Hundreds of Dinosaur Shrimp Emerge After Arizona Monsoon
Hundreds of three-eyed ancient creatures called triops emerge after heavy rainfall in Arizona. Their eggs can stay dormant for decades, waiting for water.
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00:00 So it's no surprise that Northern Arizona
00:02 is a very dry place, it's a desert,
00:05 but sometimes they get a lot of rain.
00:07 And that is exactly what happened
00:09 the last week and a half of July of this year.
00:13 The region got almost five inches of rain,
00:16 which is nearly 13 centimeters.
00:18 And when it rains so much in the desert,
00:20 these temporary ponds known as vernal pools form.
00:25 And at Wupaki National Monument,
00:27 some visitors noticed these like tadpole
00:31 like creatures swimming in one of the pools.
00:34 So they quickly alerted the rangers and they said,
00:36 "Hey, I saw the tadpoles in the pond at the ball courts."
00:40 There it is, look at that, it looks like a little alien.
00:43 Turns out it's a crustacean.
00:46 - Oh yeah, oh, here's the ball court.
00:48 What is the ball court for, do you know?
00:51 - Right, so the indigenous people of the region
00:53 built this ceremonial ball court
00:56 and we're actually not sure what its purpose was.
01:01 I did ask the ranger if it was used for something similar
01:05 like the Maya ball game, but she says,
01:07 they're just not sure.
01:08 It's actually not in the same shape
01:10 as the Maya ball game court.
01:11 So perhaps it's entirely different.
01:13 - Great breeding ground to just hold
01:17 a lot of these little creatures, yeah.
01:19 - Right, it's perfect for the vernal pool that formed.
01:23 So to learn what this visitor was talking about,
01:27 one of the rangers, I spoke with her,
01:28 her name is Lauren Carter, a lead interpretation ranger
01:31 at Wupatki National Monument.
01:33 She went down and scooped one up,
01:34 you're looking at her hand right there.
01:37 She says, "These creatures are known as triops
01:40 "and they look like little mini horseshoe crabs
01:43 "with three eyes."
01:44 And yeah, look at those eyes there.
01:46 So it has two compound eyes,
01:48 which are common among arthropods,
01:50 which is this massive group that includes insects,
01:53 arachnids, scorpions, crustaceans.
01:56 I mentioned this particular creature is a crustacean.
02:00 And then it has a third eye,
02:02 look at that little dot between its two main eyes.
02:05 - Oh, it's so zen.
02:06 - I know, it looks very wise.
02:08 So that third eye actually senses light.
02:12 And the third eye is actually quite common among arthropods.
02:17 And it turns out like for example, bees,
02:20 they have their two compound eyes
02:22 and they have three simple eyes.
02:24 So this one is very prominent,
02:27 you can see it right in the middle.
02:30 But yeah, it's got three eyes
02:32 and that's how it got its name,
02:33 triops means three eyes in Greek.
02:36 - Cool, so how long can they stay dormant?
02:40 - That's kind of their survival trick,
02:42 it's so dry in the desert.
02:44 They can stay in their eggs for decades.
02:47 And then once there's a heavy rainfall
02:50 and these vernal pools form,
02:52 they pop to life, they hatch.
02:54 And within hours,
02:55 they start gobbling up as much food as possible.
02:58 So they can filter feed,
03:01 they can nibble on seeds and leaves and roots.
03:06 If it's like a scarce food situation,
03:09 they can even cannibalize each other.
03:12 - Oh no.
03:13 - So I feel bad for the smaller ones,
03:14 they're probably more the prey for the larger triops.
03:18 - Is that probably what happened
03:19 to his poor little missing left arm there?
03:21 'Cause I'm looking at these other ones,
03:23 from stock images and they seem a little bit more even.
03:27 - I did notice that.
03:29 Yeah, I'm not sure how he broke his little appendage.
03:31 Poor dude.
03:33 At least it doesn't appear he was entirely eaten
03:38 or whatever happened to him.
03:40 - Yeah, tell me more about these little creatures,
03:42 they're kind of cool looking.
03:43 - I know, so after they've eaten a lot,
03:45 they molt a few times,
03:47 they're crustaceans just like crabs and lobsters.
03:50 And then they reach adulthood really fast,
03:52 just over a week, I think eight or nine days
03:54 they reach adulthood and they're ready to mate again,
03:58 start the next generation.
03:59 - Oh my goodness.
04:01 - Yeah, and you can tell by looking at this photo,
04:04 but they're not that big.
04:05 They're about 1.5 inches long,
04:08 which is about four centimeters.
04:11 And they have a few nicknames.
04:13 So, they're called triops, that's their genus name,
04:17 but sometimes they're called tadpole shrimp.
04:20 They're also known as dinosaur shrimp
04:23 'cause they have this long evolutionary history.
04:26 Their ancestors date back to the Danobian period,
04:30 which lasted from 419 million to 359 million years ago.
04:35 And they look pretty much the same as their ancestors did.
04:38 It's really impressive.
04:40 - Yeah, I mean, but because they're so old,
04:44 can we call them living fossils?
04:46 - Oh my gosh, I'm really glad you asked that
04:48 because I think this is a term that gets thrown around,
04:52 but it turns out that a lot of scientists really hate it.
04:55 And Carter, the ranger I spoke with, she told me,
05:00 "I don't like the term living fossil
05:02 because it causes a misunderstanding with the public
05:05 that they haven't changed at all, but they have changed.
05:09 They have evolved.
05:10 It's just that the outward appearance of them
05:12 is very similar to what they were millions of years ago."
05:16 So, put another way, they do look the same,
05:19 but they are not the same.
05:20 They have evolved.
05:21 Their internal processes are different,
05:26 at least some of them.
05:28 So, yeah.
05:28 - Oh, yeah, amazing.
05:30 And this is all just because of that insane reign
05:33 that they had.
05:35 - Yeah, yeah, they were,
05:36 I guess the pond lasted three to four weeks,
05:40 is what Carter told me.
05:42 So, I said they reach adulthood quite rapidly
05:45 and then it's time to mate.
05:46 So, how do they mate?
05:47 A male and a female might find each other
05:51 and the female will lay eggs,
05:53 but their circumstances are so,
05:56 it's so interesting.
05:59 Like maybe they won't be able to find a partner
06:01 of the opposite sex.
06:02 And it turns out that triops are hermaphrodites as well,
06:06 which means they have both male and female organs.
06:09 - It's like they're doing it themselves.
06:10 - Yeah, so they have that flexibility.
06:14 And they're also parthenogenic,
06:16 which means the females can produce offspring
06:19 from unfertilized eggs.
06:21 So, they don't need a male to spawn the next generation.
06:26 - More power to them.
06:27 That's, I guess, and that's why they've been around
06:29 for so long.
06:30 That's pretty cool.
06:31 - Yeah, it's a pretty cool superpower.