World’s Most Beautiful, Colorful and Unique Shrimps

Here’s a list of peculiar, attractive and pretty shrimps.

Here they are … the colorful and beautiful ones…

Striped Bumble Bee Shrimp

One of the prettiest species of shrimps is the Striped Bumblebee Shrimp. The beautiful and colorful Striped Bumblebee Shrimp or Gnathophyllum americanum is a shrimp species that can be found in tropical bays, lagoons and reefs.

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This brightly-colored creature with blue highlights usually grows to a length of 2.5 cm.  

Heterocarpus ensifer

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Heterocarpus ensifer is a colorful deep-water shrimp species that is found in the Atlantic Ocean. Other subspecies of this beautifully colored shrimp can be found in the Pacific Ocean and around the Philippines and Indonesia.

Pederson’s Shrimp

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Pederson's Shrimp or Periclimenes pedersoni is a type of cleaner shrimp. The lovely-looking specimen on the above picture was photographed in Bonaire, Dutch Antilles.

Fire Shrimp

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Fire Shrimp or Lysmata debelius is a colorful cleaner shrimp species endemic to the Indo-Pacific region. Because of its beautiful appearance, it is popular in the aquarium trade, where it is known as the Blood Shrimp, Fire Shrimp or Scarlet Cleaner Shrimp.

Northern Cleaner Shrimp

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The Northern Cleaner Shrimp or Lysmata amboinensis is a colorful omnivorous shrimp species which is widespread in the Red Sea and Tropical Indo-Pacific area. It scavenge and eat parasites and dead tissue making them safe and beneficial in salt water tanks since it clean both the tank and occasionally other fish within the tank.

Common Prawn

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Although the Palaemon serratus is commonly called Common Prawn, it is actually a shrimp species. It can be found in the Atlantic Ocean from Denmark to Mauritania. It can be found too in the Black and Mediterranean Seas. It can live up to 5 years.

Cardinal Shrimp

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The brightly-colored Cardinal Shrimp or Caridina dennerli is a small shrimp species that can be found in Indonesia. It grows to a length of up to 2.5 cm. It is popularly known as the 'Cardinal Shrimp' in the aquarium trade.

Pink Shrimp

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Pink Shrimp or Pandalus borealis is a shrimp species found in cold parts of the Pacic and Atlantic Oceans. It is also known for a variety of common names such as Deepwater Prawn, Deep-sea Prawn, Great Northern Prawn, Crevette Nordique and Northern Shrimp.

It can live up to 8 years and lives at depths of up 1,330 m, usually on soft muddy bottoms, in waters with a temperature of 2–14 °.It can grow up to 16.5 cm. Pink Shrimp are hermaphroditic. They start out male, but after year or two, their testicles turn to ovaries and they complete their lives as females

Spotted Cleaner Shrimp

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The Spotted Cleaner Shrimp or Periclimenes yucatanicus is a kind of cleaner shrimp that can be found in the Caribbean Sea. It lives in sea anemone and sways its body and waves its antennae in order to attract fish from which they eat dead tissue, algae, and parasites.

Here they are … the unique and weird-looking ones…

American Ghost Shrimp

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The American Ghost Shrimp or Palaemonetes paludosus is a freshwater shrimp species from the Eastern United States. It is also commonly called the Eastern Grass Shrimp and Glass Shrimp. It can grow up to 2.5 cm long and largely transparent.

Australian Tadpole Shrimp

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The Australian Tadpole Shrimp or Triops australiensis is a uniquely structured Australian species of Triops. It lives temporary pools of water in the arid regions of the Australian outback.

Cameroon Ghost Shrimp

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The Cameroon Ghost Shrimp or Lepidophthalmus turneranus is a ghost shrimp species that lives off the coast of West Africa. It occasionally irrupts into dense swarms, one of which resulted in the naming of the country Cameroon. It can grow up to 14.5 cm long.

Longtail Tadpole Shrimp

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The Longtail Tadpole Shrimp or Triops longicaudatus is a freshwater shrimp species that resembles a miniature horseshoe crab. It is characterized by an elongated, segmented body, flattened shield-like brownish carapace covering two thirds of the thorax and two long filaments on the abdomen. Triops refers to its three eyes, and longicaudatus refers to the elongated tail structures. It is found in freshwater ponds and pools, often in places where few higher forms of life can exist. It is one of the oldest animal species still in existence. It is also commonly called American Tadpole Shrimp or Rice Tadpole Shrimp.

Horseshoe Shrimp

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The Horseshoe Shrimp or Triops cancriformis is an endangered tadpole shrimp species. It can be found in Europe. It can reach a length of 6 cm in captivity. In their natural habitat, it can grow up to 11 cm. This species is considered to be one of the oldest living species on the planet at around 200 million years old.

Artemia salina

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Artemia salina is a very old brine shrimp species that does not appear to have changed in 100 million years. Adults have three eyes and 11 pairs of legs and can grow to about 1.5 cm in size.

Pestarella tyrrhena

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Pestarella tyrrhena is an odd-looking crustacean that belongs to mud shrimps. It lives in burrows in shallow sandy parts of the seabed of Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. It can grow up to 7 cm and has been used as bait by fishermen for the last 200 years.

See also

• Pretty Aquatic Pets: 10 Most Beautiful Shrimps
• Pretty Aquatic Pets: 18 (More) Beautiful Shrimps
• Unique and Bizarre Shrimps for Your Tank

Interesting Facts About the Red King Crab

Here are some notably interesting facts about one of the most commercially important species of king crab – the Red King Crab.

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1.) A Red King Crab can grow a leg span of 1.8 meters or 5 ft 11 inches.

2.) This huge arthropod was named after the color it turns when it is cooked rather than the color of a living animal.

3.) A live Red King Crab is more Burgundy in color.

4.) The Red King Crab is endemic to the Bering Sea – a sea located between Russia and Alaska, USA.

5.) This large crustacean was introduced artificially by the Soviet Union into the Murmansk Fjord, Barents Sea, during the 1960s to provide new, valuable catch for Soviet fishermen.

6.) Red King Crabs in the Barents Sea have become invasive species and its population is increasing tremendously.

7.) This is causing great concern to local environmentalists and local fishermen as the crab eats everything it comes across and is spreading very rapidly.

8.) This king crab species is the most coveted of the commercially-sold king crabs worldwide.

9.) The Red King Crab is the most expensive per unit weight.

10.) This commercially important marine animal is most commonly caught in the Bering Sea and Norton Sound, Alaska.

11.) It is one of the most preferred crabs for consumption but it is extremely difficult to catch.

12.) The Red King Crabs are declining steadily in their native Far East coastal waters for unclear reasons.

13.) Since its introduction it has spread westwards along the Norwegian coast and also northwards, having reached the island group of Svalbard.

14.) The species keeps on advancing southwards along the coast of Norway and some scientists think they are advancing at about 50 km a year.

15.) Despite the rapid growing population of Red King Crabs, only 259 Norwegian fishermen are allowed to catch it, and they see the king crab as a blessing, as it is an expensive delicacy.

16.) Alaskan crab fishing is very dangerous, and the fatality rate among the fishermen is about 90 times the fatality rate of the average worker.

17.) It is suggested that, on average, one crab fisherman dies weekly during the seasons

18.) If you want to try some king crab recipes just visit this site.

See also

• The World’s Most Colorful Crabs
• World’s Most Colorful and Unique Hermit Crabs
• Unique and Peculiar Squat Lobsters
• Freakiest and Weirdest Crabs in the World
• Amazingly Unique and Weird Lobsters
• World’s Most Colorful Lobster in Their Natural Habitats
• World’s Most Colorful and Unique Porcelain Crabs
• The Most Beautiful and Distinctively Colorful Hermit Crabs in the World
• Colorful and Unique Crabs That Beautify and Clean Your Aquarium Tanks

Amazingly Unique and Weird Lobsters

Amazingly Unique and Weird Lobsters

Here's a list of amazingly distinct and peculiar lobsters found from the different oceans of the world.

Lobsters are found all over the world. Lobsters have 10 legs with the front ones adapted to claws. Lobsters are economically important as seafood, forming the basis of a global industry that nets US$ 1.8 billion in trade annually.

Split-colored Lobster/Half-and-Half Lobster

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One of the weirdest and rarest kinds of lobster is the Half-and-Half Lobster. It was so named because it looks like the half is cooked and the other half is raw. It was caught in 2006 by a Maine Fisherman. Only 3 lobster of this kind had seen in the last 35 years. The chance of finding one is estimated at 1 in 50 million. Lobster shells are usually a blend of the three primary colors: red, yellow and blue. The colors mix to form the greenish-brown color of most lobsters. All split-colored lobsters observed havebeen hermaphroditic.

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Unique and Colorful Octopus and Cuttlefish

Unique and Colorful Octopus and Cuttlefish 

Here's a list of distinct and pretty octopus and cuttlefish. 

There are around 300 recognized octopus species. Most octopuses have no internal or external skeleton, allowing them to squeeze through tight places. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms. Octopuses are highly intelligent, probably the most intelligent invertebrates.

They are known to build 'forts' and 'traps' in the wild and for rearranging tanks and burying other animals alive in domestication. For this reason, they are quite notorious among aquarium operators. For defense against predators, they hide, flee quickly, expel ink, or use color-changing camouflage.

Wonderpus Octopus (Wunderpus photogenicus)

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The beautiful and colorful Wonderpus Octopus is found in shallow waters from Bali and Sulawesi north to the Philippines and east to Vanuatu. It is often confused with the similarly colored Mimic Octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus).

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