The Battle Between Eel and Stonefish Is One-Sided | National Geographic

less than 1m read

·Nov 11, 2024

Today in the ocean, a life-or-death battle between two extremely capable predators. First up is the stonefish, the killer who hides in plain sight, with sharp spines containing enough venom to kill a person. We've chosen a shot of it missing its prey.

I'm skeptical. Its opponent, the Moray Eel. Its toxic skin and sharp teeth are battle-tested and ready to hunt. I know where I'm placing my bets. Let's see how things play out.

As the eel dodges the venomous spine of the stonefish, he sinks his teeth in and doesn't let go. Not off to a good start, stonefish! As the eel's skin comes in contact with its wounded prey, the toxin excruciatingly destroys its red blood cells.

Okay, stonefish is gonna need to mount a comeback here. The assault isn't over though. As the eel clamps down, a second pair of jaws deep inside its throat slides up to chew the meal.

And that is alien! That is the Xenomorph from Alien! Can we license some footage of Alien to put up alongside this? Ah, no, I'm being told no. We cannot afford it.

We begun entangling the fish in its body. The eel is then able to tear off more manageable chunks. There are about 200 kinds of moray eels throughout the world. Some chase their prey while others prefer to lie and wait.

Note to the scriptwriter: be careful with your titling this! I don't know about a battle between two capable predators when one is just going to sort of stomp all over the other. I'm just saying.

Visit the Okavango Delta in 360° | National Geographic

Snorkeling With President Obama: How Our Photographer Got the Shot (Exclusive) | National Geographic

View All

Zeros of polynomials (multiplicity) | Polynomial graphs | Algebra 2 | Khan Academy

All right, now let’s work through this together. And we can see that all of the choices are expressed as a polynomial in factored form. And factored form is useful when we’re thinking about the roots of a polynomial, the x-values that make that polynomi…

Exploring a Seedy Reefer | Lawless Oceans

When I look at this ship, it just speaks seedy to me. There’s something suspicious about it. Not only is it a reefer with a Chinese name, indicating that it could be Chinese or Taiwanese, but now all of a sudden it’s got a Bolivian flag, and that’s a flag…

15 Ways to Safe Guard Sudden Wealth

So you just sold your business, sold some land for 100x what you paid for, inherited a lot of money, retired rich, or won the lottery. Now what? Need a game plan, my friend? And by the end of this video, you’ll not only know the most effective ways to nev…

Yes, Powerful Thoughts Can Change the World

We all know how it goes. One day we’re born, one day we die. Everything that happens in between we know and understand, but everything that happened before and will happen after we know nothing about. As a result, it’s really difficult to say what exactly…

r-selected and K-selected population growth strategies | High school biology | Khan Academy

What we’re going to do in this video is talk about different population growth strategies for different species and think about if we can come up with a broad categorization or if there’s a broad categorization already out there for us. We see that there…

Andrea Ghez’s Black Hole Research Confirms Einstein’s Theory of Relativity | Short Film Showcase

Black holes are deceptively simple and yet incredibly complex. A black hole is a region of space where the pull of gravity is so intense that nothing can escape, not even light. We don’t have the physics to describe what a black hole is because it leads t…

The Battle Between Eel and Stonefish Is One-Sided | National Geographic

More Articles