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24 The sea-bass is braver than your elephant Cf. 974 d supra.: it is not from another, but from himself without assistance, that he extracts the barb when he is caught by the hook; he swings his head from side to side to widen the wound, enduring the pain of tearing his flesh until he can throw off the hook. Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. i. 40, of the tunny; Ovid, Hal. 39 f. and Oppian, Hal. iii. 128 ff., of the bass. The fox-sharkPlutarch seems here to have confused this fish with the so-called scolopendra (of which he writes correctly in Mor. 567 b; see also Mair on Oppian, Hal. ii. 424). Cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 37 (621 a 11); Aelian, De Natura Animal. ix. 12; Varia Hist. i. 5; Mair on Oppian, Hal. iii. 144; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 145. There are fish (but not sharks) which can disgorge their stomachs and swallow them again. Note that hasty reading of Aristotle l.c. could easily cause this misstatement (Andrews). does not often approach the hook and shuns the lure; but if he is caught, he immediately turns himself inside out, for by reason of the elasticity and flexibility of his body he can naturally shift and twist it about, so that when he is inside out, the hook falls away.