Monday, March 10, 2014

Unsolved mystery and ecology of deep-sea creature “Giant isopod”…6 years without feed

The deep-sea creature “Giant isopod” of the TOBA aquarium (Mie Prefecture) has not taken food for a very long time. 
This year it is entering the “Fasting” for the 6th year. It has a grotesque appearance like the alien. It is the continuous favorite of the visitor though it hardly moves in the display water tank. The video site exceeded three million views in about one year.
Why it does not eat the food, and how it is alive?
Ecology is wrapped in the mystery, and there are lot of deep-sea creature that have died by not taking food. The aquarium is trying somehow to make it to eat the food.



“Giant isopod” is the biggest wood louse in the world, and inhabits in the deep-sea of 100~1000 meters in the Gulf of Mexico.
The body length is 20~40 cm, and weight is more than 1 kg.
The special features are the stern appearance of having a terrific face and armor, which reminds the space creature of the movie “Alien”.
The individual fasting in the aquarium named as “No.1” is the male captured by about 800 meters depth in the Gulf of Mexico in depth, and was raised from September 2007.
The body length is about 29 cm, and weight is about 1 kg.
The final food it took was about 50 grams of cut fish on January 2, 2009. 




It is said that the breeding staff continued to feed, but it did not eat at all.
Though they focused and devised the “Menu”, it did not work
On January 2 this year, it pretended to approach the mackerel pike fish food, but never opened the mouth during the feeding time of 1 hour, and broke into the 6th year of fasting. 





Unfortunately, on February 14 before publishing this blog, it kept updating the fasting record before publishing this blog, and the “Giant isopod” No.1 of the mystery deep-sea creature made a record of surviving for 6 years and 158 days (2350 days), and fasting for 5 years and 43 days (1869 days), and died.

It is regrettable because it was very popular on the net. 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I wonder do they pressurize its living environment? if its used to 800metre depths..?