Food Habits
P. velox is a nocturnal predator, hunting primarily by touch and scent in and around calm pools . Each dive lasts only seconds . It searches both within the pool and along the bank for prey using the sensitive vibrissae and odor and apparently not eyesight . It prefers areas that have cover to retreat to when it feels threatened . P. velox attacks prey using sharp bites, sometimes pinning the prey with its fore feet, and flipping crabs over to attack the weaker ventral surface they usually avoid crabs larger than 7 cm across . The prey preference varies among individuals; some prefer crabs; others, frogs, or even fish. Frogs are eaten headfirst and fish are pulled apart into manageable bits. Prey is consumed on the bank. They also eat insects, mollusks, and freshwater prawns . In captivity eats 15– 20 crabs per night. Diet includes amphibians, fish, insects, terrestrial non-insect arthropods, mollusks
Read more about this topic: Giant Otter Shrew
Famous quotes containing the words food and/or habits:
“Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 3:11.
John the Baptist.
“Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers’ glory—to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)