Tuesday Crustie: Dance

It’s another new species of crab! Er, lobster. Crobster? Lobrab?

My confusion about this is that the paper announcing the discovery of this species, Kiwa puravida, and the news articles following it, refer to this as a “yeti crab.”

But the group this species belongs to, Galatheoidea, is normally referred to as “squat lobsters.” Thanks, English, for the reminder of why we scientists ended up using Latin for species names.

The paper describing this species also has a lot of cool stuff on how this beastie is farming bacteria on its hairy claws. Cool! And even cooler is the behaviour K. puravida uses to keep their bacteria happy:



Soundtrack added by Jarrett Byrnes.

And once I saw Jarrett’s remix, I couldn’t resist getting in on the fun...

The Northern Pikes’ “Dancing in a Dance Club”:



Men WIthout Hats’ “The Safety Dance”:



More contemporary with Little Boots’ “Shake”:



And my most populare one so far, Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance”:



And, well, there’s more in this YouTube playlist. I was proud when I saw “Now trending on Science Pond: #DancingYetiCrabs” on Twitter. Shrimp on a treadmill, you’re on notice!

More coverage by Ed Yong at Nature News, the Inkfish blog, and Thoughtomics.

Reference

Thurber AR, Jones WJ, Schnabel K. 2011. Dancing for food in the deep sea: bacterial farming by a new species of yeti crab. PLoS ONE 6(11): e26243. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0026243