From the Bookshelf, #3

More from Aelian, On Animals

The Octopus feeds first on one thing and then on another, for it is terribly greedy and forever plotting some evil, the reason being that it is the most omnivorous of all sea-animals. The proof of this is that, should it fail to catch anything, it eats its own tentacles, and by filling its stomach so, finds a remedy for the lack of prey. Later it renews its missing limb, Nature seeming to provide this as a ready meal in times of famine (I 27).

*

The Red Mullet is of all sea-animals the most gluttonous and indisputably the most unrestrained in tasting everything it comes across. And some of them are known as 'roughies', deriving their name from the places where there are rough rocks full of holes and thick growths of seaweed in them, and where there is a bottom of mud or sand. A Red Mullet would eat the dead body of a man or of a fish, and its special delight is in filthy, ill-smelling food (II 41).

*

The Seal, I am told, vomits up the curdled milk from its stomach so that epileptics may not be cured thereby. Upon my word the Seal is indeed a malignant creature (III 19).

Comments

[The Necromancer]

Pinnipeds are pretty unusual. Some cryptozoologists think that certain cases of "sea-monsters" can be explained by rare or unknown pinnipeds -- seals.

[raskolnikov]

But why so malignant?