Animals, features and articles | Educational Science

Sep 30, 2014

Tiny Sea Monkeys Create Giant Ocean Currents

Every evening, sunset signals the start of dinner for billions of wiggling sea monkeys living in the ocean. As these sea monkeys — which are not actually monkeys but a type of shrimp — swarm to the surface in one large, culminating force, they may contribute as much power to...

Feb 19, 2015

Shrimpy Sharks to Great Whites: Marine Animals Have Gotten Bigger Over Time

Animals tend to evolve toward a larger body size over time, and marine animals are no exception, a study suggests. In fact, the average size of marine animals has increased significantly over the past 542 million years, according to researchers who recently compared the body sizes of ocean-dwelling creatures from...

Mar 3, 2015

Animal Sex: How Barnacles Do It

Barnacles are invertebrates related to crabs and lobsters. But unlike their crawly cousins, adult barnacles permanently attach to surfaces, raising an interesting question: How do these sessile creatures mate? Numerous immobile invertebrates, including clams and sea anemones, reproduce via broadcast spawning, in which the animals release sperm and eggs into...

Mar 19, 2015

Mystery of the 'Vampire Crabs' Solved

The mystery of the origin of two strange-looking species of vampire crabs is finally solved. The crabs come from the island of Java in Indonesia, according to the scientists who officially describe the species in a new report. Vampire crabs owe their name to their spooky appearance, as they have...

Jun 24, 2015

In Images: The Amazing World of Antarctic Yeti Crabs

With its hairy chest and stark white shell, Kiwa tyleri is not your typical crab. This deep-sea creature, which makes its home atop the hydrothermal vents in Antarctica's Southern Ocean, is an extraordinary animal. First discovered in 2010, scientists have just published the first official description of this so-called yeti...

Jun 24, 2015

'Yeti' Crab Grows Its Own Food, Lives in Antarctic Spa

What's white and blind and hairy all over? A yeti, of course! Or, in this case, a yeti crab — a marine creature that lives near the thermal vents in the ocean floor where hot water gushes into the sea. There are three known species of yeti crabs, and now,...

Sep 23, 2015

Boxing Mantis Shrimp Prefer Flurry of Hits Over Knockout Punches

When you're one of nature's greatest pound-for-pound punchers, getting into a dispute over territory or mates can quickly turn ugly. Mantis shrimp are notorious for their clublike front limbs, which they use to kill prey. These fearsome appendages are capable of the world's fastest limb movement and have even been...

Sep 30, 2015

King Crabs Arrive in Antarctic, with Claws Out for Biodiversity

The king crab could soon take over a whole new kingdom, and it has global warming to thank for the conquest. King crabs live on seafloors all over the world (perhaps most famously off the Alaskan coast), but scientists didn't know that these large crustaceans had ventured all the way...

Apr 12, 2016

Red Crabs Swarm Like Insects in Incredible Underwater Video

A strange cloud of disturbed silt in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Panama unexpectedly led marine biologists to an incredible sight: thousands of red crabs close to the sea bottom that were swarming like insects, according to the researchers. The scientists were in a submersible investigating biodiversity at...

Jun 2, 2016

Males' Oversize Right Claw Lures Crustacean Ladies

What makes a female marine crustacean swipe right on a prospective mate? If she's Dulichiella appendiculata — a tiny relative of the sand-hopping beach flea — she's impressed by the size of the male's enlarged right front claw, which is significantly bigger than its left one. And she definitely prefers...

Jun 15, 2016

Male Fiddler Crabs Entrap Females In Their Bachelor Pads

Male banana fiddler crabs take courting to a new, and pushy, level: The little Australian crab males wait for females to enter their burrows and then trap them in order to mate, scientists have found. Competition for mates is intense for banana fiddler crabs (Uca mjoebergi), the researchers said, with...

Jul 13, 2016

Do Lobsters Live Forever?

Many animals that live in the deep, dark sea are subject to myths, and lobsters are no different. But one particular “belief” — that lobsters would be immortal were it not for fishermen and hungry predators — doesn't exactly hold water, biologists told Live Science. Lobsters age just like most...

Nov 15, 2016

Smash! Super-Stabby Mantis Shrimp Shows Off in Video

The mantis shrimp, that tiny toughie of the sea, smashes and stabs in a new video showing off the special talents of this predatory crustacean. The video, produced by KQED San Francisco's Deep Look, shows how some species of mantis shrimp use knockout blows to break open the shells of...

Nov 28, 2016

Coconut Crab's Pinch Is Strongest in the World

Watch your fingers! New research finds that the hulking coconut crab has the strongest pinch of any animal. In fact, this crustacean's claws can snap closed harder than most animals can bite — with the exception of alligators, according to the study published Nov. 23 in the journal PLOS ONE....

Jan 23, 2017

Accio Crab! Newfound Crab Honors Harry Potter and Professor Snape

A newfound crab named after Harry Potter wizards may not be magical, but its discovery is certainly enchanting. The late Harry Conley, an ex-Marine turned researcher, unearthed the tiny crustacean while digging along the shores of Guam, a U.S. territory located in the western Pacific Ocean. Twenty years passed between...