Saturday, August 10, 2013

MAX IDENTIFIES MYSTERY ANIMAL

This picture has been doing the rounds of The Internet, and has been described as: "a tiger prawn, crab and scorpion combined when he was in the jungle to collect palm leaves".

I wrote to Max...

Max Blake I initially dismissed it as a fake, thanks to the poor photo which showed very little about the animal. However, after looking into it, it turns out it is a mud lobster, one of the Thalassina species, but with the tail stretched out. There is a lot of forced perspective, but comparing it to the hand shows it's around 25-30cm maybe, which is at the large end of the size range of Thalassina.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalassina
http://layersofdelite.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/ngoang.html
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1 comment:

  1. Dr Karl Shuker7:29 PM

    Yes, this is the correct identification. I was asked about this same photo a few days ago on Facebook and pointed out there that its species is also known colloquially as a burrowing crayfish. Forced perspective is indeed making it seem much bigger than it really is.

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