Wild Things: Yeti Crabs, Guppies and Ravens
Tree killers and the first beds ever round up this month in wildlife news
- By T.A. Frail, Laura Helmuth, Joseph Stromberg, Erin Wayman And Sarah Zielinski
- Smithsonian magazine, February 2012
(Andrew Thurber / Oregon State University)
A species of Yeti crab (Kiwa puravida) recently discovered at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean may be the world’s deepest farmer. Scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, and elsewhere, diving in the research submarine Alvin, collected the crabs 3,300 feet below the ocean surface off the coast of Costa Rica. The crabs have a specialized whip-like appendage that scrapes the bacterial filaments from their claws and scoops the meal into their mouths. As it happens, these deep-sea bacteria feed on chemicals from seafloor hydrothermal vents, which release plumes of methane and sulfide. The researchers saw the crabs waving their claws rhythmically over the vents: They were apparently fertilizing their crops.
Additional Sources
“The roles of hydraulic and carbon stress in a widespread climate-induced forest die-off,” William R. L. Anderegg et al., PNAS, December 13, 2011
“Dancing for Food in the Deep Sea: Bacterial Farming by a New Species of Yeti Crab,” Andrew R. Thurber et al., PLoS ONE, November 30, 2011
“The use of referential gestures in ravens (Corvus corax) in the wild,” Simone Pika and Thomas Bugnyar, Nature Communications, November 29, 2011
“Middle Stone Age Bedding Construction and Settlement Patterns at Sibudu, South Africa,” Lyn Wadley et al., Science, December 9, 2011
“Social preferences based on sexual attractiveness: a female strategy to reduce male sexual attention,” Josefine B. Brask et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B, December 7, 2011
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