Yes, but is it free-range?

There are picky eaters, and then there are picky eaters…like a runway supermodel that refuses to eat anything except for very particular types of food, the Harlequin shrimp (Hymenocera picta) is also exquisitely beautiful and highly specialised in its diet. 

At only 5cm in length and bedecked with a dazzling display of coloured spots, the gorgeous Harlequin will only deign to feed on starfish, and only on the tube feet of starfish at that. Living mainly in the coral reefs in the tropical Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Harlequin lives and hunts in mated pairs and uses petal-like appendages on its head to smell out its preferred prey. 

Unlike a supermodel, however, the Harlequin’s appetite is voracious. They are adept at flipping starfish over to attack and consume the tube feet at their leisure, starting at the tip of one arm and working their way to the central disc. The starfish may shed the arm and regrow it if it survives the encounter, but it is often too mortally wounded to do so. The Harlequin even has the ability to absorb any toxins it consumes from the starfish and store them within its own body to make itself unpalatable to other predators, thus co-opting the starfish’s defences for its own protection. 

It’s a wonder that this tiny but beautiful terror manages to survive at all considering it only has a single, very specialised source of nutrition. But so efficient is it at consuming and killing starfish that canny marine aquarists have taken to keep the shrimp in their own reef aquariums in order to eradicate and control populations of nuisance starfish such as Asterina.