Saturday, September 23, 2006

Holy jumpin' flatworms batman!

Sydney Crayfish, Euastacus australasiensisSaw this big monster in a creek last night along with a heap of its smaller brethren.

It's the Sydney Crayfish, Euastacus australasiensis. Wouldn't want to try to pick that guy up, even if I avoided those nasty claws there are still those painful looking spikes to contend with. Truly a well defended beast.

Close inspection pays off as usual, you can see those funny looking oval things on its carapace and claws - zoom in on the photo and what do you see?

Temnocephalans on Euastacus clawTemnocephalans of course.

3 comments:

Snail said...

Good grief! Those temnos are huge!!!

Anonymous said...

mmm
Sorry to disappoint but I can't see clearly what it is... :(

And what is a temnos??

Ah, so much to learn...

David Nelson said...

G'day Abie,
'Temnos' are Temnocephalans, you can read a bit about them in my previous post here: http://davidavid.blogspot.com/2006/07/ask-and-you-shall-receive.html

Hopefully after seeing that you'll see them on the claws and carapace of this crayfish.