The mouth of a whale shark is not a hospitable environment to take up residence, a priori, but it is here that Japanese researchers come to find a new species of gammarids, a subcategory of crustaceans.
Gammarids have a very varied diet and are able to live in extreme environments - both in high mountain lakes and at the bottom of the oceans.
"These creatures, which are typically three to five centimeters tall, are incredible because they can live in such different environments," Ko Tomikawa, a researcher at Hiroshima University in western Japan, said on Monday. However, he did not expect to find squatting the mouth of a whale shark.
Brown color and hairy legs
The new species, which has been dubbed "podocerus jinbe" - the Japanese name of the whale shark (jinbe zame) - is brown in color and barely 5 millimeters long, with hairy legs to better catch micro -organisms, explained the researcher.
"The mouth of a whale shark is probably a good habitat" for this small crustacean, he said, because "fresh seawater, necessary to allow him to breathe, enters regularly, just like food". "It also gives him a safe place, without predators," said the researcher, who was asked to examine a whale shark from an aquarium in the Okinawa archipelago in southwestern Japan.
About a thousand of these small crustaceans were found in the gill slits of the mouth of this giant of the seas, which besides their respiratory function are used to filter the water to separate the food.