Friday 27 July 2012

Acanthacaris caeca

Image: hankplank via Flickr
It's slim pickings in the deep sea. You need only look at the lobsters to see that. There's not much flesh on the exoskeleton!

Acanthacaris caeca is a lobster from the Caribbean, Florida and Brazil. Sounds like a nice place to be! Except they live some 300 to 900 metres (1,000 to 3,000 ft) below the water's surface. In burrows beneath soft mud. So... all that sun was a bit of a waste then.

The lobster itself looks like it's wasting away. They get to about 30 cm (a foot) long, but their claws and legs are incredibly slim and spindly. This really isn't one of those meaty ones you might see getting boiled alive, torn to pieces and laid out next to some tomatoes.

Unless someone's expensive dinner came back as a skeleton? And then died again and came back as the ghost of a skeleton?

Image: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Invertebrate Zoology
At least they have Claws of Shocking Cruelty +1. If anyone round here has been eating lobster, be glad this fearsome weaponry is in the hands one so distant, tiny-eyed and blind. You wouldn't want this kind of malice on stilts seeking out revenge.

5 comments:

TexWisGirl said...

spidery fellow.

Anonymous said...

Lol "Claws of Shocking Cruelty +1" I love that!

Joseph JG said...

@TexWisGirl: More creepy and crawly than your average lobster!

@Chloƫ Langley: Ha! Currently playing Baldur's Gate 2

Porakiya said...

In that first picture, it looks like some alien or horror film creature reaching out to grab its next victim.......Sounds like my kinda guy.....er....invertebrate.

Joseph JG said...

Ha! It does look like it's preparing to pounce with its spindly claws.