OK, so it didn’t exactly walk in, but photographer Tim Samuel caught this shocking image of a fish swallowed whole by a jellyfish in Byron Bay, Australia. The photographer documented the struggle managing to capture a few images he posted online.
“It seemed completely trapped in there, like it had somehow managed to swim inside and then was unable to back itself out. The fish was able to propel the jellyfish forward and controlled its movement to an extent, the jellyfish threw it off balance though and they would wobble around, and sometimes get stuck doing circles,” noted Samuel. “I contemplating freeing the fish as I felt bad for it, but in the end decided to just let nature run its course, which was a difficult decision for me to make.”
The images are a reminder of the course of nature when it comes to predators and prey and how it rules the sea, but then again is this image exactly what it seams?
Magazine Australian Geographic noted that Associate Professor Ian Tibbetts, a fish biologist at the Centre for Marine Science at the University of Queensland, that offers a different version than jellyfish eats fish. Tibbetts things the fish could actually be a juvenile trevally, a fish known to seek shelter among the stingers of jellyfish, and might have just happened to find itself inside the bell and not just the stingers.
“It’s difficult to tell whether disaster has just struck, or whether the fish is happy to be in there,” says Ian, who adds that the jellyfish looks like a type of stinging jellyfish called a cubomedusan.
[via Australian Geographic]
