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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday February 06 2018, @03:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-say-crayfish-I-say-crawfish dept.

No one knows exactly when the clones first appeared, but humans only became aware of them in the early 2000s.

It was a German aquarium owner who first brought it to scientists' attention. In 1995, he had acquired a bag of "Texas crayfish" from an American pet trader, only to find his tank inexplicably filling up with the creatures. They were all, it turns out, clones. Sometime, somewhere, the biological rule that making baby crayfish required a mama crayfish and papa crayfish was no longer inviolate. The eggs of the hobbyist's all-female crayfish did not need to be fertilized. They simply grew into copies of their "mother"—in a process known as parthenogenesis.

Crayfish specialists were astonished. No one had seen anything like it. But the proof was before their eyes and in 2003, scientists dubbed the creatures marbled crayfish, or Marmorkreb in German.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/attack-of-the-crayfish-clones/552236/


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by drussell on Tuesday February 06 2018, @04:10PM (3 children)

    by drussell (2678) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @04:10PM (#633901) Journal

    Alex Jones is gonna have a field day with this one... :facepalm:

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  • (Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:07PM (2 children)

    by Rivenaleem (3400) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:07PM (#633989)

    Forget Alex Jones, Jeff Goldblum is all geared up to say "I Told You So"

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @08:31PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @08:31PM (#634080)

      Who is Alex Jones?

      • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:20PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:20PM (#634133)

        We can only hope