Again on breezy sands the roamers creep,
Twine to the rocks, or paddle in the deep.
Doubtless the God whose will commands the seas,
Whom liquid worlds and wat’ry natives please,
Has taught the fish by tedious wants opprest
Life to preserve and be himself the feast.
The fact is, that the larger predatory fishes regard an octopus as very acceptable food, and there is no better bait for many of them than a portion of one of its arms. Some of the cetacea also are very fond of them, and whalers have often reported that when a “fish” (as they call it) is struck it disgorges the contents of its stomach, amongst which they have noticed parts of the arms of cuttle-fishes which, judging from the size of their limbs, must have been very large specimens. The food of the sperm whale consists largely of the gregarious squids, and the presence in spermaceti of their undigested beaks is accepted as a test of its being genuine. That old fish-reptile, the Ichthyosaurus, also, preyed upon them; and portions of the horny rings of their suckers were discovered in its coprolites by Dean Buckland. Amongst the worst enemies of the octopus in British home-waters is the conger. They are both rock-dwellers, and if the voracious fish come upon his cephalopod neighbour unseen, he makes a meal of him, or, failing to drag him from his hold, bites off as much of one or two of his arms as he can conveniently obtain. The conger, therefore, is generally the author of the injury which the octopus has been unfairly accused of inflicting on itself.
The Curator of the Havre Aquarium describes an attack by congers on an octopus which he had thrown into their tank. As soon as the latter touched the bottom it examined every corner of the stone-work. The moment it perceived a conger it seemed to feel instinctively the danger which menaced it, and endeavoured to conceal its presence by stretching itself along a rock, the colour of which it immediately assumed. Finding this useless, and seeing that it was discovered, it changed its tactics, and shot backward, in quick retreat, leaving behind it a long black trail of turbid water, formed by the discharge of its ink. Then it fixed itself to a rock, with all its arms surrounding and protecting its body, and presenting on all exposed sides a surface furnished with suckers. In this position it awaited the attack of its enemies. A conger approached, searched with its snout for a vulnerable place, and, having found one, seized with its teeth a mouthful of the living flesh. Then, straightening itself out in the water, it turned round and round with giddy rapidity, until the arm was, with a violent wrench, torn away from the body of the victim. Each bite of a conger cost the unfortunate creature a limb, and, at length, nothing remained but its dismembered body, which was finally devoured;—some dog-fishes, attracted by the fray, partaking of the feast.
I have always refused to permit so shocking a scene to be repeated at the Brighton Aquarium. The Havre experiment has taught us all that is to be learned from it concerning the mode of attack of the conger, and the octopod’s strategy of defence. That the flesh of the latter is a favourite food of congers, I have repeatedly proved by watching the eagerness with which they will rend limb from limb, and devour the body of a dead octopus to which I sometimes treat them after removing such portions as may be required for dissection and preservation.