HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The home of this rare Crayfish is a 25-hundred foot cave system called Shelta Cave... Which, surprisingly, is surrounded by subdivisions and bustling roadways.
"As far as we can tell, there's only been about 118 individuals been confirmed to science. most of those were back in the 1960's and 1970's by the late Dr. John Cooper. Since 1988, we've only reported three by we referring to the kind of the general cave biology community." says Associate UAH Professor, Matthew Niemiller.
But why should we care that these creatures are still here? Well, the health of these organisms is an indicator of the health of the environment that they are living in.
"We as humans, we rely on groundwater, particularly rural areas to a high degree, not only for drinking water, recreational water, but also for agriculture."
Groundwater and these crayfish go hand in hand, and again - the rediscovery of them means that our ground water was not as polluted as we thought or the quality of that ground water that we have... is steadily improving...
"They help to purify the bacteria, they helped to purify the groundwater, they work for nutrient recycling.", explains Niemiller.
Although it's a good sign that we're seeing more of these organisms.... The fact that there are so few of them is alarming... and could be seen as a canary in a coal mine...
For context, in the past, canaries were used in coal mines because they are more sensitive to dangerous gases than humans are. So, if the canary died, the miners knew there were dangerous gases present and would leave the mine.
"But they can also act as canaries in the coal mine, right? So when something does happen, if we're monitoring them, that can be a big red flag that oh, you know, we shouldn't be investigating what's going on before it has impacts to us, in human society.", added Niemiller.