Invertebrates are universally regarded as lower animals so it always comes as a shock when a squishy animal eats a bony one. You’ve seen highly intelligent octopus go after sharks but the case of the Anemone eating a bird is even more astounding.
The Anemone in question is the Pacific giant green anemone, Anthopleura xanthogrammica, part of a group of stinging anemones which are well known for their fish catching habits, but a bird is a new one. The pitiful and dead seabird appears to be a young cormorant which is too small to have any kind of protective feathers to shield it from an anemone sting, not that it would help if the bird went in head first.
It’s hard to tell whether the anemone happened to catch a living cormorant which got its beak a little too close to the danger zone but most likely, this bird was already dead and happened to stray head first into the anemone’s nematocyst trap. Of course this anemone won’t be able to ingest the entire bird, or even a part of it, but we that anemone is definitely making a bird’s head soup in its stomach. [IFL Science]
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