Scientists Interested in Harsh Living Conditions
Scientists renamed a hairy crab, originally found in the freezing waters of the South Ocean at 2000 meters depth. Originally named “The Hoff” to hark back to the oft-topless actor David Hasselhoff, scientists have made the time for the creature to have an official scientific designation as a living object of study.
What is The Hairy Crab’s New Name?
Its new name is kiwa tyleri, after the famous Paul Tyler, a British polar and deep-ocean biologist from Southampton University. Although public perception of the hairy crab is unlikely to change enough to adopt the new name anytime soon, scientists are excited to learn the crab’s habits- its way of not just surviving, but thriving in the harsh conditions of deep-sea pressure, dark and alone amidst other evolving and competing creatures.
What Does Kiwa Tyleri Eat?
Luckily, the hairy crab’s many hairs are home to bacteria, which it harvests to feed itself. The hairs, called satae, are specifically designed to gather enough nutritious bacteria preclude the need for take-out.
How Does the Hairy Crab Survive Down There?
Basically, kiwa tyleri has found its environment’s sweet spot: the creature sticks close to hydrothermal vents to escape the sea floor’s normal temperature of roughly 32 degrees Fahrenheit. These vents form when seawater is sucked in, injected with chemicals and metals, and then in turn blasted out as a new concoction into that frigid abyss. After a short while, some specific kinds of bacteria begin to leech the heat, plant themselves on top of the vents in enough strata to insulate more complex life from heat and supply sustenance, and then voila; an entire ecosystem is born.
But if its uniquely formed environment isn’t cool enough, scientists found that kiwa tyleri’s legs have naturally growing spikes with which to climb the vents. However, the poor miracle of evolution is trapped in a Catch 22, for a few feet in the wrong direction will either roast the guy alive or freeze him into a slow death.
But scientists say kiwa tyleri is not the only recluse in such environs. Several other “yeti crab,” very similar to the hairy critter, await scientists’ qualification.
Scientists think the hairy crab reached such remote areas by journeying along the jagged undersea paths of over ten to twenty million years of activity.
