Predators I Have Known by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online Page B

O’Toole’s cinematic characterization of Lawrence, this brief response holds many meanings. I think of it often when I’m diving.
    When the tide is out at Lady Elliot, visitors are permitted to walk on and to explore the shallow fringing reef. As my wife doesn’t dive, this offered her the chance to observe at close range those sea creatures caught in pools left by the receding waters as well as those who dwell permanently in the intertidal zone. Reef walking is something anyone can do, but it’s not as casual or danger-free an exercise as it is often portrayed in tourist advertisements.
    To begin with, you need to have appropriate footwear. Simple sandals, flip-flops, and cheap open shoes just won’t do. Coral can cut like a knife. Your feet need more than a minimal amount of protection. Ragged coral can also slice and dice footgear that is insufficiently durable. One of the quickest routes I know to a hospital is to be caught hiking far out on a reef with inadequate footwear. Coral not only cuts, it infects, and coral infections can be damnably difficult to cure and reluctant to heal.
    Your feet can slip out of cheap sandals. Coral constitutes a rough walking surface whose unevenness is further disguised by the action and visual distortions caused by rippling water. Your favorite footwear may be tough, but if it doesn’t provide proper support for your feet and ankles, you’re better off skipping a reef walk, however enticing it seems. Nothing can bring a vacation to a miserable, screeching halt faster than a twisted knee or broken leg.
    The best shoes I’ve found for reef walking are the booties scuba divers don before slipping on their fins. Booties are tough, designed to be submerged in salt water all the time, and many styles are equipped with ribbed soles suitable for limited hiking. They come with an added benefit in that they can be used with fins, even if all you do is snorkel. Compared to booties, expensive reef-walker shoes, Tevas and their clones, and plastic sandals don’t hold up. If you don’t have booties, I suggest bringing along a pair of expendable sneakers.
    Because it’s not only the inanimate sharp-edged coral that you have to look out for.
    Reefs and their inhabitants are among the most amazing places on the planet. But like every other ecologically rich biota, they are home to hunters as well as the hunted, and sometimes the hunters are less than obvious.
    When discussing diving I’m often asked, “Aren’t you afraid of the sharks?” Let me tell you—whether on land or in the water, it’s not the big predators you have to worry about. It’s the little guys. The chance of being attacked by a shark, or a lion, or a bear, is far smaller than that of contracting a tropical disease, or acquiring an inimical internal parasite, or a persistent infection. It’s smaller than that of meeting up with one of Nature’s miniaturized but no less deadly predators. As any Australian who has been stung by an irukandji jellyfish (and survived) can tell you.
    Cephalopods are all carnivores. Their class is comprised of squid, octopus, cuttlefish, and that living fossil, the chambered nautilus. They are the most intelligent of all invertebrates. Unlike a fish, when you confront a cephalopod, especially a cuttlefish or octopus, and gaze into its remarkably advanced eyes, you get the distinct feeling that something is looking back at you and . . . thinking. Their parrotlike beaks are powerful enough to crush the shells of mollusks to get at the edible flesh within. When biting, some species drip toxins of varying potency into the wound they inflict in order to help immobilize their prey. Sadly, they only live two or three years. I’ve always wondered how our species would have fared if intelligent cephalopods enjoyed life spans akin to that of humans. Perhaps one day genetic engineering would allow . . .
    “Come look at the pretty octopus!”
    I was preoccupied with examining some small fish isolated