The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 253: CHAP. 66. (42.)—THE PINNA, AND THE PINNOTHERES.

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The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 66. (42.)—THE PINNA, AND THE PINNOTHERES.

Belonging to the shell-fish tribe there is the pinna 2713 also: it is found 2714 in slimy spots, always lying upright, and never without a companion, which some writers call the pinnotheres,2715 and others, again, pinnophylax, being a small kind of shrimp, or else a parasitical crab. The pinna,2716 which is destitute of sight, opens its shell, and in so doing exposes its body within to the attacks of the small fish, which immediately rush upon it, and finding that they can do so with impunity, become bolder and bolder, till at last they quite fill the shell. The pinnotheres, looking out for the opportunity, gives notice to the pinna at the critical moment by a gentle bite, upon which the other instantly closes its shell, and so kills whatever it has caught there; after which, it divides the spoil with its companion.