ABSTRACT
NOT even these water-dwellers can refrain from molesting one another. This occurs for four reasons: an innate desire for superiority, food, mating, and offspring, 1 as I shall tell below with regard to the whale and the grampus, 2 and here of 3 the mullet and the bass, which cherish a glowing hatred for each other. Congers and lampreys bite the tips off one another’s tails, yet in certain fixed months of the year they live in harmony. The lobster is so terrified of octopuses that if it sees one nearby, it simply dies. The conger eel fears the lobster, while the congers in their turn will mutilate an octopus. Yet they all survive, even when they lose their tails. 3 In his book Investigations of Nature Seneca gives a great many instances of strife between marine creatures; 4 and in his On Animals, Bk XXIV, Albertus describes how crustaceans of the crab family draw up their swarms in line of battle and fight with other armies of their kind over feeding-grounds, their young, or their females. 5
