Editor's note: This is part of a series of videos offering an up-close perspective on the animal kingdom. A special 360-degree video camera system was set up in zoos and other facilities to show how the animals view their world as they interact.

Also visit our special 360-DEGREE LIVES page (http://t.asahi.com/360lives), where you can watch all the previous videos.

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Camouflage is everything if you're an “ise-ebi,” or Japanese spiny lobster, living on the ocean floor. It's nature's protection from predators.

So, visitors to the Toba Aquarium in Toba, Mie Prefecture, always seem to marvel at the way the lobsters blend into their environment as they cling to rocks in the fish tank.

Even scary looking moray eels play coy in the presence of the 150 or so lobsters, each measuring about 30 centimeters long.

Spiny lobsters are naturally brown, and look dull in color as they seek refuge in the rocks around them.

Occasionally, one of them will sedately stroll over the sandy bottom--oblivious to a video camera set up to record every movement.

But the serenity of the scene is broken as soon as Japanese horse mackerel is dropped into the tank at mealtimes by aquarium attendant Fumito Tamaoki, 55.

The “wall of spiny lobsters” becomes a mob scene as the creatures battle it out with the moray eels for food, which sees them crawling on top of the camera.

In their natural habitat, ise-ebi only have to fear octopuses, whose natural enemies include moray eels. In a way, the hard-faced eels serve as guardians for the spiny lobsters.

The larvae of the Japanese spiny lobster, called phyllosoma larvae, spend about a year drifting through ocean currents as plankton after they hatch from eggs.

According to the Mie Prefecture Fisheries Research Institute, which specializes in artificial rearing of spiny lobsters, the females lay hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time, but only one or two ever reach adulthood.

Although researchers have succeeded in increasing the survival rate of young lobsters after they grow from phyllosoma larvae, they have yet to find a way to raise spiny lobsters commercially.