Undersea Talk

A new deep sea crab has been discovered, and it has the mind-blowing ability to grow its own food on its own body. Pretty convenient, right? Kinda makes me feel like a sucker for having to get up and walk over to the fridge to get lunch!

 

The Yeti crab gets its common name from its appearance. It is a beautiful pale white, and seems to be covered with tufts of long fur. Upon examination it turned out that those tufts of "fur" were actually spines on the crab's carapace which are covered with thick colonies of bacteria. 

Whenever it feels hungry, the Yeti crab need only take a little snack off its own arms. In between snacks, it spends most of its time waving its arms back and forth in the current from the methane seeps, which pour out methane and hydrogen sulphide. The most likely explanation for this odd "dance" is that they are improving the water circulation around their bacterial gardens, thus encouraging their growth. 

 

The bacteria growing on the crab convert these chemicals to energy, making them one of the few examples of a non-solar-based lifeform on Earth. This makes the crabs qualify as non-solar-based as well, because testing confirmed that the crabs are feeding almost exclusively on these bacteria. This greatly broadens our understanding of how the non-solar life cycle works at the bottom of the ocean surrounding these methane seeps. (And how it might work on other planets, as well.)

 

The Yeti crab was recently discovered by deep sea researcher Andrew Thurber, a marine ecologist who was doing geologic research off the coast of Costa Rica. Thurber was working with a team to study methane seeps, which are one of the world's most unusual (and least known) ecologies. Lo and behold, they also stumbled across a brand new species of crab. Somewhat surprising, given that the crab is brilliant white, covered with tufts of bacterial "hair," very numerous, and about 3.5 inches long.

 

Two other species of animal (a crab and a shrimp) also have developed this tactic of raising their own bacterial gardens in the gases from hydrothermal vents. The more we study these ecosystems, the richer they begin to seem. We once believed that the ocean floor was a vast desert, but it turns out that it is apparently dotted with incredibly rich and diverse oases - ones which exist outside the normal cycle of photosynthesis.