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War of the Anemones

Writer's picture: Debra Quick-JonesDebra Quick-Jones

11/14/19

I have been observing the behavior of three anemones on a single rock. One is the original Giant Green anemone I have reared since it was ½” wide, and the other two are interlopers, congregating anemones from the same clone. The newer animals have pretty much chosen a spot and stayed put, but the original one is now staking out it’s ground, both retreating from and attacking the other ones. Now I can find it in a different spot each day, within a few inches of its original spot. It never moved until the interlopers came.

Anemone have different types of tentacles- the short feeding one, the very long catch one and a knobby structure called the acrorhagi, which is for defense. The photo below shows the catch tentacle on the largest anemone reaching out to sting the smaller one, to keep it out of its space. It appears to work, as the two smaller ones have been nudging themselves father away. It would be interesting to see if the two smaller ones would defend against each other - since they are clones, or copies of each other, you would not think so.





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