Giant isopods are one of the star attractions in the Toba Aquarium, Japan.Under normal circumstances these crustaceans live at depth on the cold, dark ocean floor, scavenging flesh from dead fish and whales.Their alien appearance, as well as the strangeness of their lives, instills a combination of fascination, fear, and disgust in the aquarium visitor.In 2007, one specimen-29 centimetres long and weighing just over a kilogram-was plucked from waters off the Mexican coast and sent to the aquarium.He was named Giant Isopod No.1.No.1 refused to eat for the first year at the aquarium.In 2008 he took two small bites of fish, and again in 2009, but stopped eating completely thereafter.1 For five years he refused all food, and every attempt to coax the creature into eating failed.Then, one morning his caretaker, Takeya Moritaki, found Giant Isopod No.1 lying listless on the bottom of its tank.By 5pm No. 1 was dead. 2 No.1's captivity and death captures the themes addressed by this special section: the awkwardness of being together in multispecies entanglements; the differential vulnerability that both precedes and is reshaped by being drawn together; the way killing and death circulate alongside care and life.This special section aims to enrich our understanding of the ethics of living with nonhuman others.We are interested in creatures that bite, or sting, or-like giant isopods-fascinate but repulse us, and in creatures that must die so that others may live: awkward creatures, in other words, which tend not to fit off-the-shelf ethics.1 Toba Aquarium, "ダイオウグソクムシについてのお知らせ" (News about the Giant Isopod).Accessed 29 April 2014, http://www.aquarium.co.jp/topics/index.php?id=250.
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