‘Vampire’-like creature — a popular aquarium pet — turns out to be new species
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated who collected the specimens.
The corrected version appears below.
Walking through a forest in Indonesia, a researcher noticed some brightly colored creatures on the stony ground. The “vampire”-like animals were popular aquarium pets — and a new species.
Achmad Sofyan made several treks into the forests of Java island in search of vampire crabs. These colorful crabs are “well known in the aquarium trade” but often labeled with “exotic names” and “false” collection locations, according to a study published Nov. 27 in the peer-reviewed journal Raffles Bulletin of Zoology.
Peter Ng and Daisy Wowor, the study’s co-authors, suspected these popular pets might be a new species but needed to find some wild animals to know for sure.
Between 2022 and 2023, Sofyan tracked down dozens of these “distinctive” crabs in forests of Java. Ng and Wowor took a closer look at the animals and realized they’d discovered two new species.
The first new species was named Geosesarma riani, or Rian’s vampire crab, after Achmad Rian Dietra, another hobbyist involved in the discovery. It has a “squarish” body reaching less than an inch across, red-brown legs and “iridescent yellow” eyes.
Rian’s vampire crabs live in “wet areas” of a lowland forest and were often found near stones and rocks, the study said.
A photo collage shared on Facebook by Fish in the News shows the two new species. The left-hand photos show Rian’s vampire crabs. From above, the crabs almost look like they’re smiling because of a brown marking in the center of their backs.
The right-hand photos show the second new species named Geosesarma nigripes, or the black-legged vampire crab, after its coloring, the study said.
Black-legged vampire crabs have a “slightly trapezoidal” body with a bumpy texture, researchers said. They’re less than an inch across, have “iridescent” orange to yellow eyes and live in “wet bushes” near lowland streams.
Both new species “are collected for the global aquarium trade” in “large numbers,” the study said. Collectors prefer adult male crabs because “they are more colourful with larger chelipeds (claws).”
So far, both new species have been found in small, nearby areas of Java, the Indonesian island with the country’s capital city.
Researchers encouraged conservation efforts to protect the new species and other vampire crabs, saying the animals could “face imminent extinction” due to their “popularity” as aquarium pets.
This story was originally published December 5, 2024 at 10:07 AM with the headline "‘Vampire’-like creature — a popular aquarium pet — turns out to be new species."
