Defense Mechanisms
- Like pufferfishes they can inflate themselves, making their spines stand perpendicular to the skin. When inflated they pose a major difficulty to their predators: a large diodon fully inflated can choke a shark to death. According to Charles Darwin in The Voyage Of the Beagle (1845), Darwin was told by a Doctor Allen of Forres, UK that the Diodon actually had been found "floating alive and distended, in the stomach of the shark" and had been known to chew its way out of shark bodies after being swallowed, causing the death of its attacker.
- They may be poisonous, through the accumulation of tetrodotoxin or ciguatera.
Read more about this topic: Diodon
Famous quotes containing the word defense:
“Though a censure lies against those who are poor and proud, yet is Pride sooner to be forgiven in a poor person than in a rich one; since in the latter it is insult and arrogance; in the former, it may be a defense against temptations to dishonesty; and, if manifested on proper occasions, may indicate a natural bravery of mind, which the frowns of fortune cannot depress.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)