You know I have a soft spot for crayfish, so I was excited to read about the new study about their nervous system, nicely explained by Mo:
When confronted with threatening stimuli and predators, the crayfish responds with an innate escape machanism called the startle reflex. Also known as tailflipping, this stereotyped behaviour involves rapid flexions of the abdominal muscles which produce powerful swimming strokes that thrust the small crustacean through the water and away from danger. In the struggle for existence, the speed of this response response can mean the difference between life and death, and the crayfish has evolved an incredibly fast escape mechanism which can be initiated within well under one-hundredth of a second.
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It's the time of the year when it used to become legal to catch and sell Swedish crayfish (since 1994 there is no limit), and so the grocery stores sell Turkish and Chinese crayfish for a few weeks.
Researchers at the University of Hull, UK, recently published a paper about chemical signaling in reproductive behavior in crayfish. Yep, crayfish. Apparently, the female must release urinary cues in order to initiate courtship behavior in males. No pee, no sex.
Long-time readers of this blog remember that, some years ago, I did a nift