Butter fingers

At feeding time in the aquarium, as the hermit crabs race about, grabbing goodies, squabbling over them, mugging their erstwhile friends for a tidbit, trying to hog two or three meals (that's what all those extra mouthparts and pincers are for, aren't they?), the shrimp drifts down, casually, as if moved only by the currents in the water. As if he had no real interest in the proceedings. But let him drift within reach of a food pellet, and suddenly he's galvanized; faster than my eye can follow, he has bounced up to a handy perch, carrying his catch.

Three feet for perching, five for holding onto the food.

But he's not as efficient as the hermits and the crabs; even using several feet to hold on to the food, it slips out of his grasp and falls to the sand below.

And down he goes after it, breaking out all those extra swim fins to get there before the hermits do.

And the food pellet is snagged by a speedy crab. The shrimp drifts away; no big deal, not interested, really, not at all, he's not hungry, anyhow.

Rinse and repeat. It usually takes him three or four tries to collect a meal and get it into a safe place.

Worm food

It was feeding time in the aquarium again. I dropped in the usual Crab Cuisine pellets, about one per hermit crab. (One is too much for a tiny hermit, but the big guys collect two or three each.) As always, there was great excitement, as crabs and hermits and the one remaining shrimp raced around, trying to get to the table first. But when they'd all retired with their goodies to their preferred eating spots, one pellet had been missed, right up against the glass. And then the 15-scale scaleworm slid timidly out of hiding, tracking down that delicious scent of fish and corn.

Scale worm. Belly view; the edge  of some scales on his back are just barely visible.

Licking his lips already

"Look what I found! Oh, this looks good!"

These worms eat by everting their jaw some distance beyond the face, and biting down. I've watched them many times, but never actually seen the everted jaw. It all happens in a split second; the worm is there, looking at the food from a short distance away, then there's a moment of blur, and then all is as before, except that the food has moved.

This time, with the worm and his lunch so close to the glass, I set the camera down, focussed on the pellet, and tried to catch the action. The worm was biting at the edges of the pellet; it was too big for him to swallow. After each bite, he'd back off, rest a minute, and then, - snap! - take another bite.

Mostly, by the time my finger pressed the camera shutter, it was all over. I tried anticipating his moves, and finally got one blurry view of that speeding jaw.

Snap!

A few more bites, and the worm retreated into his seaweed hidey hole, leaving the rest of the pellet for midnight snackers.