Sacre Bleu, what is this?
When fish fight back: Are the killer shrimp headed to the U.S.?
- The gammarid or "killer shrimp" has no heart, and joyfully eats its own.
- Highly invasive gammarid shrimp have been found at Grafham Water reservoir inCambridgeshire, UK.
The aquatic superstars of The Little Mermaid and Finding Nemo paint a swimmingly sweet image of creatures under the sea, don't they?
Well, the crustacean dubbed "the killer shrimp" ain't your coral garden variety Nemo or Flounder.
In fact, the United Kingdom's unexpected decapod demon is wreaking some serious havoc in the Grafham Water ecosystem.
The villain, aptly named Dikerogammarus villosus, isn't content with a fate of ending up in your gumbo. Instead, the little monster splashes back by preying on the natives, like freshwater invertebrates and young fish.
These killer shrimp even play the cannibal card and feast on their own shrimpy kin.
What's worse is that, according to UK's Environment Agency, the bloody bugger bites and shreds its prey simply for the bloodlust, and often leaves it uneaten.
What an animal!
So what's next? While Britain tries in vain (yet again) to clean up its oceanic catastrophe, let's just hope those shrimp have no sense of direction. For their sake, that is.
'Cause if those things get as far as Texas, we're going to be eating a lot of etouffee.