How does an octopus eat?

The octopus has a powerful parrot-like beak in its mouth that it uses to crack the hard shells or crass and oysters.  The octopus is a sea animal with a soft, bag-shaped body.  It gets its name from two Greek words that mean “eight feet.”  We call its eight feet “arms.”

The octopus dwells on the ocean bottom where it crawls about on its arms, searching in every crack and crevice for its favorite food of shrimp, crab, and mussels. On each of the eight arms there are two rows of cup-like suckers which help the octopus grab and hold very tightly to anything it catches.

The arms do not squeeze and prey, but pull it toward the creature’s mouth.  An octopus has two very strong jaws that look like the beak of parrot.  It uses its jaws to crush crab shells and to tear apart the food it eats.

The long, snakelike arms and large, unwinking, strangely human eyes give it a frightening look.  Most kinds of octopus are only about as big as a man’s fist, and do not attack people.  Some however, have poisoned jaws and bites from even a small octopus.-Dick Rogers

How do fish breathe in the water?

As the fish forces water past its gills tiny blood vessels lining the gills  absorb oxygen out of the air that is dissolved in the water.

Just as  our lungs take oxygen from the air.  Fishes take oxygen from the water.  But fishes breathe with gills instead of lungs. By watching a fish in an aquarium,  You can see it open and close  its mouth constantly as though drinking in gulps of water.

Each time the fish opens its mouth a mouthful of water is drawn in. Then the fish closes its mouth and the water is forced back out through the gill openings, which  are the slits located on the side of the fish’s head. The gills are very  thin tissues.  They are bright red because they contain many tiny blood vessels.

As the water passes over  the gills the oxygen dissolved in the water is absorbed  into  the tiny blood vessels and is carried by the blood to other parts of the fish’s body. (Fishes have nostrils which they use only for smelling.)

Fish live wherever there is water, except in  very salty  water, such as the dead sea and  the great salt lake of Utah, or in water polluted by man. In such water fish cannot find enough oxygen to breathe. – Dick Rogers