don't belong on this side of the globe."

If they truly do not belong there they will eventually die off. IMO, this is the kind of thing we should take a back seat to and let the planet take care of itself. Just because it may be an inconvenience to us does not mean they do not belong there.

[NEVER INHALED 1]

10:23 PM on 02/27/2012

You really want to cut down on a species population.
Let the russians find out they are edible,problem solved.

[ogre123]

09:05 PM on 02/27/2012

BTW-
The clueless devotees of the aquarium industry is where this all started.

[spydrworks1067]

09:26 PM on 02/27/2012

Actually, it started with a few irresponsible individuals. True "devotees of the aquarium industry" would not release these animals, but rather keep them in the trade.

[Azbo61]

06:44 PM on 02/27/2012

#1 should be called the penis shark.....

[NEVER INHALED 1]

10:27 PM on 02/27/2012

WOW, MAN !
IF A PENIS LOOKS LIKE THAT SOMEONE
REALLY NEEDS TO SEE A DOCTOR...

[mmbcf]

05:57 PM on 02/27/2012

If you see or catch a lion fish in the Atlantic, kill it. It doesn't belong here in Florida and like the article says its decimating native fish populations.

[kareemachan]

06:04 PM on 02/27/2012

And evidently, they're edible as well.

[jewel67]

09:27 PM on 03/10/2012

LION FISH, FLYING CARP - I see a cat food and fertilizer factory here somewhere!!

[Ihearyou777]

06:08 PM on 02/27/2012

Beware...the fish are highly venomous. Do not touch them with your bare hands.

[Michael Cimino]

12:02 AM on 03/04/2012

I owned one for 10 years before he finally just had age catch up to him. They are rather timid fish that wont strike at anyone unless cornered. I pet mine and would feed him by hand after about 2 years of feeding him. He ended up throwing water out of the tank about 8 feet out (rather accurately might I add lol) to let me know he was hungry. Very pretty fish indeed.