A giant isopod at Loveland Living Planet Aquarium in Draper, Utah. | cifraser1, Flickr // CC by SA 2.0 And it’s all in the eyes. Giant isopods have widely spaced, fixed compound eyes with more ...

A new deep-sea crustacean that bears a striking resemblance to the facehuggers from “Alien” has been identified in the Gulf of Mexico. The bathynomus yucatanensis is a species of giant isopod ...

The ocean is home to some of the planet's largest and most incredible creatures. Yet, many of these giant beings remain ...

Newly-discovered giant sea bug resembling Darth Vader isn't as scary as it looks The creature belongs to a genus of giant isopods found in abundance in deep-sea waters, though the size of B ...

A 14-legged giant isopod is the highlight of a new dish at a ramen restaurant in Taipei and it has people queuing up—both for pictures and for a bite from this bowl of noodles.

Recent years have seen giant isopods like B. vaderi go from being merely the accidental bycatch of local fishermen to an expensive delicacy elevated above even lobster, the so-called king of seafood.

The recent study described Bathynomus yucatanensis, a giant isopod subspecies that can grow up to 1.64 feet from oblong head to rounded tail. The team’s work is published in the Journal of ...

More facts about isopods Isopods are invertebrates – animals without backbones – that belong to the group known as crustaceans, which also includes crabs and shrimp. There are about 10,000 ...

A new species of giant isopod, Bathynomus yucatanensis Huang et al. via Journal of Natural History. Giant isopods are like something out of a science fiction novel—these massive, ...

By early 2023, the team realized that these giant isopods belonged to a species that had not been described by scientists. Bathynomus vaderi is considered a supergiant isopod, reaching about 12.7 ...

Giant isopods are an example of deep-sea gigantism. Above, a giant isopod feasts on a fish in the deep sea around 40 miles southeast of Key West, Florida. NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research ...

Like all giant isopods, of which there are around 20 species, B. Vaderi is a carnivore and prefers feeding on crustaceans, fish, squid, and even whale carcasses.