SueNami Last Day
Measurements AD
Mantle: 3.25" (8.26 cm)
Longest arm: 10" (25.4 cm)
SueNami has not been eating offered food for several weeks but retained most of his color control (the first picture was taken two days before he died, note the cork screw arms) until his last day. He must have eaten some small things as we saw him eliminate three days ago and could see traces of Cyclop-eze. At one point, I tried several times to get him to eat Cyclop-eze from a pipette (
Trapper would eat this way after brooding) without success. The blotchy looking photo is the one I took last night. He was having trouble breathing (and may be why he chose to be in front of the return and on top of the Koralia) and a brissle worm was on the tip of one arm so I was not surprised to find him dead today. Last night I got out a breeder net to allow him to die without being molested by the clean-up crew but before I could get it in place, he moved back behind the LR and I let him be.
There is one possible unusual sign I noted with SueNami and tried to video. Unfortunately, I did not keep the clips as they did not clearly show what I was trying to show. I had forgotten about the constant "hick-up" observations until reading back on on McLovin's thread and noticed that Simple
recorded something similar (post #16).
I am still pondering the refusal to eat during the last weeks of senesence and am convinced that something stops working that causes this. Since all of mine that would eat at this stage only ate small dead things, I have wondered if the muscle that controls the beak looses strength but looking into their digestive track also makes me wonder if their stomach stops emptying. While SueNami was eating well, we consistently noticed that he would not eat until he eliminated and then was immediately hungry. This pattern was so obvious (and stopped as he aged and ate less) that I went on an internet hunt to better understand their digestive system and found that the routing is one way so that the stomach must empty before new food can be introduced (there is a
holding tank crop in the path but it is very small compared to the stomach). The information I read also mentioned that the liver directly injects digestive juices into the stomach so liver failure is another thought.
I sure wish our bio students would study this more in the lab.
After discussing the digestive tack Neal wondered out loud about how much nutrition the receive if the food source is large vs small and can stay in the stomach longer. Would small feedings multiple times a day be better than one larger feeding at night?