Jan 30th, 2017:Chinese Mitten Crab

[xoxoxoBruce]

I wouldn’t mess with this guy, got his gloves on, probably a pro fighter.
He’s called a Chinese mitten crab, so he probably does that sneaky ninja stuff too.



They’re a delicacy caught from Hong Kong to Korea, everywhere else they’re a nasty invasive species.
It’s not hard to figure out how they made it from Hong Kong to London.
They’ve been in the Thames for a long time but now they are spreading.

They’re aggressive, have few predators and will eat almost anything, aquatic plants, native fish eggs,
mollusks, probably even my first wife’s cooking. Their opportunistic lifestyle has makes them successful,
but at a high cost to the local environment. To make things worse, they can burrow a meter(40in) or more
into river banks, so when floods come to areas where there’s been a lot of crabs, river banks collapse.



They're happy in both fresh and saltwater. In fact, they’re born in coastal regions or estuaries, then migrate
up the river, hang out for years, then get horny and boogie down to the coast to breed. However, once they
are in freshwater, studies have shown they can migrate up to 1,500 km(932mi).
This crab can even leave the water, cross dry land and enter a new river system.

They ever have the dubious honor of making the IUCN (the International Union for Conservation of Nature)
100 of the world’s worst alien species list. So if you see one, eat it.