Talk:Moray eel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is part of WikiProject Fishes, an attempt to organise a detailed guide to all topics related to Fish taxa. To participate, you can edit the attached article, or contribute further at WikiProject Fishes. This project is an offshoot of the WikiProject Tree of Life |
| ??? | This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale. |
| ??? | This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale. |
What does "cosmopolitan" mean, as in "Moray eels are large cosmopolitan eels"? Kent Wang 17:00, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- In an ecological sense, it means moray eels are widely distributed; they occur in many parts of the world's oceans. (Speaking in terms of the family as a whole rather than individual species.) -- Hadal 10:19, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- C'est moi! >LePierrotAnguille 05:33, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
[edit] As food
I had it once in Shanghai. It was delicious. Don't know enough about morays as food, but maybe someone more knowledgeable can jump in? Kent Wang 02:12, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Dean Martin
- There's an eel with big teeth,
- And it lives in a reef -
- That's a moray...
- Sorry!
- - Astatine 16:22, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Reputation section -- unrealist portrayal of these gargantuan green monsters
The articles says:
- Morays have sometimes been described as vicious or ill-tempered. In fact, morays are shy and secretive, and they only attack humans in self-defense.
I find this hard to believe about a species large enough to bite off a human leg and swallow it whole.
- They also accidentally bite human fingers when being fed....
(1) How could something as enormous as a Moray eel manage to bite off something as small as a finger without taking the hand with it? Isn't this a bit like saying that a Tyrannosaurus rex might've accidentally bitten the toes off of rodents?
(2) Who in his right mind would ever get close enough to one of these giant, bright-green sea serpents to actually try and feed it? Is this some new, trendy method of suicide that I don't know about? (Has the human rase managed to adapt to the highly toxic material available in the so-called "coffee" at Starbucks?)
- ...because it cannot see or hear very well....
Which would explain why fewer people have their heads taken off.
- Morays hide from humans and would rather flee than fight.
Which is why these giant, bright green, anaconda-dwarfing sea monsters lie in wait for humans to pass by, snap them up, and swallow them whole. (And probably eat any giant squids, sperm whales, great white sharks, or anything else that gets too close.)
Morays, however, do inflict a nasty bite, because, although not poisonous.... ... They have mouths big enough to swallow an orca whole.
One thing I find curious is that the so-called "largest" Moray listed in this article is a tiny, minuscule little brown thing only about fourteen feet long. That's less than one quarter the size of thos hugee, bright green krakens that instantly come to mind when one thinks of a "Moray Eel". The subject of this article seems to be about unremarkable little nothing-eels that no-one would ever need fear, not the gargantuan green man-eaters that hunt ship-wrecks looking for SCUBA divers or even whole deep sea exploration vehicles to consume (whole). --Þorstejnn 10:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
--- Sarcasm aside, the references to their behavior, for the most part, lacks any cite or scientific data to support it whatsoever. From the articles cited, all we can definitively say is they live in burrows, are nocturnal, and sometimes hunt with groupers. There is nothing to back up the claims above their behavior with humans, which isn't to say it's untrue, just that it lacks references (and by reference I mean a scientific journal, not someone's Geocities page). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.145.127.70 (talk) 16:52, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
