Red swamp crayfish
Procambarus clarkii
— Where the name comes from
Procambarus places the prefix pro- before Cambarus, a genus name built on the Latin cammarus, the crayfish. The epithet remembers the American naturalist who supplied the specimens. The common name gives the origin and the colour: it is the crayfish of the Louisiana swamps, the one of the crawfish boil, and it reached Italy in the 1970s for farming.
— Facts
- Group
- Crustaceans · Malacostraca · Maxillopoda
- Order
- Crabs, lobsters and shrimps
- Habitat
- Ditches, rice paddies, canals, ponds: any still water, however poor
- Range
- Native to the Mississippi; today Europe, Africa, East Asia
- Size
- 10–15 cm
- Diet
- Omnivorous: plants, tadpoles, amphibian eggs, detritus
- Lifespan
- 2–5 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It walks overland for hundreds of metres and crosses banks and roads.
- 02
It digs burrows over a metre deep, riddling embankments.
- 03
It carries the crayfish plague without falling ill.
— What sets it apart
It is the textbook case of an introduction that went wrong in every possible way. Brought to Europe for aquaculture, it escaped everywhere: it digs burrows that weaken the banks of rice fields, it devours amphibian eggs and tadpoles until whole ponds are emptied, and above all it is a healthy carrier of the plague that is erasing Europe’s crayfish. It walks overland from one body of water to another, survives months in a damp burrow through a drought, and tolerates pollution almost no other crustacean can. In Italy it is illegal to farm it or sell it alive.
