Viral internet star: The tiny royal crab conquers the hearts!

Viral internet star: The tiny royal crab conquers the hearts!

A small pink royal crab with spines and black eyes has developed into an internet star in the past few weeks. A video from the US Ocean and Weather Authority Noaa shows this unusual young specimen that sits in the palm of a scientist. Within just two weeks, the video about Lippewelle more than 10.6 million views on the online platform X and was shared thousands of times. At the same time, the discovery of the tiny crabs also inspires the scientists.

While a research team was involved in the elimination of sea waste and collecting coral samples in the Gulf of Mexico, they happened to come across this young copy of Art Neolithodes Agassizii. These royal crabs usually live in depths from 200 to 1900 meters, which makes the discovery all the more remarkable. The freshly found crab is only as big as a finger and was discovered in a plastic bag on board a research ship, like Bild reported.

The biology of the royal crab

royal crabs are remarkable creatures of the sea that differ from real crabs. They only have six legs while real crabs are careful. Royal crabs do not belong to the group of real crabs (Brachyura); Her last common ancestor lived 250 million years ago. Royal crabs developed from hermit crabs and lost the need for a shell home up to 25 million years ago. Your great attack and smaller eating tongs help you to find your way around in the living space of the deep sea. Königskrabbenbabys are considered cute and use Seegurken, for example, as shelter. These aa eaters search the sea floor for dead animals, feces and mucus.

The discovery of the baby king crab has triggered a wave of enthusiasm in the online community, and the video of the NOAA is another example of how social media can help to raise awareness of marine life and to support important research. The importance of deep-sea biodiversity is increasingly recognized, and structural studies, as carried out by the Geomar-Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel, offer new insights into the functioning of the oceanic ecosystem and its adaptability to changed conditions.

The scientists use various modern molecular biological techniques, including the analysis of environmental DNA (EDNA) and DNA barcoding, to identify unknown species and to document their spread. Findings about the deep-sea organisms could make a decisive contribution to understanding the global biological diversity and the ecological dynamics of the oceans.