How do underwater prey know a predator is hunting them?
In: 25
Often they don’t.
I spent an amusing 20 minutes one night floating above a rock (about 2 meter cube) 25 feet down off of Kona. There was a moray, hunting a couple of Tang. Morays hunt like you’d think a snake would: sneaking up, then striking over a short distance. They also have poor aim. You frequently see fish with bites taken out of them where they were hit but not caught.
So this moray strikes at the tang, and misses. The tang, *finally* noticing what’s going on, dashes off…about 3 feet, then goes back to aimless swimming. The eel regroups, follows the fish, and tries again. Misses again. Fish does *exactly the same thing*. Rinse and repeat. By the time I ran low on air I was really pulling for the moray. The tang was clearly too dumb to live.
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