why-animals-do-the-thing:

michiefen:

i-lyke-chickin:

casismypie:

terriblyraeven:

sixpenceee:

This insane puffer fish eats anything thrown in the tank. I’m truly scared.

It just looked you dead in the eye and ate that centipede

any one else notice he started with the tail

like… that centipede was alive the whole time it was getting eaten.

Brutal

hey @why-animals-do-the-thing my mom said it looks like the pufferfish might just be going after them bc it’s starving, is that what’s going on or am i right to fear them now?

Pufferfish are predators – along with algae, they will attack and eat marine invertebrates. I don’t think it’s necessarily extreme for them to go after the invertebrates or the snake that were provided, although it’s not what they’d normally eat. 

It also isn’t the same tank in all of the videos, and may not be the same fish. (If you look at the fixture in the back and the wear on the bottom of the tank, it’s not the same in the centipede video and the scorpion video). I’m not sure why those fish are being kept in those conditions, or if they live in those tanks full time – we don’t have enough information to know – but if they’re being fed these prey items specifically for the video, I could potentially see people withholding food to make them super hungry for a good film clip. 

That being said, the method through which they’re hunting them isn’t unusual or overly dramatic – that’s just how puffers deal with their prey. 

FYI: the music behind the video is loud electronica, so watch your volume levels if you’ve got headphones in or don’t do well with being startled. 

That’s pretty much how pufferfish deal with prey, yes. They’re hungry little things. 

Please note that it is not smart to feed your fish things that are venomous and/or capable of biting, like the centipede and scorpion. You also really shouldn’t feed live vertebrates, i.e. animals that are capable of feeling pain, unless the animal in question simply cannot be weaned onto pre-killed food. This unfortunately seems to be in the same class of videos as people who feed live fish to their piranha to watch them be torn apart. IMO, feeding live, fully aware vertebrates to a predator, when there are other options, is cruel. Pufferfish will happily eat dead meat, they don’t need to be fed live things.