Some green crabs from Nova Scotia have been pretty crabby lately. According to reports, they’ve been wreaking havoc on the shores of Maine, destroying the ecosystem there by eating everything in their path.
“What we’re seeing is this insane level of aggressiveness,” says researcher Markus Frederich, who discovered the phenomenon. According to him, these crabs have been migrating south from Nova Scotia and eating way more than their fair share of self-shell clams and destroying local eelgrass. They’re not to be confused with similar Maine-native crabs, who are also reportedly angry in nature – these crabs from up north are even more aggressive.
In an experiment, both sets of green crabs were released on a bed of eelgrass. Frederich says the Canadian-native crabs destroyed them, almost like Edward Scissorhands. Now, they’re planning more studies to determine whether there’s a gene that causes the aggressive trait.