Creature Feature: B is for Bite-Acuda, the Bit-Part Breakaway · 4:06pm Aug 26th, 2022
Blog Number 185: "At the Akuda Bar" Edition
Since these were only ever one-off obstacles, and in a much-hated ep, they're not creatures I can dissect in-universe. New plan: instead, I'll talk about the real-world inspirations. Barracudas, piranhas... and bats.
Yes, bats. Look at those wings!
The mlp fandom wiki has this to say on the subject of Bite-acudas:
Bite-acudas are ravenous piranha-like fish with wings and long fangs that appear in the season eight episode Non-Compete Clause. They dwell in the river along Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and the Young Six's river canoeing path. Ocellus transforms into a massive specimen to frighten off a school of them. Their name is a portmanteau of "barracuda" and "bite".
It's not a lot to go on, hence me getting creative.
BARRACUDA
A blink-and-you'll-miss-it barracuda in Finding Nemo. Small role, big impact.
The species I'm most familiar with is the Great Barracuda, Sphyraena barracuda, which is a pretty prototypical member of the group. Contrary to the Bite-acuda, the Great Barracuda is a fish of the open ocean, not freshwater rivers, spending its time hunting near the surface of tropical or subtropical zones.
Vacation spots aside, that isn't the soft option. I'm talking open ocean, which especially in the hotter climes are the aquatic equivalent of land deserts: full of way too much featureless environment and not very much food, beyond scattered and hard-to-find seaweed floats or shoals of travelling fish.
Since their lifestyle requires effortless long-distance travel, Great Barracudas are therefore big, muscular fish, weighing a little over a hundred pounds with it. Their bodies are elongated and sleek, and thus hydrodynamically economical in design. Some specimens are known to be as long as a human is tall.
Despite their impressive size - and apparent desirability as a game fish - eating them is a gamble because Great Barracudas sometimes eat toxic fish prey, which means their own flesh can accumulate those toxins and cause ciguatera poisoning if humans consume it. Ciguatera poisoning is a common problem when eating tropical and especially reef-dwelling fish, so it's no surprise anything that eats said fish can itself become a health hazard. Ironically, you're more likely to die from eating a barracuda than from being eaten by one. Or bitten, or slapped, or just generally rushed.
And they call sharks "torpedoes with teeth"...
Since the toxins need to concentrate from a lot of meals, it's usually the bigger barracudas that are dangerous.
Meanwhile, the young prefer to seek shelter inshore, close to reefs and mangrove forests, and shoal together for mutual protection. When they're fully grown, they're almost exclusively solitary hunters, with few natural predators of their own, which might explain why they're confident investigating any divers they come across.
Like their cousins the swordfish, the sailfish, and the marlin, their hunting tactic involves long games of patience followed by sudden attacks and lightning-fast strikes. Their teeth are mostly concealed within the long snout, but these things are so well-equipped that they've been known to take serious and damaging bites out of human victims. Barracudas do not mess about: if they want to bite you, you will get a chunk taken out of your flesh.
Interestingly, despite the danger they pose, Great Barracudas aren't normally vicious. They generally attack humans in murky waters, which suggests they're mistaking human body parts for small prey, though some have been known to fight back when molested by spear-wielding hunters. Which is, of course, the other reason why it's usually the bigger barracudas that are dangerous.
Possibly a coincidence, but Ocellus' Bite-acuda form looks more like a barracuda than do the real Bite-acudas. Especially a barracuda from the point of view of its next meal.
PIRANHA
Did you know that piranhas also eat fruit? That's right, you could have an apple-loving piranha. 🍎
I mean, there is an Apple in there.
Despite the name, Bite-acudas have more in common with piranhas, given both their appearance and their behaviour. More accurately, with the common stereotype of piranhas. So let's talk about those next.
Firstly, there's no such thing as "a" piranha, any more than there's such a thing as "a" shark, despite the media's obsession with maybe one or two stereotypical species.
Case in point: these are sharks too.
There are at least thirty different species of piranha, most of which are harmless to humans, and one species even eats nothing but the scales of other fish. Their close relatives are the pacu, which - to show that family isn't everything - are predominantly herbivorous fish who live alongside their cousins in the tropical and subtropical zones of South America.
The most familiar species is the Red Piranha, Pygocentrus nattereri, which is also regarded as the most aggressive species of piranha and the one that gets the most publicity. It's fair to say their reputation is somewhere between "nightmares in fish form" and "kill on sight", but - like sharks, giant squid, sperm whales, electric eels, and other monsters below the surface - it's massively exaggerated.
Piranhas are Amazon-dwellers, so the first that Europe would have known likely came from early explorers, who in hindsight are notorious for exaggeration and outright fabrication. Probably doesn't help that early explorers of prior centuries had basically free rein to tell tall tales - many moralistic - about all kinds of beasts worldwide, such as giant killer anacondas in the Amazon and giant killer apes in Africa and (sensing a theme here?) giant killer whales in the ocean deep (Moby-Dick gives you some idea). Also not helped by natives stoking them up for the viewing pleasure of, say, any Theodore Roosevelts visiting the area.
Animals being moral projections for humans is an ancient idea. Animals just being... well, animals, doing animal things... is a relatively modern idea compared with centuries of human prejudice. (Idealistic examples existed, too, as bees and ants were religious metaphors for selfless sacrifice and hard work... never mind that a hive is basically a massive nuclear family and not a group of unrelated associates).
"I am not with him!" "I am not with you either!" "I also am not with him!" "Or you!" "Or you too!" "Or you two!"
Not that it's hard to see where piranhas got their fearsome reputation. The teeth alone are well-designed for slicing flesh, interlocking perfectly like a pair of shears, kept sharp simply by being replaced regularly like those of a shark, set in jaws blunt as a bulldog's bite, with a similar jutting lower jaw for maximum strength distribution and muscular anchoring.
They won't take a bite as big as a barracuda's, nor as fast, but what they lack in streamlined speed, they make up for with stout strength. (Keep in mind, though, that they're still physical entities with limitations: jaws are tools for breaking down food matter, not disintegration pistols, and surprisingly there do exist Amazon fish capable of resisting piranha bites, such as Arapaima gigas).
However, while piranhas can and do eat flesh en masse - with surprising efficiency - the first and most obvious point to make is that they won't strip you to the bone in a matter of seconds, like some cartoon acid vat. Physically taking bites is still subject to the normal laws of thermodynamics, as well as basic biological common sense, and even a determined shoal of absolutely blood-crazed piranhas - perhaps trapped and starved by humans for show - will take several minutes to strip a dead carcass, never mind a flailing, struggling live animal.
Keep in mind, even the Black Piranha - record-holder for the strongest bite force of any piranha - has a bite strength of 70 pounds per square inch. Impressive, especially for its size - relative to its size, the strongest bite of any animal - but even another human would give you an absolutely stronger bite of approximately 150 pounds per square inch, to say nothing of animal heavyweights like the Saltwater Crocodile, with a bite strength of 3,700 pounds per square inch.
Remember there's a BIG difference between "relative" and "absolute" strength.
Also, it takes a hell of a lot to get them to that point. Normally, they're pretty independent, content to take bites out of fruits and seeds that drop from the Amazon trees overhead. Fruits and seeds are a good regular feed in a rainforest, especially during the flood season when more forest becomes accessible.
Should it become necessary, protein comes in the form of smaller creatures, like insects and other fish, for sensible predatory reasons: larger prey can fight back, risking injury or even death, so why go for a difficult meal when there are easy ones all over the place?
"How to Feed Your Piranha! Step One: Stick your hand into the tank..."
If food becomes scarce, however, or if they're forced together in cramped conditions - such as when they're stranded in a pond - piranhas start taking more risks, also for sensible predatory reasons: if you're going to die of starvation anyway, why not gamble it all on the next big bonanza?
Although the swarming does make them a formidable force from a prey animal's point of view, from the point of view of an individual piranha, every other fish in the swarm is - at best - a shield against predators (yes, they have predators: cormorants, river dolphins, caiman, bigger and tougher creatures that aren't put off by a few bites) and - at worst - a rival for rare food. They're getting in each other's way, not cooperating in any kind of coordinated pack.
Capybaras, horses, and humans go from irrelevant distractions to viable victims, first as a few opportunistic bites that keep a piranha alive for longer, and then - if they're not going anywhere - as a full-blown meal.
Nothing about this escalation is nice, but the fact is that piranhas simply aren't monsters, or at least not monsters for monsters' sake. They're animals, and animals have to follow sensible natural strategies to make the most of their ever-changing environment. Piranhas are no more exempt from the costs of predation - including risks of injury, energy spent hunting, and the obvious drawback of constantly, indiscriminately killing all nearby prey - as anything else. They certainly don't exist to satisfy ghoulish human fantasies, and they're not the only animals who suffer from wilfully histrionic PR.
They're actually kinda cute, so long as you don't see their teeth.
Being real-world animals, piranhas also have to follow sensible natural strategies when it comes to things other than eating. Reproduction, for example: piranhas go for what's called the "r-selection" type of reproductive strategy, which is to have lots of children and hope enough of them survive to reproductive age. Females lay hundreds of eggs - potentially even a thousand - on submerged tree roots and then she and her mate guard them for roughly nine or ten days until they hatch.
After that, the young are left to fend for themselves. The Amazon is full of predators and omnivores, so inevitably the vast majority of piranhas are eaten before they ever grow old enough to eat anyone else.
What's notable about Red Piranhas is their variable appearance, depending on which parts of the Amazon you're in. Mixtures of dark grey, orange, silver, and the eponymous red exist; some have more bulbous or bulging facial features than others; some have more prominent teeth.
These regional differences are typical of widespread species, though not easily explained: could be due to genetic differences, could be due to slight differences in diets, could be random drift or the early stages of speciation, I'm not sure. Whatever the cause, they'd make for pretty if challenging aquarium pets, though it should be noted that keeping piranhas is banned in certain states.
But enough about the piranha. Now for the third of our apparent Bite-acuda inspirations:
BAT
For reasons that are not clear to me, the wings of the Bite-acuda have the show's more traditional bat-wing cartoon design, and don't look like anything found on any fish ever. Even real-world flying fish use a completely different wing design, since their "wings" are elongated pectoral fins rather than skin-stretched oversized hands.
Interesting fact: flying fish sometimes jump out of the water to lay spawn on adrift objects, including seaweed, abandoned fishing nets, and even occupied boats. Just ask the BBC nature team.
Whereas we have in-show bat species for a handy in-universe comparison. Regardless of the cartoony design, you can still see the bend in the bat wing where the arm gives way to the index finger, and even make out the lines radiating from the "hand" which, on a real bat, would be the other fingers. Observe:
Now compare this wing design with the cartoony "fins" of the Bite-acuda:
You see my point?
Whether it was lack of rudimentary research or a deliberate design choice, the result is a bizarrely winged fictional fish, though the Bite-acuda doesn't seem capable of more than prolonged hovering.
Incidentally, some bats do have an association with fish, including one species in the Amazon: the Greater Bulldog Bat, or Noctilio leporinus. Its echolocation is so good that it can not only find and snatch fish out of the water like the mammal equivalent of an osprey, but it can do so at night. This gives it the alternative name of "Fisherman Bat".
The Greater Bulldog Bat is tiny - head to tail, it's about half as long as your hand - so it won't be boasting about the whopper it caught anytime soon. Most of its prey is likewise tiny, and apart from fish, it also eats any small arthropod on the ground or in the water, such as crabs, beetles, moths, scorpions, and shrimps.
The bat's snatching technique is helped by the relatively massive curved claws on its feet which, unusually, can curve upward rather than downward, similar to the ancient curling shoes of various Asian and European nobles. The bat achieves this by twisting its feet 180 degrees, enabling it to dangle from branches or ceilings within tree crevices. And, of course, to hook prey out of the water or off the ground.
Given the average piranha is at least twice its size, there's little to no chance the bat eats piranhas. If anything, it's more likely to end up as a snack to one instead. But after rodents, bats are among the most diverse order of mammal in modern ecosystems, with over a thousand species, so it's really no surprise that some have learned to find food in what at first seem to be the most impractical of places. They're an adaptable bunch.
So where does that leave us re: the one-off Bite-acuda?
Well, we could do what the show did and chuck them into a fic as a stock enemy type, feeding off the stereotype of piranhas, ignoring the real-world barracuda, and making no big deal of the bat wings.
Or... or... or we could burst a few bubbles. Have them be an actual species in an actual ecosystem. Have fruit-eating, parental piranha imposters. Take the cool, no-nonsense lone wolf of the barracuda (well, you know what I mean) and contrast them with the anxious, social young (maybe Ocellus' form was an adult facing several children). Have a fisherbat motif, or even another species of bat as the Bite-acuda's mortal enemy.
Or maybe something else entirely. What do you think?
That's all for now. Impossible Numbers, out.
Yeah, the show's approach to creatures got a lot less inspired and more "random critters/lazy fusions of real animals" towards the end, didn't it? Far less of the mythology-based and inspired species that dominated early on. Almost as though the newer writers just approached it as a wacky cartoons with pony-shaped humans in the lead roles, and not as a world different from our own… oh, wait.
Less sarcastically, I'd forgotten about these things (like much of that episode's content beyond the base scenario and story), and was very surprised you picked them for the B-letter blog. Though it did allow for interesting entries on barracudas (though I'd disagree on it being a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in Finding Nemo – that scene imprinted into many of our minds vividly) and piranhas. Less so on bats, but only because they're far more common animals to know things about. But the wing dissection was neat!
As for what to do with them… you're asking the wrong ghost.
When presented with something lazy like this in canon, I just ignore it where doing so has no repercussions. No bad options you provide, mind.
Honestly, my main observation here is, it's not fair that such conceptually-lazy creatures came along at a point in the show's history where they had mastered the Flash workflow so effectively. Most early creatures would kill for this many shots (relative to screentime) with that many elements and that depth of field!
But, sometimes life isn't fair. Least the crew at DHX and Top Draw were still (mostly) giving it their all. And it was probably still fun to design and rig these things, I'm sure.
5682055
I'd probably be more forgiving of the design if it had a traditional portmanteau name, like "pirannacuda" or "battacuda" or even "piranha-bat". Avatar: The Last Airbender did just that, and created some fun, unique designs (isn't that always the pleasure of mix-n-match, though?). Add a little zoological research, and you've got plenty of options from there.
"Bite-acuda" just sounds slapped-together and nonsensical.
I'm trying not to be predictable. Or at least too predictable. For "C", I might cave in to personal preference and go for "Cerberus", because I love that three-headed dog and its multiple incarnations. (That said, I won't be going for a strict A-Z routine, if only for practicality, so there will be more than one of some letters anyway).
Ah, guilty as charged. It's fast and not in the movie long, but that's not necessarily the same as a "blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo"; the camera lingers on it long enough. "One-scene wonder" sounds more accurate.
Incidentally, I didn't count on a lot of people knowing what kind of fish it was. Even I needed reminding!
That's partly why I went for the Greater Bulldog Bat: it's not a "typical" bat by any means, and pretty obscure by mainstream standards. For a flying group of animals, it's hard to find ones associated with fish.
Full confession: I don't really have any plans for this one, either. I did end up surprising myself with what I could do with the associations, though (piranhas in fiction, like sharks in fiction, are a bit of a pet peeve of mine).
On the other hand, OC stand-ins aren't out of the question. Hey, if the show won't use "pirannacuda", then it's fair game...
Yep, I agree that the name was a bit uninspired, but when contrasted with G5's uni+(mundane animal name), pega+(mundane animal name), and (mundane animal name)+corn critter naming scheme, it seems almost brilliant.
Thinking about how such a creature would evolve/function in any sort of realistic fashion, I'd suspect that you'd find them in low food environments (like a stony desert), and that they'd use their wings to get to small prey (similar to their own size) which had come down to the river's edge to drink. Leap/fly out, clamp on, and use weight and momentum to drag the prey into the water where it could be killed more easily.
Wings would also give them a better chance of taking waterfowl attempting to take off after seeing them approaching, and certainly insects skimming over the surface of the water.
If working in cooperative schools, they could take down larger prey, but that would also increase the likelihood of injury to themselves. They would certainly then be a danger to ponies in small boats.
5682072
I can see that working with the portmanteau theme, but I suppose your point was that it gets repetitive. I'd still take uni-piranha over bite-acuda (at least "uni-[corn]-animal" is more dignified than "bite").
Damn, that's dark. I kinda love it! 😈
Alternatively, I like the idea that the ones we see are babies who have to fight over food, with the strongest surviving to adulthood, and Ocellus took the form of a fully grown adult. Part of the reason that's an effective scare tactic is because adults get a much easier life simply by being the biggest predator in the water. (Adult carnivores sometimes bully younger ones off their kills in nature through sheer size, because it means wasting less effort obtaining meat).
Or perhaps they eat fly-ders, the other mix-n-match critter. Or get eaten by them. Or they eat each other, web versus water, wing versus wing, rabid fang versus poison bite.
5682078
It's obvious that Mother Nature is a goth.
Stretch the idea of self sacrifice and hard work out far enough, and you'll find there's almost always some mutually beneficial relationship involved, even if it's not immediately obvious.
To be fair our "ghoulish fantasies" are their own form of survival technique. They teach us to avoid unnecessary confrontation by overemphasizing the very real danger such species present.
It's also sometimes better not just for us, but for the other species as well.
I can't tell you how many times I avoided antagonizing animals and insects because horror stories taught me that you don't screw around with what can hurt you.
Historically speaking, a lot of threatening animals are still around to this day, where as their more docile cousins were hunted to extinction or endangerment.
Probably because it looks more stereotypically intimidating. Although the flying fish fins definitely look more practical.
I didn't hate every design the latter writers came up with (possibly because I have very odd tastes) but I won't pretend all their ideas were winners.
Although if I'm honest, the show's visuals were on a fairly steady decline throughout it's run.
5682083
Not exactly. Altruistic behaviours were a long-time challenge in the biological sciences for a very good reason: some individuals really don't get benefits, and that can't be explained from the "individual survival" paradigm, hence not by mutual benefit with another.
From the point of view of a bee that's just stung someone to protect the rest of the hive, for instance, it doesn't get less beneficial than ending up dead. It's not like bees have a concept of patriotic duty; they're simply programmed to be suicidal whenever it protects and keeps the seed of the hive going. It's still suicide.
You could argue that this benefits the "genes", but there's a massive practical difference between what benefits "genes" and what benefits individual organisms. For one thing, genes are basically bits of data on molecule chains in the cells. They don't have brains to suffer with, or actual lives to end.
True, mutualism is a definite (and sometimes overlooked) phenomenon in nature, but it's certainly doesn't exclude genuinely altruistic behaviours.
The trouble is, even were this a viable strategy in human prehistory (being inaccurate carries risks of its own, if only in the form of wasted time and energy), humans didn't even encounter piranhas until relatively recent times, and one of the most famous reports of piranha ferocity (the Roosevelt report) was basically a misleading traveller's tale, long since superseded by scientific study.
And especially in the modern day, being phobic over piranhas - which you'd have to be in a pretty unusual set of circumstances merely to encounter, much less to be threatened by - makes no sense even from a pragmatic POV: if it poses no danger to you in a city, as opposed to cars, crimes, and basic accidents caused by carelessness, why go out of your way to exaggerate a nonexistent threat?
It seems to me more plausible that a combination of black-and-white sensationalism, general lazy stereotyping, and a love of "exoticization" (monsters over mere animals) are sufficient to explain how the piranha's reputation got blown way out of proportion to its actual threat level. Since piranhas aren't exactly going to campaign to have their stereotypes overturned, human imagination has little to no restraint beyond recycled tradition and tropes.
5682098
Honestly, my point is that family and altruism are not mutually exclusive concepts.
My initial interpretation of your words indicated that you thought that such was not the case. I apologize if I misread you.
In a academic sense perhaps.
In a truly pragmatic one, which is the greatest risk?
Analysis of a animal in the field, and determining it's various risks, values, things like that... Or simply coming to a conclusion and acting on it, be it flight or fight?
Sometimes the needs of the academic differ greatly from the needs of a practical approach.
Perhaps, but this sort of dramatization is not exclusive to Piranhas. It has been applied to any number of potentially dangerous creatures, from bears to wasps.
Not all such hysterical treatments produce the right responses, but some do... Don't mess with a wasp or bumblebee and it is less likely to mess with you.
While not always accurate, some tall tales have a grain of truth to them.
They are remembered for a reason, and I have found several of them to be at least somewhat valuable in the heat of the moment.
Much like how Friendship may not allow you to shoot Rainbow lasers, but it is invaluable anyways.
Good work for setting the record straight about piranhas! (This is late, I know. Haven't been on the site as much recently.
)
5687593
Better late than never!
(Fashionably late, of course).
To be fair, I'm predisposed to push back against simplistic animal stereotypes. It might be useful, for instance, to lump in some animals as "dangerous: avoid" and leave it at that, but I don't think it's interesting, and - given how complex the natural world can be - I don't think it's accurate either. When it comes to spiders, for instance, how many people are aware that they can look like tiny peacocks? It's amazing what's out there to be discovered and understood.