...and here is his first wife (you'll see why I say "first wife" in a minute. Be patient.)
I raised these crayfish since I netted them last spring when they were little bitty babies; so they are right at one year old now. I don't know why, but out of several, only two of them turned out to be males, and at that, I got lucky - one of them is a wild "blue", which is rather rare. Most of the wild ones have little or no blue color, and are just mottled brown to brownish-greenish with quite a lot of reddish-brown or even quite a deep red. Here he is:
...and here is his first wife (you'll see why I say "first wife" in a minute. Be patient.)
As I write this, that female is in an isolation tank, away from other crayfish and away from fish, carrying around about a hundred babies with her. And within minutes of her removal from the community tank, look what her mate got up to with another female:
Conclusion: I guess you could say that Florida crayfish are not exactly monogamous. They are like the men in Florida. You know, if you ask a Florida redneck man if he is married, he will say, "Mah wahf eeiz."
Well, there may yet be more to the story. First of all, I haven't had a good look at the new babies yet, their mama has them in a ceramic vase lying on its side in an 8-gallon tank. That's normal. She will keep them with her for a few days, but now that there is no danger from other critters, soon enough I suppose she will leave them to fend for themselves, and as far as I know, may even eat some of them. I removed her from the community tank in that vase, and have had only brief glimpses of the babies. I will be eager to see if any of them have substantial amounts of blue on them, although, realistically it isn't very likely.
I have a consultant, a lady up nawth who raises the blue mutation of these animals, and she has told me that if this wild male with some blue heritage would mate with one of the bright "electric blues" the resulting offspring would probably be pretty close to the color of the wild father; but in succeeding generations the bright blue could be brought back by judicious inbreeding - come on, folks, don't get squeamish on me, now, canary breeders and horse breeders do it all the time. To let you know what the full-blown electric blues look like, here is a picture I took just a couple of days ago of a female "blue" that I have recently acquired.
Go here to see some genetic speculations.
Come back again. I will sort out and post some pictures of some previous babies, born this past October to the same mother who has babies now; and I will attempt to get some photos of the new babies; also, if I get a blue or white female for my wild male there may yet be some selective color breeding going on, especially if I get really lucky and one of my crawdad's children turns out even more blue than he is (that could happen, I think, since I think I have reason to believe his ole lady is his sister). And, heck, while I'm on the aquarium photo kick, I might well decide to post a whole bunch of pictures of a variety of the small aquatic critters of my part of Florida, both of fresh and of salt water. Any comments or advice or guidance will be appreciated; and if there are any questions, I will either try to answer them or try to find out who can. Meanwhile, learn some Spanish. You never can have too many languages.
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Genetic Speculations
Blondie - an unusual crayfish