00:00I'm about to come face-to-face with a serial killer.
00:11This little menace is the dog whelk.
00:19And here he is, the scourge of the seashore. Now this tiny unassuming snail
00:25may look completely pointless to you or me but to the animals that live here
00:29this guy is Jack the Ripper because the way that he feeds it'll make your blood
00:35curdle. But to investigate this coastal crime we need to delve a little deeper.
00:45So while most snails are happy feeding on algae and bits of detritus the
00:51dog whelk makes his meal out of other snails as well as mussels, barnacles and
00:56indeed anything that can't scurry away fast enough. But how do they do it?
01:01Well when the dog whelk has sighted a potential victim it will crawl over to
01:05them and use a special patch of skin on their muscular foot to excrete acid and
01:10start to melt the shell weakening its structure. And then the dog whelk deploys
01:17his secret weapon. Inside its mouth it has a long ribbon of mineral hardened
01:23dagger sharp teeth. It's called a radula and the barbed radula is used to drill
01:31down through the acid weakened shell. It's like having a circular saw for a
01:37tongue. With a hole now bored in its victim's shell it's time for the next
01:49stage of the attack. The dog whelk injects a paralyzing chemical followed
01:55by enzymes which digest the poor prey inside its own shell. With the muscle now
02:01resembling soup the dog whelk slurps up his tasty prize. Disgusting. Just goes to
02:09show that beneath those waves there's always a battle being fought.
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