[Snaz]

I just wanted to chime in here about defensive responses and stress. Many animals have many different response mechanisms to stress all in an effort to improve survivability; camoflauge, ink-jets, tails that fall off or just run like hell etc. Off the top of my head I cannot think of any defensive response of any creature that would put that creature in further harms way, except bee stings but that is whole hive organism thing.

To say a defensive response contributes to that creature's demise does not make sense to me on an evolutionary scale. Can anyone think of any examples where a defensive response actually does the organism harm?

I understand that puffing is probably stressful and if a puffer was puffing too much and or constantly inflated it's not going to do well but I expect whatever condition is eliciting the defensive response is more harmful than the actual response.