From the "Cute Animals Devouring Other Cute Animals" file, I bring you this BBC video showing a mob of starfish ravaging the carcass of a seal pup. (That starfish covered mound in the picture? Seal pup.) Granted, they do this very, very slowly. The video speeds things up with time-lapse photography, which only adds to the alien creepiness as you watch thousands of starfish (plus sea urchins and giant meat-eating worms) damn-near gallop across the ocean floor.
How do starfish eat a seal? Glad you asked. Turns out, they latch onto the seal's side, pop their stomachs out through their mouths, dump digestive juices onto the seal flesh and then slurp up the dissolved "soup". Happy Monday.
Oh, and beware the scene at about 1:50 into the clip. It's a little, erm, not cute. Nature, red in tooth and claw, and all that. Fair warning.
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I suppose this means PETA will be boycotting starfish as well....
Tentacle porn! Real life!
That was amazing. I thought it was extremely clever how they did a slow pan together with the time lapse. That must have been a really slow turn! How did the cameraman hold his breath that long??
In all seriousness, being able to plan some of those shots is clearly the mark of the true professional. I'm curious as to what kind of footage they shot but didn't use, if any.
I loved the camera work here. There must be some sort of robotic camera panning movement to get these video shots.
my god that is creepy
The camera work is amazing but the post-production sound effects are pointless and irritating.
BBC nature documentaries are just second to none. I'm really enjoying this series.
Jesse,
"Despite the best efforts of the film-makers, some sequences ended up on the cutting room floor. Scientists in Arctic Scandinavia had accumulated enough evidence to suggest that golden eagles were the main predators of reindeer calves, but an attack had never been witnessed. After two summers tracking the herds in Finland, cameraman Barrie Britton finally filmed a hunt in full. However, the attack had taken place nearly a mile away, and the footage was too distant to be considered for broadcast.[14]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_(BBC_TV_series)
Also for Jesse, from the info BBC sent me about the shoot:
"One of the most ambitious shoots LIFE attempted, the sequence was filmed under the permanent ice of the Ross Sea. But because sea stars and nemertean worms move incredibly slowly, the team had to use time-lapse photography to bring them to life.
The trickiest part, however, was trying to rig the gear under 8 feet of solid ice. Every piece of equipment had to be brought through a specially drilled hole in the ice and be monitored every day. In the end, it took the crew over 100 dives to get the sequence."
The camerawork is amazing! When I see stuff like this I know why video technology must evolve- not for art, but for this, exploring and documenting our world.
We've come a looong way since hand-drawn journal entries about wild beasts of far-away lands. And some part of me is sad that we can now see so much without getting up from the chairs in our apartments.
The rest of me thinks this is frickin' awesome and forwards it to everyone I know.
While that is exploring and documenting our world - I'd have to disagree with you that it is not art also.
I'm so glad there are groups willing to put the effort and funds into such work. The amount of work involved in that 2 min sequence is boggling and it's sad it will be under-appreciated by the masses.
On a side note, are the whales really that hairy or did it just appear that way due to another factor?
It's a seal, they are definitely that hairy.
Also, how about those carnivorous worms slithering into the eye socket?
Sometimes you only have to read the first handful of words to realize you're reading an MKB article.
Glorious and disturbing.
Wow, I totally misread that. Thanks for the correction, it all makes much more sense now!
Wow! Equal parts gross and beautiful I think. What an amazing video sequence. Watching those giant sea worms eat their way into the eye was pretty nasty, and yet totally cool.
Decomposition is so different in water. I'm really amazed by the pan though. I would have been amazed even without thinking about the problem of ice.
Bastards. Somebody should club those starfish.
Hopefully in a good way.
Enjoying the view, the technical aspects of the feat? This is disgusting and you have no kids.
That was pretty amazing footage. Bacterial decomp is very slow in the near-freezing Antarctic waters, so these scavengers get to feast (and perform a very important function). The part that creeped me out (other than the worms in the eye socket) was the swarm of little orange shrimpy things crawling all over the seal. Reminded me of a swarm of roaches.
Why should replied comments be visually nested? Because otherwise you end up with:
"Bastards. Somebody should club those starfish."
"Hopefully in a good way."
I hereby request a baby-seal chaser...oh wait.
Can I just say hurrah for youtube and 1080p? And also to the BBC for uploading that clip in full HD glory? Seriously, a lot of people rag on the BBC, but their approach to making their content available online should be championed a bit louder.
Until I get BBC HD on freeview, the above clip is actually higher res than it would be one my tellybox.
Amazing footage.
As an aside: I'm told that scientists are encouraging the public to move away from the term "starfish" and towards "sea star" in order to avoid the misconception that they are some sort of fish. I don't know how nitpicky the science community is about it, but I've been corrected enough times that I thought I'd pass it along.
That's pretty metal/brutal
I think the episode of Life that this is from is on tonight :)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00p4rl4/Life_Creatures_of_the_Deep/
Woo!
It was less gruesome than I expected. What really struck me were the colours; the gorgeous mix of purples, pinks and yellows under the shimmering blue surface. Beautiful filming.
I didn't mean to say this wasn't art, but it's first and foremost a documentary. While I am delighted to see other things shot in HD it is documentaries that I think best use the technology.
I'm pretty sure I heard David Attenborough use the word "starfish" during tonight's episode.
Besides, it's a bit cheeky of scientists to decide that a word doesn't belong in the public language. They can use whatever word they want to be technically accurate — though they have the perfectly good word Asteroidea which is miles better than the insipid "seastar" — but real language is a continuously evolving palimpsest. Starfish are obviously not related to fish, any more than jellyfish are. Is confusion really likely, or even important?
wow. beautiful.
and, as ironc sans stated, they are sea stars, not 'star fish'.
Also, a "Sea Star" is and always will be, as far as my brain is concerned, an orphaned baby pony from Maryland.
If scientists want to change the popular terminology, they'll need to begin with the hearts and minds of second-grade girls.
They'll always be starfish to me too. (How come none of the nomenclature nazis ever seem to care that they aren't stars either, so calling them "sea stars" is just as silly?)
This is the best thing all day.
I find this to be very interesting to watch! I had no idea these sea creatures could even eat an animal that big. It's amazing to see so many of these creatures gathered in one location.