The newts enjoy a feast of ice-cubed bloodworms regularly. I have been instructed to knock thrice upon the newts' aquarium when it is feeding time, as they have been trained a la Skinner. H never fails to grasp the quickly-dissolving cube in his jaws, and is soon flailing about, shaking the quivering mass of worms the way certain mammalian predators might shake certain wee animals in order to break their respective wee necks.
I have been unable to get a clear shot of feeding time. Curse the lowly camera! Instead, use thy imagination, with these feeble images as your humble guide...
Can you spot the bloodworms hanging from H's mouth in the second photo?
1 comment:
I think that the shaking of the food may indeed have to do with some natural newt instinct of catching prey and shaking it to death. Then again, maybe not: newts probably prey upon small surface insects in the wild, so just one big chomp would do the trick there; perhaps shaking the worm block might free the individual worms for consumption? The only way to determine positively is to feed some hitherto un-bloodworm-fed newts a worm block and see how they approach it: if they try to swallow it whole, we know the shaking tactic doesn't come naturally to the little buggers, and it's something they learned. Perhaps if they're caretaker had been more observant when he first started feeding them, we would know...
Much more interesting to me is their eating order - seems Hammerhead always does the most shaking and is usually the first one at it, while Lucy just sits patiently by and watches. I wonder if newts have a pecking order?
When they were younger, they used to try to eat ONE ANOTHER before eating the worms. That is, they would ingest one another's limbs... but the limbs never came off, so at some point they would let go and go for dinner.
I love the newt blog!
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