They are top predators, wearing "camouflage suits" that blend in with the environment, but beneath the beautiful appearance hides the essence of killing! It's just the Devil's Scorpion!
Commonly known as lionfish, like most fish, the devil scorpion also lives in the shallow sea area of coral reefs, where it inhabits, hunts, and reproduces!
Scorpion is a common name for the genus Scorpene, a total of 1 genus of 9 species, all poisonous, devil scorpion is a tropical warm water marine fish, body length 20cm-40cm, yellow body surface covered with red and brown staggered markings, pectoral fins, fins, tail fins, transparent and black spots, back with 18 spiny spine roots connected to the venom glands, spines attached to spiny membranes, native habitat in the western Pacific Ocean and the shallow waters of the Red Sea!
Scorpion posture
Elegant, brightly striped, the fin membrane that unfolds when slowly swimming is like the fairy's clothes fluttering, and the colorful corals, sea anemones are in harmony, very beautiful, the strange shape and bright appearance of the scorpionfish make them hidden in the coral bushes and not easy to be found by other fish, so it is very beneficial for hunting other fish!
Slowly swimming scorpions look harmless to humans and animals, but in fact they are top defense and hunting masters, similar to leaf perch hunting, scorpionfish will slowly swim closer to the small fish, wait until enough distance suddenly extends the cylindrical mouth, in front of the creation of a vacuum to suck the small fish into the mouth, because the action is very fast, other fish, not easy to detect! The difference with leaf perch is that if the small fish are aware, the scorpion will tighten its fins and rush over to swallow the small fish directly at a very fast speed! At dusk, it is the peak of the scorpion's hunting, at this moment, the day-moving fish are ready to return to their place to rest, the scorpionfish as a nocturnal fish, at this time out to hunt, so the scorpion does not need to spend a lot of time and energy to find food, they only need to slowly wander in the coral, look for the target, and then launch a surprise attack, so the success rate of the scorpion's hunting is very high!
Scorpion hunting
Because of its elegant posture and beautiful shape, as an ornamental fish, the scorpion is very popular in the ornamental fish market, especially the North American market demand is very large, but in the middle of the last century in the Atlantic Florida near the sea also found the figure of the scorpion, the scorpion is not the indigenous people of the Atlantic, so how did they colonize from Africa to the Atlantic?
According to media reports, in the middle of the last century, due to the impact of the hurricane, the Florida Aquarium's scorpion successfully escaped into the Atlantic, after more than two decades of breeding and growth, the population of the scorpion exploded in the Atlantic, due to the high hunting efficiency and amazing food intake of the scorpion, the National Geographic Survey showed that the invasion of the scorpion led to a decline in the number of fish in florida waters by about 79%, and they almost ate all the native fish in the waters near Florida!
Why do populations of squid entering the Atlantic explode?
On the one hand, because the scorpion is not a native of the Atlantic, the Atlantic reef fish and the scorpion have no basis for co-evolution, resulting in no recognition and avoidance of the scorpion, and it is relatively easy for the scorpion to catch them!
On the other hand, the environment of the Atlantic reef is dominated by sponges and some small corals, the natural enemy of the scorpion, the grouper, which cannot hide from large fish, coupled with the overfishing of the grouper, the natural enemies of the scorpion are sparse,
The explosive growth of the scorpion in the Atlantic has attracted the attention of all parties, and now more manual caught, made into delicacies, developed into a tourism project, hoping to control the growth of the scorpion population in order to reduce the degree of harm to other fish! But these scorpions seem to be very clever , they have dived to a depth of about 300m underwater, this depth has exceeded the limits of human diving, in order to control the number of scorpionfish, is working on new countermeasures, how to catch these clever fish!
Nature's regulatory mechanism is really magical, a small fish just changed an environment, causing ecological disasters! I wonder if the ecological catastrophe caused by this inadvertent move will provide some warning to countries with different global environments and increasingly close contacts.