New "Hairy Lobster" Crustacean Discovered and Classified

AviLazar writes "American-led divers discovered a new type of Crustacean, that resembles a lobster but has it's claws covered in 'sinuous, hair-like strands'. This species is so different, from other Crustacean's that it was classified with a new Family name: Kiwaida. Unfortunately for the Kiwaida, the AP is already using this blind creature and a salad plate in the same sentence."

Comments

The important question is

[semiotec]

what do they taste like?

Re:The important question is

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article: "The animal is white and 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) long -- about the size of a salad plate."

I imagine they taste pretty darn good since they've obviously been intelligently designed as a salad course.

Re:The important question is

[sentientbeing]

It tastes great and after youve eaten it you can wipe your chin with its carcass!

Its lunch and a napkin.

Re:The important question is

[lcsjk]

Is that an African Salad plate or a European Salad plate?

Why hairy?

[Angostura]

This raises obvious questions about the value of the 'hairs'.

Given that it is blind, I suppose they may be tactile, like a cat's whiskers.

Or perhaps detritous gets stuck in the hairs and it is a rudimentary filter feeder.

Or perhaps most lobsters shave regularly, but since this one's blind... nah.

Re:Why hairy?

[foxcorner]

The equivalent article at the BBC mentions bacteria living in the hair: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4785482. stm

Looks great...

[tengennewseditor]

I want one of those to hang on my rear view mirror.

Standard Units of Measure

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when was a salad plate a unit of measure?

Re:Standard Units of Measure

[qwijibo]

It's a reference point that suggests that this scientific discovery is more of an appetizer than a full meal. Even scientists are humans first. That means when we discover something new, we have to give it a location on the food chain.

New Taxonomy

[cparisi]

Here is the new Taxonomy order:

Domain
Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
Species
Yummy-ness!

I know what Dr Zoidberg has been up to

[MooseTick]

My mother was right! It will make hair grow on your hands.

Re:just what i need

[ForwardThinker]

I heard they also found a new type of hairy lobster off the brazilian coast ... but it only had a thin strip of hair down the middle!

Is it tasty though?

[linzeal]

A lot of deep sea creatures have ammonia in them for anti-freeze and are not very tasty.

Obviously

[RealProgrammer]

you must have remarkably poor technique.

The edible parts are hairless.

Wait a minute

[tunedfeeders]

I thought "Hairy Lobster" was the upcoming Ubuntu release...

Blonde Hair

[MECC]

So blondes aren't going extinct after all - they're just just mutating into a more intelligent form.

Dear god..

[boingo82]

this is by FAR the worst grammar I have ever seen in a summary. I am actually depressed.

"American-led divers discovered a new type of Crustacean,(comma unnecessary) that (which)resembles a lobster but has it's (its, dammit) claws covered in 'sinuous, hair-like strands'. This species is so different, (comma unnecessary) from other Crustacean's (apostrophe inappropriate) that it was classified with a new Family name: Kiwaida. Unfortunately for the Kiwaida, the AP is already using this blind creature and a salad plate in the same sentence."

Re:just what i need

[Anonymous Coward]

>But seriously... what else are you eating that causes hairs to get stuck in your teeth?

McDonalds cheeseburgers

Re:the squatter

[Rxke]

They do.
From the BBC article: "From its general shape and appearance, the new creature resembles freshwater "squat lobsters" found in South America. But Dr Segonzac said that genetic analysis showed it was closer to marine members of this group."

What makes it especially interesting

[jd]

Is that many "blind" fish exist, trapped in underground lakes where eyes serve no purpose. Fish transported there don't become blind, it is only the fish that have been there countless generations. HOWEVER, they go blind by a membrane growing over the eye. The eye is still there and research (from what I understand) suggests that the eye is still fully functional.

Here, there is no eye, there is only a membrane. This suggests one of two possibilities. Either it has existed in conditions where light would serve no purpose for FAR longer than the "blind" fish - such that the eye has devolved completely, or it predates the evolution of the eye entirely.

This may be testable. It's believed this new crustacean is a new species, but the only real test for this would be to run a DNA test and compare it against known crustacean DNA types. This would also give a good indication of how ancient the species is, as we'd then know how much junk DNA there was and if/when it split off from any other known species.

Talking of DNA, there have been a lot of new species discovered recently, but I've not heard of much DNA work being done and there are still VERY few species in any of the online DNA databases I've seen. I can't help but feel that this is an area of work that isn't being utilized as much as it could be. Sure, it's not cheap, but the masses of DNA sequencing labs that have sprouted up for genealogical DNA work can't possibly be getting enough orders to keep running. There must surely be some way of tapping into existing resources that would bring the cost of the work down to affordable levels.

But, then, maybe not. Absolute production-line marker recognition of one Y chromosome and mDNA of a well-known species over a very narrow time-frame is relatively trivial compared to charting actual base-pairs and chromosomes over an unmapped type of DNA for a species of uncertain classification, where the nearest point of reference might be anywhere from very recent to a few hundred million years apart.

Even so, DNA research for species identification must surely be an area that could supplement the income of such labs, the equipment would only need to be able to do enough work to produce preliminary results of some sort, the promotional value can't hurt, and it would give researchers something more than "it looks really different" to go by.