#CrayWeek What makes red swamp crayfish such resourceful invaders? For one thing, they can walk several miles over dry land in search of water. And that's a #crayfact!

#CrayFact Who wore it better? Definitely the stage-stealing Cherax pulcher, a gorgeous cray whose native range may consist of a single stream system in Indonesia. #CrayWeek

Photo: https://buff.ly/2AhKKKc

BONUS #Crayfact: Australians commonly call crayfish "yabbies," which comes from "yabij" in the Aboriginal Wergaia language. #CrayWeek

A linguistic #crayfact journey: The word "crayfish" comes...
from Old French "escrevisse"...
from Frankish "krebitja"...
from Old Frankish "krebit," or crab...
from Proto-Germanic "krabitaz"...
from Proto-Indo-European "greb" or "gereb," meaning to scratch or crawl!
#CrayWeek

In the past, crayfish calcium bombs (aka gastroliths) have been used by humans to plug holes in teeth, calm upset stomachs, and "treat" everything from syphilis to bladder stones to the plague. #crayfact #CrayWeek

More recently, pharmaceutical companies have sat up straighter at the notion that crayfish research could teach us about mechanisms for moving calcium around in the body -- potentially yielding treatments for osteoporosis and other bone-related conditions. #CrayWeek #crayfact

Thrifty #crayfact: Before molting, a crayfish siphons calcium out of its exoskeleton and stashes it in little rocks, called gastroliths, inside its head. After shedding the old shell, the cray recycles the gastroliths to build a new one! #CrayWeek

Photo: https://buff.ly/2AhVRD5

Here's a #crayfact: Thanks to their impressive abs, mudbugs can escape predators by speeding away — backwards.

Unless, like this bisected bug on the beach in Petoskey, they're missing a few vital components. Photo: Todd Marsee

#crayweek

Put your chelipeds together, folks, because #CrayWeek is here!! 🦞🎉✨🦞

A #crayfact to kick things off: There are more than 500 species of crayfish in the world, native to every continent except Africa and Antarctica! A whopping 350+ of those species live in North America.