Female fiddler crabs find male suitors more attractive if the chaps can arrange safe sand castles for booty calls, new findings suggest. In the animal kingdom, females are often attracted to outrageously showy displays such as a peacock's plumage. If gaudy males can escape from predators despite their flamboyant ornaments...

Is one crab more crabby than another? It could be true. Crabs apparently can have different personalities from one another, the first discovery of personality in crustaceans. People consistently differ from one another in behavior, differences known as personalities. The same is known to hold true in many other animals,...

Like creepy stalkers, cleaner shrimp won't share their partner with anyone else. When placed in groups of more than two, the creatures attack in the dark of night, killing off the competition. We enlarged the group size to triplets and quartets, and we observed the molting cycle and the interactions...

Scientists doing their first exploring of deep-sea vents in the Antarctic have uncovered a world unlike anything found around other hydrothermal vents, one populated by new species of anemones, predatory sea stars, and piles of hairy-chested yeti crabs. It was almost like a sight from another planet, said expedition leader...

Scientists on an expedition to sample a deep-sea trench got a surprise when their traps brought back seven giant crustaceans glimpsed only a handful of times in human history. The supergiant amphipods are more than 20 times larger than their typical crustacean relatives, which are generally less than a half-inch...

Some crayfish fake out their opponents with their gigantic right claws, suggests new research showing that these big claws aren't always as strong as they should be for their size. The slender crayfish, Cherax dispar, fights with other males over territory. They start these bouts of aggression by assessing each...

Four new species of crab that sport some wild colors have been discovered near the Philippine island of Palawan. The newfound species are threatened by mining activities in the region, which is one of the world's major biodiversity hotspots, its discoverers said. About half of the species that live on...

Aspiring marine biologists recently got a taste of the joys (and the occasional discomfort) of real fieldwork during an annual horseshoe crab census in Delaware. Freshmen in the University of Delaware's first class of marine science majors fanned out across beaches in Delaware Bay in mid-May to count the throngs...

Mantis Shrimp (Image credit: Jenny/Wikimedia Commons)The colorful mantis shrimp Gonodactylus smithii. Researchers compare mantis shrimp to heavily armored caterpillars. Peacock Mantis Shrimp (Image credit: S. Baron)The peacock mantis shrimp Odontodactylus scyllarus from the Indo-Pacific boasts strong, hammer-like claws. Peacock Mantis (Image credit: Chris K Horne, Shutterstock)Peacock mantis shrimp are solitary...

If sea creatures were Marvel comic book characters, the peacock mantis shrimp would be Thor. These colorful crustaceans have a hammerlike claw that can smash prey with the acceleration of a 0.22-caliber bullet — not unlike the superhero's mythological weapon. Now, a new study reveals the secrets behind the strength...

A new species of crustacean has been discovered in the underwater mountains off the northwest coast of Spain, scientists recently announced. The squat lobster is orange and a little over 2 inches (5 centimeters) long. Squat lobsters are more closely related to porcelain and hermit crabs than true lobsters. It...

Three critically endangered insects called Lord Howe Island stick insects, also known as tree lobsters, have been hatched at the San Diego Zoo for the first time. The species was thought to be extinct after 1920, when the last known wild tree lobsters were devoured by rats on their native...

The late Jamaican musician Bob Marley has joined the I have a species named after me club, as a parasitic crustacean has been donned Gnathia marleyi, researchers announced today (July 10). This blood feeder infests certain fish that live among the coral reefs of the shallow eastern Caribbean Sea. I...

What good is color vision in the dark of the deep sea? For some crabs, an ability to see blue and ultraviolet light may mean the difference between chowing down on a good meal versus a toxic one. A new study published today (Sept. 6) in the Journal of Experimental...

When the red swamp crayfish invaded Europe more than 30 years ago, it may have smuggled another species overseas. Scientists say they've found an alien type of tiny crustacean in Spain, and evidence suggests it came from North America on the back of the crayfish. A team of researchers collected...