Thursday 28 April 2011

Couch-Surfing with an Amphiuma

Monday night was our first night out of our own house, so the travel adventures and this blog begins! Now we’ve moved to Glenn Tattersall’s house. Glenn’s one of Daddy’s friends from Brock, who teaches in the Biology department. Glenn lives in Fonthill too. Nothing like starting our around the world trip with a little baby step of 1.5 km away!
The house is very big, and comes complete with Celidh the Australian Shepherd that we often dogsit while Glenn is at work this past winter. Glenn has Japanese swords mounted above the stairway, along with spears on the living room wall. At the top of the stairs, there is a kimono mounted. Today Daddy and Glenn had espresso from Glenn’s fancy Saeco machine in Japanese sake cups – very international!

Glenn inherited an amphiuma. It does not move much and does not have very good eyesight. When Glenn put the shrimp in, it used its nose to find where the shrimp was. It sensed the shrimp up at the surface of the aquarium after only about two minutes or less. It started to go towards the shrimp almost directly rather than swimming all around. When it located the shrimp, it sat in front of it for a few seconds, then gobbled the whole thing and swallowed it in one gulp. This told me that its sense of smell is very good and better than its eyesight. Glenn says that it eats about once a week. The way that it eats is called suction feeding. It opens its mouth very fast, which pulls the water and food in because of low pressure.
Check out the amphiuma picture - it doesn't have a name yet but Daddy want to call it Gollum from "Lord of the Rings." See the little arms on the body - there's another set of small legs near the back.

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