something odd in the mantle....

bathypol

Wonderpus
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Mar 2, 2004
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I was wondering if any of you, in your vast cephalopod experience, have come across another animal inside the mantle cavity of one of your cephs? I was working on one of my specimens and when I opened up the mantle, there was a fish inside. A whole fish, not chewed or damaged...just lying inside the cavity. I thought it was a bit odd since it was an octopus I was working on and the fish is rather big in comparison (it took up nearly the whole space). So...has anyone else had a similar experience????
 
I've come across fish, crustaceans and Halobates inside the mantles of trawl- and other net-caught squid. A while ago we had a much odder story here, about a squid that appeared to have been living inside the mantle of another living squid - unfortunately the pics disappeared in the great crash of whenever that was. :hmm:
 
It's bound to be a post-mortem artefact. The next question is obviously ..... was the octopus dead when you were looking inside the mantle? This is extremely common in trawl-caught specimens.
 
Please find a deep sea fish from inside the mantle of an Architeuthis specimen we dissected last April, same story here; post mortem artefact, three in total.

IMGP2849.jpg
 
Steve O'Shea;131831 said:
It's bound to be a post-mortem artefact. The next question is obviously ..... was the octopus dead when you were looking inside the mantle? This is extremely common in trawl-caught specimens.

Yes, the octopus was dead when I was looking inside the mantle. I figured it was probably an artifact but just wondered if anyone else had seen something like this. I found it odd since the mantle opening was small and the fish was large yet nothing seemed damaged. Gotta be one of the odder ways to go... in the mantle of a ceph!:sink:
 

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