Sponsored by HEARTS, 美华文学, and 硅谷女性

Home / Global Environment / Afzelius’s crab

Afzelius’s crab

By: Suri Zheng

Lost and found: how a single clue led to the rediscovery of a crab not seen  for 225 years | Endangered species | The Guardian

Scientists have recently just made a new rediscovery! The Afzelius crab, a crab species found in Sierra Leone has not been recorded since 1796! This species has orange legs with a rainbow-colored shell. Pierre A Mvogo Ndongo and his team discovered the land-dwelling species after only having one clue, “Sierra Leone”.

​​“These discoveries are bittersweet because the joy of discovering lost species is mixed with the realization that, while not extinct, they’re on the edge of extinction, and that urgent conservation interventions will be required to protect these species in the long term,” says Neil Cumberlidge, a professor in the Department of Biology at Northern Michigan University, who collaborated with Dr. Mvogo Ndongo on the expedition.

These species of crabs belong to the Afrotropical family, a family of crabs that can breathe air and this has allowed the animals to survive on land, climb trees, and even dig burrows. These land crabs are rare and unique and only 5 species in the world are known to exist. Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia are the only African countries where these crabs can be found.

About Suri Zheng

Check Also

U.S. Finds Fewer Cases of Bird Flu in Wild Birds in 2023

By Suri Zheng In 2023, the United States witnessed a notable decrease in cases of …

2 comments

  1. Hello my family member! I want to say that this article is amazing, nice written and include almost all important infos.
    I’d like to peer extra posts like this .

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *