Barbicambarus simmonsi: New giant crayfish species discovered

[n2doc]

By Reuters / January 20, 2011

WASHINGTON
A new species of giant crayfish literally crawled out from under a rock in Tennessee, proving that large new species of animals can be found in highly populated and well-explored places, researchers said Wednesday.

The new crayfish should not have been easily overlooked, as it is huge -- twice the size of other species, the team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Eastern Kentucky University said.

But the crustacean is also quite rare, they report in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.

"This isn't a crayfish that someone would have picked up and just said, 'Oh, it's another crayfish,' and put it back,'' said University of Illinois aquatic biologist Chris Taylor, one of the researchers.

"You would have recognized it as something really, really different and you would have saved it,'' Taylor added in a statement.

more
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/0120/Barbicambarus-simmonsi-New-giant-crayfish-species-discovered-and-it-s-really-big

[kestrel91316]

1. I like the name - "Barbicambarus", lol. Throw another crayfish on the barbi!

[LiberalEsto]

2. Was it found anywhere near a nuke power plant?

Just wondering.

[PearliePoo2]

3. It says that this crayfish is HUGE.

WTF?
Five inches is huge? I don't THINK so.
In my freshwater pond, there are thousands of crayfish that are this size or BIGGER.