There Is Now a Species of Shrimp Named After Pink Floyd

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There Is Now a Species of Shrimp Named After Pink Floyd

Dark Side of the Shrimp?

A newly discovered pink shrimp that, by snapping its claw, can make an enormously loud sound registering up to 210 decibels, has just been named by a group of scientists. They're calling the new species Synalpheus pinkfloydi, after the British prog-rock band Pink Floyd. According to Zootaxa journal, the newly named and very noisy pink shrimp can be found in the tropical eastern Pacific.

Just for reference, the sound this shrimp makes is formidable—210 decibels is more than a shotgun firing (130 decibels) and more than your average rock concert (110 to 140 decibels). According to a press release issued by Oxford University, the shrimp is able to generate this enormous sound by "closing its enlarged claw at rapid speed," thereby creating "a high-pressure cavitation bubble, the implosion of which results in one of the loudest sounds in the ocean." The sound is said to be strong enough to stun or kill a small fish.

The shrimp was named by Sammy De Grave, the Head of Research at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. A lifelong Pink Floyd fan, De Grave said, "I have been listening to Floyd since The Wall was released in 1979, when I was 14 years old." He claimed the discovery of this pink shrimp was the "perfect opportunity" to honor his favorite band; De Grave said he had been waiting to name a newly discovered species of pink shrimp after Pink Floyd for some time now.

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Oddly enough—and unbeknownst to the scientists who discovered the new species—an urban myth about the volume of a Pink Floyd concert actually killing fish has been circulating for decades. According to Nicholas Schaffner, who wrote a band bio called A Saucerful Of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey, back in the early 70s, Pink Floyd played a show at the Crystal Palace in London where "a 50-foot inflatable octopus, shrouded in dry ice" emerged from a small lake that separated the audience from the stage. After the concert, the fish in the lake were said to have died from "trauma"—allegedly because of the volume of the music. When asked by NPR about the urban legend and its possible veracity, De Grave said he had never heard the story before but said, "Yeah, that doesn't really sound possible."

Read the full story at Munchies.