It is pretty beautiful! (Photo: ZooKeys)
Christian Lukhaup named this creature "beautiful"—Cherax pulcher, the beautiful aquatic crayfish. He first saw the cotton candy-colored crayfish in a photo, more than 10 years ago, the Washington Post reports. He first found it in pet shops, being sold in places like Japan and Europe, sometimes as the Hoa Creek crayfish.
Finding it in its natural habitat, though, was much harder.
"If you look at the map, you don't find the name of creeks on the map," he told the Post. "It's not easy to find."
But eventually, he was able to confirm that it lives, as he reports in ZooKeys, in "Hoa Creek, close to the village Teminabuan in the southern-central part of the Kepala Burung (Vogelkop) Peninsula, West Papua, Indonesia."
It's three to four inches long—about the length of a finger—and besides being beautiful, it's apparently very tasty.
Bonus FOUND: A Marine helicopter that went missing in Nepal, quadruple quasars, and a British footballer's 1889 contract.
Every day, we highlight one newly lost or found object, curiosity or wonder. Discover something unusual or amazing? Tell us about it! Send your finds to sarah.laskow@atlasobscura.com.
