Friends Pull Nightmare Creature From Sea, Take It to Hooters
Were most people to see a giant isopod hanging around near a body of water, they would likely just watch it from afar but otherwise mind their business.
Luckily or unluckily for one giant isopod, depending on how you see things, when a group of rambunctious millennials ran into him last May, they decided to temporarily adopt him as their pet and take him to a Hooters restaurant for lunch.
And in the process, they wound up giving the isopod, which they named Benji, the adventure of a lifetime.
Watch the video below to see Benji’s journey from a lake to Hooters:
Fun times, aye? It remains unclear whether Benji ever made it back to his home, or whether he suffered any harm during his involuntary journey with the millennials.
Because of Benji’s size, it’s presumed he’s part of the genus Bathynomus, or what the millennial magazine Mental Floss describes as “the giant isopod.”
“They’re crustaceans, and are closely related to marine crustaceans like shrimp and crabs, and terrestrial crustaceans like the pillbug,” the magazine notes.
Moreover, giant isopods reach sizes between 7.5 and 14.3 inches in length and possess a giant isopod shell that “comes in two varieties: brown and pale lilac.”
Here’s the kicker: Isopods can survive without food for very lengthy periods of time, which is a plus for Benji, since he was taken away from his natural habitat.
“One of them ate twice last year, one of them ate four times last year, one of them ate almost ten times last year,” Ann Auten, describing the giant isopods she cares for at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California. “Another one I think was seven times.”
While it’s unclear how long giant isopods can survive out of water, it’s known that other crustaceans such as blue crabs can survive roughly 24 hours out of water “as long as their gills are kept moist,” as noted by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Dovetailing back to Benji, is what the millennials did wrong? They took him out of his natural habitat, passed him around like a toy and seemingly took pleasure in apparently irritating the heck out of him.
Some would would say they were just fooling around in good fun, but others would disagree.
What do you think?
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