the most evil creature

savor your prey The Harlequin Shrimp Keeps Prey Alive To Eat It Slowly Harlequin always seems to mean brightly colored but kind of scary. Harley Quinn will throw confetti in your face but will also feed you to a hippo. The classic harlequin clown from Italian theater takes part in a comedy, but he’s a trickster in the same way devil characters are tricksters. The “harle” in harlequin means hell. The French had the legend of the Mesnée d’Hellequin, their version of the Wild Hunt, demons who ride across the sky to kill you. And then there’s the harlequin shrimp. Shrimp are not scary. Shrimp are delicious, and they can’t kill anything themselves, they can just scavenge. The harlequin shrimp is an exception. Harlequin shrimp hunt, and they hunt exactly one thing: starfish. You know, like the giant starfish Harley fights in The Suicide Squad, only slightly smaller. A pair of shrimps (perhaps one red, one blue) work together to turn a starfish over, one of them snipping those little suckers attaching the starfish to a rock and the other handling the flipping. From that point on, the starfish has no ability to right itself again or defend itself in any way. The happy couple (who mate for life) may drag the starfish to their lair. They nibble off and eat one of the five legs. But they don’t kill the starfish. The prey stays alive for a week as they slowly eat it. In fact, the shrimp may even keep the fish alive by feeding it algae during this time—“force-feed” it, say those who watch this happening—letting its meat stay good and fresh. This would even be a great way of getting the starfish to regenerate its legs and provide infinite food, except that starfish take a whole year to grow a leg back, and shrimp won’t wait that long before gobbling the whole fish up. Don’t feel too sorry for the starfish. Starfish have no brains, so we don’t imagine they understand the true horror of what’s happening to them. Also, those cute starfish are terrible for coral, so shrimp killing them off is a plus for all of us. For more devious animals, check out: - [Ants Raise Aphids Like Farm Animals]( - [An Amazonian Spider Makes a Scarecrow of Itself]( - [The Pink Dolphin That Eats Piranhas]( Top image: [Nathalie Rodrigues]( Daily Digest [15 Killer Alt-Comedy Comedians You Should Know About]( By JD Roberson / July 28th, 2022 [Does Nope Make Any Sense At All? (LIVESTREAM)]( By Jesse / July 28th, 2022 [Nobody Ever "Wants" To Work, You Idiots]( By Eli Yudin / July 28th, 2022 [Bill Hader: 13 Now-You-Know Facts]( By JD Roberson / July 28th, 2022 [A ‘Better Call Saul’ Actor Nearly Overdosed On Cinnabons]( By JM McNab / July 28th, 2022 [READ MORE]( [fb]( [tw]( [yt]( [Logomark_DIGITAL_Red_50X50-px] [insta png]( [tiktok png]( [ARTICLES]( | [PICTOFACTS]( | [Videos]( Literally media Ltd. 190 West St, Suite 17B, Brooklyn NY 11222 COPYRIGHT © 2005-2021 Cracked is published by Literally media Ltd. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](. ONE CRACKED FACT | [View in browser](