The Daily BuzzColourful crustacean: Lavender crab discovered in shipment
On January 18, staff at Japanese fish wholesaler Marusan Mikami Shoten began unloading a shipment of crabs from Russia.
One crab in particular stood out: a bright lavender one.
Among the other red king crabs, the blueish-purple 7.7-pound, 3.3-foot crab was hard to miss.
"I've been dealing with crabs for 25 years, but this is the first time to see that colour. It could be a good omen," Marusan Mikami President Kenetsu Mikami said of the discovery.
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Staff at Marusan Mikami decided to spare the crustacean's life — Who would dare to eat a lavender crab? — and display it in a tank instead.
A research organization in Hokkaido suggested the unique colourization was "the effect of its diet or possibly a mutation causing a lack of pigment."
We've seen this before.
Last summer, a Nova Scotia lobsterman caught a rare bright blue lobster.
According to research out of the University of Maine's Lobster Institute, a brilliant blue hue is the result of a genetic defect that causes a lobster to produce an excessive amount of a particular protein. It's so rare that it affects only one in 2 million lobsters.
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And in August of 2012, a Quebec fisherman caught an albino lobster, which was named Blondie.
The odds of finding an albino lobster? One in 100 million.
In both cases, the lobsters' lives were spared. Sometimes there are advantages to standing out.
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