10/25/2002: Defiant shellfish
 

http://cellar.org/2002/crab.jpg

I was browsing the German Yahoo! Most Popular images, scouting for stuff... and this came up. The caption read:

Eine Languste überquert am Donnerstag nach schweren Regenfällen eine geflutete Straße im spanischen Castelldefels.

Babelfish translates this to "A Languste crosses a flooded road in the Spanish Castelldefels on Thursday after heavy rainfalls."

Languste? What is that? It looks like a half-crab, half-lobster.

But what struck me funny is how this guy is giving the two-finger "up yours" salute (the euro version of the middle finger) to the flood waters he just got past. With those hands, it's the only salute he can give. And it's an oversized version, too. No wonder he's so ticked off.

"Ey, stupid flood waters... thinking you can push me around... fuck you!"

Fich dich!! Deine mutti!

Fick dich! Ihre Mutter?

This might be photoshopped
 

The languste, a noble relative of the lobster, doesn't have the claws represented in the yahoo image.

http://www.kueche-genuss.de/lex155.jpg

Also, see this photograph in natural habitat.

http://www.aquamare.ch/fotos/languste.html

Looks like a crawfish to me. They are fresh water inhabitants so it would make sense to find one in a river.

Yea -- you can see where 15 hours of German at the nation's largest school got me.

And yes, it does look like a crawfish. Nic just might not know what they look like <font size="-3">(he's Canadian)</font>.

They don't have rivers in Canada?

Canadian Crayfish ;)

http://www.inspection.gc.ca/bil/fish...lobster2.shtml

It looks like a string of bad translations
 

Languste sounds like a bad translation of the Spanish word "langostina" which is a european equivalent to a crawfish / crayfish. Think of a lobster with the claws of a fiddler crab, that's what the critter in question looks like. Bigger than American crawfish, IIRC.

-EP

The English word is langouste and the distinguishing characteristic is no claws.



But it's a funny photoshop, though. .V..

Oh, come on now...
 

Is anyone else willing to give the photographer the benefit of the doubt? It doesn't seem like someone would have taken pains to fake this one, and we're basing the claim on a german report of a spanish animal. I think it's legit. It seems more likely that an editor at a German newspaper mislabeled it.

I said, "This might be photoshopped."

Has anyone got any confirming picture of a creature like this? It looks strange to me.

By the way, it takes no pains to fark a foto.

I have no problem with the image. It's really cool. I just want to know if it's real or fake.

Why would you use the informal mode in one sentence and the formal mode in the next?

Whatever it is it's obviously hailing a water taxi.

And the reason it looks funny is its thorax obscures its tail at this angle. The critter is facing the photographer.