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The Yeti Crab, a crustacean with fur
INTERESTING CREATURES
Waterfalls Magazine – In 2006 scientists announced the discovery of a new species of blind deep-sea crab whose legs are covered with long, pale yellow hairs.
The Yeti Crabs
The species have become known as the yeti-crabs and these furry crustaceans where first observed in March 2005 by marine biologists exploring hydrothermal vents along the Pacific-Antarctic ridge, south of Easter Island.
Due to its hairy legs, the creature was nick named the “Yeti crab,” after the fabled Yeti, the abominable snowman of the Himalayas.
Yeti Crabs thrive in the deep-sea hydrothermal vents and at time it was discovered, scientists were learning how bottom-dwelling animals from one deep-sea hydrothermal vent are able to colonize other hydrothermal vents hundreds or thousands of miles away.
During the expedition one of the scientists, part of the team, Michel Segonzac, from Institut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer (IFREMER) in France, noticed an unusually large (15-cm-long) crab with hairy arms lurking on the seafloor.
Segonzac asked the pilot of their submarine to collect this crab and bring it back to the surface.
Subsequent dives were made and the researchers found more of the unusual crabs.
Most of the crabs were living at depths of about 2,200 meters (7,200 feet) on recent lava flows and areas where warm water was seeping out of the sea floor.
According to one biologist, Joe Jones, “Many of the crabs were hiding underneath or behind rocks—all we could see were the tips of their arms sticking out.”
After returning to shore, researchers Segonzac and Jones worked with Enrique Macpherson from the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Spain to identify the crab they had collected. They found that the crab was not only a new species (which they named Kiwa hirsuta), but an entirely new family (Kiwaidae). The Yeti crab is a distant relative to the hermit crabs commonly seen lurking in tide pools.
Since the discovery, more and more species of yeti crabs were discovered.
In june 2015, a National Geographic Article writen by Jason Brittel, revealed that Kiwa Tyleri, a new species of Yeti Crabs was found.
“It’s white. It’s hairy. It’s elusive. It’s a yeti … crab. Meet Kiwa tyleri, the newest member of the yeti crab family and the first to be found in the cold waters off Antarctica”, Brittel described in his article.
His article went on to state that It’s only the third known species of yeti crab, a group of shaggy-armed creatures first discovered in the South Pacific in 2005.
This new species was found thriving in communities with environments harsher than any of their yeti relatives.
Yeti crabs are excellent at adapting to their harsh lifestyles. Since there’s no sunlight where these crabs live, they’ve evolved another way to obtain energy: They “farm” their own food.
The crabs have hair-like structures on their chest and arms, called setae, that attracts bacteria, their main diet.
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