Speaker 1: Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife,
Speaker 1: wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to
Speaker 1: conserving both. Big shout out to aex Hunt for their
Speaker 1: support of this podcast. I'm your host, Lake Pickle, and today,
Speaker 1: well fire up the boiler, cut up some onions, garlic
Speaker 1: and sausage, because it's time for a crawfish boil. Well not, actually,
Speaker 1: I wish it was, but it is time for all
Speaker 1: of us to learn a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: most popular crustacean that has ever graced the North American
Speaker 1: fresh waters. And believe me, I bet you'll be surprised
Speaker 1: at how much there is to learn about these critters.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it. I can picture the whole thing
Speaker 1: in my head right now. It's early April. I pull
Speaker 1: into my parents' driveway, and the second I open truck door,
Speaker 1: I am welcomed by the familiar smell of boiling crawfish,
Speaker 1: the Cajun seasoning, the diced onions and garlic, the chopped sausage,
Speaker 1: and of course the crawfish, all intermingling together in a
Speaker 1: giant pot of boiling water to make a harmony of
Speaker 1: good aroma and an even better taste. If you have
Speaker 1: never had the privilege of attending a crawfish boil, you
Speaker 1: are seriously missing out. It's a social event just as
Speaker 1: much as it is a feast, and it's been a
Speaker 1: staple of American Southern culture for a very long time.
Speaker 1: I would even wager to say that you won't find
Speaker 1: anyone down here that doesn't at least know what a
Speaker 1: crawfish is. But that is where most of our knowledge ends,
Speaker 1: myself included before I did this episode. Crawfish, the small
Speaker 1: and delicious fresh watershellfish that has brought more people together
Speaker 1: than Woodstock ever did. Look what else do we know
Speaker 1: about them? Where did they come from? How did they
Speaker 1: get here? How many of these things are there? My friends,
Speaker 1: There's a much bigger and interesting story here, more so
Speaker 1: than I even anticipated, And I think you're really gonna
Speaker 1: like it, so let's jump into it.
Speaker 2: And then we've got these Basically, these are you know,
Speaker 2: yabby pumps.
Speaker 1: It's early June and I've just met up with Calvin
Speaker 1: Razak for a day spin a field digging up crawfish.
Speaker 1: Calvin is an ichthyologist, which in the most basic terms
Speaker 1: means he's a fish scientist that specializes in crayfish and
Speaker 1: he works for the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science.
Speaker 3: I would say this is probably the last week I
Speaker 3: would do a burrowing crayfish ever.
Speaker 4: Why it gets dry?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 4: Oh okay, And these things are six to.
Speaker 3: Eight feet deep from sometimes, like we're probably only gonna
Speaker 3: get them if if they've.
Speaker 4: Just started a new borough, or if we've just pissed
Speaker 4: him off enough for them to come up.
Speaker 1: Okay, Calvin is explaining to me the methods that will
Speaker 1: be trying to dig up these burrowing crayfish or crawfish.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure the terms are interchangeable.
Speaker 3: Okay, So that that's this One species is called the
Speaker 3: Jackson Prairie crayfish Jackson Prairie crayfish yep. And so the
Speaker 3: Jackson Prairie crayfish is named after this region.
Speaker 4: This is called the Jackson Prairie.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, I didn't know that part.
Speaker 3: I didn't know, Missippy Steer, right, yeah, okay, so yeah,
Speaker 3: you know a lot about the region, so sure.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Only it's this type of crayfish that lives in these
Speaker 3: prairie habitats or these remnant prairie habitats, remnant prairies. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and there's we got like sixty eight species of crayfish.
Speaker 1: Okay, sorry to interrupt again so soon, but we've just
Speaker 1: found fun facts. Number one, there are almost seventy different
Speaker 1: species of crawfish just in Mississippi alone, Mississippi flatwoods crayfish,
Speaker 1: Jackson prairie crayfish, camp Shelby burrowing crayfish, banded mudbug, lonesome
Speaker 1: grave digger, war paint mudbug. These are all different species
Speaker 1: that also have some pretty cool names.
Speaker 4: Cool huh.
Speaker 1: See. That's the other thing that I didn't know. Like
Speaker 1: I knew that there was probably the same as most people.
Speaker 1: Like I knew there's crawfish that goes into boil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then beyond that, like I would know when I
Speaker 1: was a kid at like Shiloh Park playing baseball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ur in between practice, we would go to the ditches
Speaker 1: and try to find crawfish, and I just knew some
Speaker 1: of those crawfish looked a lot different than one ended
Speaker 1: up in a crawfish bowl. And I didn't know. I
Speaker 1: was just a guy that looked different. That's about as
Speaker 1: far as my knowledge went. And that bass itedem sometimes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's about it.
Speaker 1: But I didn't know there was sixty eight different species.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I had no clue either.
Speaker 3: And you know, you know, fish and muscles and these
Speaker 3: aquatic organisms are really diverse, like in Mississippi, we've got
Speaker 3: a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I might get some hate if I say crawfish
Speaker 2: or crayfish.
Speaker 1: You know, I never knew.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, I kind of used to use them interchangeably.
Speaker 3: But I mean, if you're talking about them in a
Speaker 3: science term, like if you're writing them down and it's
Speaker 3: supposed to be cray fish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where did crawfish even come from? You know?
Speaker 3: So cajun's well it's a French Yeah, well basic kind
Speaker 3: of it's a French Well yeah, basically it's it's.
Speaker 2: Like cravise is like the French word for it, cravise.
Speaker 3: And if you can imagine, you know, if you if
Speaker 3: you're just mixing that up cravis, crayfish.
Speaker 2: Crawfish, Yeah, that's kind of how it evolved.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, no one comes a crayfish bowl,
Speaker 1: right right. Personally, if someone ever invited me to a
Speaker 1: crayfish bowl, I think I would pass on it. Taking
Speaker 1: that poor use in terminology, to be an indicator of
Speaker 1: their cooking capabilities.
Speaker 3: But anyway, I can show you I brought in case
Speaker 3: we don't get how much of crayfish I brought.
Speaker 1: I watched Calvin open the back door of his truck
Speaker 1: and begin digging around in the back seat, and he
Speaker 1: emerged with the plastic tackle box one that you would
Speaker 1: take fishing, except this one you didn't have crank baits,
Speaker 1: jigs or artificial crawfish lures. He had actual crawfish, like
Speaker 1: live ones swimming around in there I brought.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, uh yeah, these are these are from our
Speaker 3: survey we did up in North Mississippi. But that's that's
Speaker 3: a lacuna cambarrass These are generally, you know, in more
Speaker 3: Layman's terms, a mudbug.
Speaker 4: Is that what we call these.
Speaker 1: He looks like he'd go on a ball. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've actually heard people eating these guys and they
Speaker 3: just they taste muddy.
Speaker 4: But I mean maybe they didn't.
Speaker 2: Purge him, right, but you get the claws on that guy.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, man, that these guys.
Speaker 3: So it is called this one's called the war paint
Speaker 3: mud bug because it's so fearsome and it's got some
Speaker 3: real I mean, this is good.
Speaker 2: This would hurt if it if it gets me, ye,
Speaker 2: gets the hold of me.
Speaker 1: But something to be said about the confidence of a crawfish,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, it's like looking at you and he's like,
Speaker 1: I got this.
Speaker 3: Well, if you're a crawfish, you know, Uh, everything eats
Speaker 3: a crawfish, right, You've got to have these big clauses
Speaker 3: to defend yourself if you got any chance.
Speaker 4: Like bass love crawfish, right right.
Speaker 3: Uh, there's a lot of studies out there, owls, hawks.
Speaker 2: Different snake species, amphibians like the.
Speaker 3: Hell bender, yeah, otters, mink, cross I mean, there's like
Speaker 3: hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of things animals that live
Speaker 3: in the in the water or or adjacent to the
Speaker 3: water that just eat them. And it's like, uh, like ibises, Yeah,
Speaker 3: their diet is crawfish and they're probably eating the ones
Speaker 3: that are these burrowing ones that come up seasonally after
Speaker 3: a rain event.
Speaker 2: They might live in pools and then they kind of
Speaker 2: go back down. But yeah, this.
Speaker 1: Is there any telling like a crawfish that size. Is
Speaker 1: there any way to tell how old a crawfish that
Speaker 1: is crawfish like that is?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great, that's a great question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, crawfish, we are. It's such a new field that
Speaker 3: there's questions like that that we don't even really know
Speaker 3: the answer to. We think something like this is like
Speaker 3: a three or four year old crawfish. But there's there's
Speaker 3: cave crawfish that can live twenty five thirty years. There's
Speaker 3: some crayfish that just live a year. Yeah, And so
Speaker 3: it would not surprise me that if we, you know,
Speaker 3: developed the proper tools to actually.
Speaker 2: Start studying these guys, that we would figure out that
Speaker 2: these guys lived a little bit longer than three to
Speaker 2: four years, because I mean these les live.
Speaker 3: Underground and uh, I mean they don't move very much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they stay in their tunnels underground year round.
Speaker 1: I would guess if they're underground, can't nothing really get
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a perfect defense, right, Yeah. I think that's
Speaker 3: why they a lot of he's adapted to start digging
Speaker 3: underground because it's in a stream environment. You're a perfect prey,
Speaker 3: right for a lot of things. But if you live underground,
Speaker 3: then nothing can get you.
Speaker 1: So what have we learned so far? Well, a couple
Speaker 1: of things. Number One, humans aren't the only ones that
Speaker 1: love to eat crawlfish. A whole lot of other things
Speaker 1: do too, owls, hawks, raccoons, ibis, just to name a few.
Speaker 1: Number two, there's some crawfish that can live up to
Speaker 1: twenty five years. That is insane. Number three and I'm
Speaker 1: speculating here, but from what I can tell from Calvin,
Speaker 1: it seems like there's a whole lot left to learn
Speaker 1: about these tiny animals.
Speaker 4: Anyway, let's continue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, we got a few more here too. I mean, looks,
Speaker 2: you know that.
Speaker 3: I don't have like a great example of a normal
Speaker 3: looking for fish we got. I got the kanov our cream.
Speaker 3: He's a little messed up. He probably looked at vernal crayfish.
Speaker 2: Look probably something like this.
Speaker 4: He's got his claw. I was all busted. It happens, man, Yeah,
Speaker 4: he's lost the claub again.
Speaker 3: See he's he's starting to grow, starting to grow that back,
Speaker 3: a little grown back.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right there, that's got a little mini that's a
Speaker 3: little mini claw.
Speaker 4: Give it enough time, they'll grow it back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when they grow it back, it doesn't When they
Speaker 3: grow the clauset back, it doesn't always come back the
Speaker 3: same shape or size. Basically, they're trying to grow grow
Speaker 3: it back as quickly as possible, because if if you're
Speaker 3: a crayfish.
Speaker 4: Everything needs to you got to defend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this guy's got a really bad clauset. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're lucky you're in aquarium. Yeah, this is another Lacuni Canberra.
Speaker 2: So another mudbug species, Yeah, called the painted hand. We found.
Speaker 4: This one is new. We've got a couple of species
Speaker 4: that we so we're.
Speaker 3: Still growing our knowledge on on crawfish and where they occur,
Speaker 3: and so up until a couple of months ago, we
Speaker 3: did not know a couple of these species occurred in Mississippi.
Speaker 1: Really, Yeah, how crazy is that? I don't know about y'all,
Speaker 1: But personally I tend to think, or at least hope
Speaker 1: that we have a pretty decent grasp on species taxonomy
Speaker 1: within our states, especially in freshwater aquatic species. But here
Speaker 1: we are, in twenty twenty six, still finding new species
Speaker 1: of crawfish that occur in the state of Mississippi, and frankly,
Speaker 1: I find it fascinating, so that, I mean, that's cool
Speaker 1: to me entirely. Again, it's like you would think, at
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, we've got to get handle on all
Speaker 1: this stuff. But it's honestly, it's pretty cool. You're still
Speaker 1: finding new stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we uh crayfish.
Speaker 2: I think crayfish have been neglected as like a.
Speaker 3: You know, as an organism as a whole for their importance,
Speaker 3: and it hasn't really been since two thousand and five,
Speaker 3: maybe the late nineties that we've really started to like, oh,
Speaker 3: we should look at these things and where are where
Speaker 3: do they care and how they how they are important
Speaker 3: to the ek system.
Speaker 2: These two species here, the pin and.
Speaker 3: Hand mudbug and the hatchet burrowing crayfish are our two
Speaker 3: newest species to the.
Speaker 2: State of Mississippi.
Speaker 3: We knew they were in Tennessee, but we went up
Speaker 3: to North Tennessee or on the counties that that border
Speaker 3: Tennessee Alabama and we found these two guys.
Speaker 4: So that's cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're still growing our knowledge and uh, this
Speaker 3: is an undescribed species right here. I've got a colleague
Speaker 3: who works on trying to look at the genetics of crayfish.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and see if they're see if.
Speaker 2: They're they're different. And so that one is doesn't have
Speaker 2: a name.
Speaker 4: Ut yet m yeah and unnamed.
Speaker 1: Okay, not only are we discovering new species occurring in
Speaker 1: the state. But now I'm currently looking at a quote
Speaker 1: new species that Calvin has in his crawfish tackle box
Speaker 1: that is yet to be even described. Boy, I tell you,
Speaker 1: when I drove out to meet Calvin today, I planned
Speaker 1: on learning a little bit more about crawfish and getting
Speaker 1: to play around in the mud a bit. I had
Speaker 1: no idea I would be getting to see all this
Speaker 1: new science and even newly discovered species. That's the thing
Speaker 1: about wildlife, man, there's always something new and enter around
Speaker 1: the next corner.
Speaker 2: No, No, that's cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is really cool. That's that's what kind of
Speaker 3: drew me to this field, is.
Speaker 1: There's just so much we don't know.
Speaker 3: Oh man, there's the questions you've been asking that I
Speaker 3: don't have answers for, and where these things occur. That's
Speaker 3: what's what's so cool, is uh yea, there's a lot
Speaker 3: to be discovered here.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Some of them even have bad raps too. I've we
Speaker 5: just did a recent project doing morphological comparisons of a
Speaker 5: sub genus of crayfishes up in the north eastern part
Speaker 5: of the state, and they whenever they were discovered in
Speaker 5: nineteen thirty six by a guy, it was all to
Speaker 5: see just how to kill them, because they were all
Speaker 5: viewed as crop pests because they burrowed down like from
Speaker 5: how they would described like ten feet yeah, and then
Speaker 5: they would all come up when these big rain events
Speaker 5: and just like just walk through all these big fields agfields,
Speaker 5: and they were all considered agricultural us. But now we're
Speaker 5: finding out that there's a lot of probable cryptodiversity within
Speaker 5: those groups through some of the morphological comparisons and stuff.
Speaker 5: But there's a lot of genetic work that needs to
Speaker 5: be done.
Speaker 4: To just kind of see the fascinating.
Speaker 1: As I listened to Calvin and as technician talk about
Speaker 1: newly discovered species, questions about the animal that still have
Speaker 1: yet to be answered, and some of the studies that
Speaker 1: have been done strictly on more of a pest control mindset.
Speaker 1: This might sound to touch out landish, but I'm honestly
Speaker 1: reminded of the episode we did a while back on
Speaker 1: the Gulf when we learned about how much we still
Speaker 1: don't know about that area, and what studies have been
Speaker 1: done have been focused on what we can gain or extract. Again, obviously,
Speaker 1: I'm for sustainable use of natural resources, and lord knows,
Speaker 1: I love a crawfish bowl. But I just think that
Speaker 1: there's a lot more that this species has to offer,
Speaker 1: and there's definitely a lot more that we don't know.
Speaker 1: It's this is the thing that keeps coming up and
Speaker 1: coming up with this show specifically. It's like we talked
Speaker 1: and we figured this out early on. It's like you
Speaker 1: can't appreciate some thing that you don't understand, right, So,
Speaker 1: like you don't understand crawfish, right, apparently is there's a
Speaker 1: lot left to be understood. Then you can just back out.
Speaker 1: Those things are pests, right or yeah, they're just things
Speaker 1: that make a.
Speaker 3: Or this is one this is a brown bug, and
Speaker 3: they're everywhere and there's one species, right. I think that's
Speaker 3: such a misnomer as everyone thinks that there's just one
Speaker 3: one crawfish, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but crawfish is crawfish.
Speaker 2: But they look so different, right.
Speaker 3: You can go to a ditch and you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: that looks real, that looks real different. But the knowledge
Speaker 3: isn't out there that you know, We've got so many
Speaker 3: different kinds.
Speaker 1: I tell you, just in these few minutes of discussion
Speaker 1: or so, my curiosity for the humble small crayfish or
Speaker 1: crawfish or whichever one you want to call it, has
Speaker 1: done nothing but grow all these unknown facts, all these
Speaker 1: numerous species. And I think it's time for myself and
Speaker 1: these two gentlemen to do what we came to do
Speaker 1: and see if we can dig up some crawfish from
Speaker 1: out of this small prairie remnant that we are currently in.
Speaker 1: Let me give a quick rundown on some general crawfish history,
Speaker 1: if you will, before we go and get our hands
Speaker 1: in the mud, so we can all have just a
Speaker 1: little more context. Crawfish freshwater crustaceans that trace their ancestry
Speaker 1: back to marine lobster like animals from all the way
Speaker 1: back in the Palaeozoic era. Think about the Southern dinosaur
Speaker 1: episode that we did kind of in that deep time frame,
Speaker 1: is what we're talking The transition from saltwater to freshwater
Speaker 1: happened multiple independent times, which is why the crawfish that
Speaker 1: you would find in your average Mississippi ditch and the
Speaker 1: ones that you would find in a creek in Australia
Speaker 1: are actually descended from completely separate lineages. North American crawlfish
Speaker 1: fossils go back roughly one hundred and sixty five to
Speaker 1: two hundred million years, putting them on this continent well
Speaker 1: before the first humans ever set foot here. Every crawfish
Speaker 1: native to North America east of the continental Divide belongs
Speaker 1: to a single family, Camberra day, and that family has
Speaker 1: exploded in diversity across the southeast. North America is home
Speaker 1: to roughly four hundred crawfish species, more than any other
Speaker 1: continent on Earth, and the epicenter of that diversity is
Speaker 1: right here in the Southeast. States like Tennessee, Alabama. Here
Speaker 1: at home in Mississippi consistently rank among the most crawfish
Speaker 1: rich places on the planet, and this probably has a
Speaker 1: lot to do with why we're so infamous for crawfish
Speaker 1: bulls shout out Louisiana. Ecologically, crawfish punch way above their weight.
Speaker 1: They're omnivores, eating algae, aquatic insects, small fish, and just
Speaker 1: about anything else they can get their claws on that'll
Speaker 1: work for them. That makes them a critical link in
Speaker 1: aquatic food webs, both as consumers and as prey. River otters, herons, bats, raccoons, mink,
Speaker 1: they all depend heavily on crawfish. Many species of crawfish
Speaker 1: are also primary burrowers, which is what we're going to
Speaker 1: try to dig up later today. Meaning they spend most
Speaker 1: of their lives underground, which makes them important for soul
Speaker 1: erration and water infiltration, even in upland habitats far from
Speaker 1: permanent water. Okay, that's all the context we need. Let's
Speaker 1: dig in the mud. You want to go, Yes, I
Speaker 1: want to go dig up a crawfish. Can't say I've
Speaker 1: ever done that. I have, but not the way we're
Speaker 1: about to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the way I did it when I was twelve
Speaker 1: was a lot more. Uh, I don't know, not as
Speaker 1: advanced as what we're about to do.
Speaker 2: Trust me, I still do that stuff all the time.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so if he's a knife.
Speaker 1: We grabbed all of our gear, a large soul knife,
Speaker 1: a hand powered water pump that closely resembles the type
Speaker 1: of pump you would use to fill a bicycle tire,
Speaker 1: and large containers of water, and we head downhill towards
Speaker 1: the large number of crawfish burrows that are scattered out
Speaker 1: across the grassy area in close relation to a large creek. However,
Speaker 1: the first spot that we stop at, I was kind
Speaker 1: of surprised at how far we were from the visible
Speaker 1: water No, is it surprising it'd be that far from
Speaker 1: the creek.
Speaker 4: Depends on where the water table lives. Okay, it's surprising.
Speaker 2: I've studied this this species. I studied this species last.
Speaker 3: Year, yea, and we learned that the look up for
Speaker 3: we are away from the creek, right, we're like one
Speaker 3: hundred meters.
Speaker 1: Away, yeah, and yards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty impressive.
Speaker 3: And we're up on this slope right, How can how
Speaker 3: can this crayfish be living up in what you think is.
Speaker 4: This really dry habitat?
Speaker 3: Well, there's these perched water tables underneath, and this Jackson
Speaker 3: Prairie clay that's you know, the the Yazoo clay people
Speaker 3: talk about that's shifty, and well, it's great habitat for
Speaker 3: crayfish because it holds moisture, and so they're there.
Speaker 2: They can live in some really insane areas.
Speaker 3: So compared to a lot of a lot of crayfish species,
Speaker 3: it's pretty unusual to find them this high.
Speaker 2: But they're in high elevations compared to a lot of.
Speaker 4: A lot of different species.
Speaker 1: To your point, like, I know I've been out hunting before, yea,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, like huh, crawfish whole way
Speaker 1: out here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like what you get out here.
Speaker 1: Right After surveying a few different spots, Calvin picks what
Speaker 1: he says would be a good one for my first try.
Speaker 1: In reality, I think he's trying to find me an
Speaker 1: easy one to put me on. But we'll see. I've
Speaker 1: got to pay attention here because he's about to give
Speaker 1: me some instruction on how all to do.
Speaker 2: This right down here.
Speaker 4: This one might not be that he should try this one.
Speaker 3: Okay, looks that that MUD's a little bit darker, so
Speaker 3: it's at least a little bit more recent, and.
Speaker 2: So he's been active, oh you know, maybe in.
Speaker 4: The last few weeks or so.
Speaker 3: But you see that the crayfishes is coming up out
Speaker 3: of the grass there.
Speaker 4: They're using their their their.
Speaker 2: Claws to excavate the mud dig deeper.
Speaker 4: Right that water table's dropping, so.
Speaker 3: They got to go deeper to find water, to find water,
Speaker 3: and so then they're just kind of this species kind
Speaker 3: of a lazy roommate, you know.
Speaker 4: It's it doesn't build.
Speaker 3: These large towers like the mudbug species.
Speaker 4: They just slough it off to the side.
Speaker 3: They're like, yeah, you know, I'm it doesn't need to
Speaker 3: look pretty.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it works, but you know, there's a learning curve
Speaker 4: to this.
Speaker 1: I would imagine.
Speaker 3: But if you get on man, hopefully can so right
Speaker 3: that there's a hole it's gotta be right here. There
Speaker 3: might be and sometimes they might have two or three
Speaker 3: entrances that it's possible.
Speaker 4: This one has that.
Speaker 3: But like I just poked my hole, my finger down
Speaker 3: in the hole, and so I can feel that there's
Speaker 3: a tunnel. I can feel the tunnel, and without cutting
Speaker 3: your finger off, you just kind of keep your finger
Speaker 3: in the tunnel, maybe dig a little semicircle and just
Speaker 3: start crying at that mud. And as you're doing it,
Speaker 3: you just don't want to drop a bunch of dirt
Speaker 3: down in the hole.
Speaker 2: It gets harder and it gets more compacted.
Speaker 4: It's just it's a harder to dig it.
Speaker 2: But you just keep opening that hole.
Speaker 1: Up and you're just trying to follow the tunnel.
Speaker 4: Yeah, basically just and so it's.
Speaker 3: This one.
Speaker 2: This one's pretty decent.
Speaker 4: I think. So that's what it's going to be.
Speaker 3: I would suggest, you know, keep that keep that tunnel
Speaker 3: open as much as you can without having a bunch
Speaker 3: of dirt falling it.
Speaker 4: Like I'll pry with one hand, then.
Speaker 3: I'll slip another hand behind it and kind of get
Speaker 3: any dirt that would fall.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, I can see that thing now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, how deep do.
Speaker 1: I need to go.
Speaker 2: Deep enough till we get a crawfish?
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 3: You might end up sticking your whole arm socket in there,
Speaker 3: all right, And and I would just just open it
Speaker 3: and open it up enough to eat your hand in there,
Speaker 3: and your your form in there, your elbowing there, and
Speaker 3: and if you hit water, then that's that's good because
Speaker 3: usually when you hit water you can.
Speaker 2: Kind of tickle the surface. Crayfish might come up.
Speaker 3: Maybe if that doesn't happen, you still don't hit water, then.
Speaker 2: We'll add water with these jugs.
Speaker 3: And kind of kind of hope to trick them, like, hey,
Speaker 3: it's raining right now, you guys might want to come up.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's kind of what the goal is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I'm gonna get to digging, all right,
Speaker 1: keep the comfort trying address that. Don't know, there's the
Speaker 1: wedding green. My wife would not be happy with that.
Speaker 4: The feeling is going to be more difficult, man, It
Speaker 4: appears to.
Speaker 1: Be now that I have the direction I need. Calvin
Speaker 1: takes off digging a crawfish hole of his own and
Speaker 1: leaves me to see if I can figure out the
Speaker 1: process from here on out. He did stay within easy
Speaker 1: talking distance of me, though, In case I hit any problems,
Speaker 1: I take off digging the hole, using the large soul
Speaker 1: knife to cut parallel to the tunnel that the crawfish
Speaker 1: has already made, and then using my hands to pull
Speaker 1: the loose dirt away. And let me tell you, I
Speaker 1: greatly underestimated how deep I was gonna have to dig.
Speaker 1: Before I knew it, I was up to my shoulder
Speaker 1: socket before I even found water. And a crawfish duck,
Speaker 1: this all by himself, tiny little crawfish. That's wow. But
Speaker 1: before I found the shellfish I was looking for, Calvin
Speaker 1: found success drunk.
Speaker 4: We were just yeah, that's really, that's great. That's great.
Speaker 3: Okay, So yeah, Jackson Praye crayfish.
Speaker 4: This one's the female.
Speaker 2: The females get a little larger than the males.
Speaker 4: And that's a male.
Speaker 3: And so I was talking about earlier with the beard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's on this. Yeah, I see it here. Yeah,
Speaker 4: So that's man, that's cool.
Speaker 3: I've never gotten a male and a female of this
Speaker 3: species in the same same hole before.
Speaker 4: So that's great because we don't eat.
Speaker 3: We don't even know anything about their their reproductive habits.
Speaker 4: No one, no one. So crayfish have eggs underneath their tails. Uh.
Speaker 3: And and then the baby's hatch from the eggs is
Speaker 3: kind of like a kangaroo. And no one's ever seen
Speaker 3: a female who call it in Barry like the crab
Speaker 3: has they get a bunch of eggs underneath their tails. Abmins.
Speaker 3: No one's ever seen a female in berry.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: Uh, the fact that we found a male and a
Speaker 3: female in the same hole, that's important.
Speaker 4: That's important to note. Uh.
Speaker 3: Just so because they must be in some kind of
Speaker 3: court shape. Yeah, yeah, they must be mating. And uh
Speaker 3: and that's really really cool, man, that's cool. So we'll
Speaker 3: hold on to these guys we can. I can put
Speaker 3: them in a bucket for now.
Speaker 4: But that's cool. I'm glad. Let's see if you can
Speaker 4: get I think you're close.
Speaker 1: I got water, I got yeah, you're gonna get So
Speaker 1: Backwoods University attendees, we just had an event of high
Speaker 1: importance happened on this show. As stated earlier, there's a
Speaker 1: whole lot that we don't know about crawlfish, and just
Speaker 1: now before our ears and eyes, Calvin has pulled out
Speaker 1: a male and female Jackson prairie crawlfish out of the
Speaker 1: crawlfish hole that he was digging, which is something that
Speaker 1: he has never done and is the first actual indicator
Speaker 1: of this species mating that has ever been documented. How
Speaker 1: cool is that? And how lucky are we that we
Speaker 1: just happened to be there to record it?
Speaker 4: Too cool?
Speaker 1: Not long after that, I finally found some success myself, and.
Speaker 2: We're gonna try to draw them out and try to
Speaker 2: draw drom up.
Speaker 3: That's what I did, So, yeah, you might want to.
Speaker 2: I think I might have.
Speaker 1: So let's go.
Speaker 3: Get there, catch it off off guard, feel anything hard?
Speaker 4: There you go. I was like, no, I didn't get anything.
Speaker 1: Look at that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so that's that's exactly.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, that's way cool.
Speaker 4: I'd have told you I didn't have anything.
Speaker 1: Look at that is living in the mud Jackson Jackson
Speaker 1: prairie crayfish yep, yep. As a kid who grew up
Speaker 1: searching ditches for crawfish and snakes, this was a heck
Speaker 1: of a fun day for me. I even ended up
Speaker 1: digging up another burrow and finding another crawfish. Calvin did
Speaker 1: tell me that it was rare for a newbie to
Speaker 1: go two for two on his first day, and he
Speaker 1: may have just been being nice, but I'll take it
Speaker 1: either way.
Speaker 4: Just another note. But like when you hear the.
Speaker 1: Term Jackson prairie, A lot of times, when people think
Speaker 1: of Mississippi, you and I'm not talking about people not
Speaker 1: from here. I'm talking about people that currently live here
Speaker 1: right now, When you hear Mississippi, you don't think of prairie.
Speaker 1: A lot of that has to do with agriculture and
Speaker 1: plantation pines, but it used to be a whole lot
Speaker 1: of prairie here, Jackson prairies. I don't that's what this
Speaker 1: crawfish is named after. Too, cool man, Like, when I
Speaker 1: come back, I think you'll have I said, I would
Speaker 1: have been doing this stuff. I wouldn't have known to
Speaker 1: do all the methods these biologists know how to do,
Speaker 1: but I would have been doing this when I was
Speaker 1: ten years old, and I would have been just as
Speaker 1: happy as I am right now.
Speaker 4: Always a curious kid.
Speaker 1: Before we wrap up today's episode, I want to ask
Speaker 1: Halvin a question about the role crawfish play in our ecosystem.
Speaker 1: You were talking about, Like I meant to ask you earlier,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to interrupt.
Speaker 4: You mentioned we were if the truck still.
Speaker 1: You said something along the lines like how important they
Speaker 1: are to like the entire ecosystem. I got to ask
Speaker 1: you to elaborate on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the saying goes is that.
Speaker 3: Everything eats crayfish, and crayfish eat everything. They are the
Speaker 3: perfect intermediate transfer of nutrients and energies right there. They
Speaker 3: break down leaf litter and sticks, and they might little
Speaker 3: bugs that are in the streams. But then in turn
Speaker 3: they're also eaten by avian predators, owls, hawks, you know,
Speaker 3: raccoons and otters, and they're you know, eaten by snakes
Speaker 3: and amphibians like the hellbender.
Speaker 1: I've seen wild turkeys. Yeah, tiny one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, crayfish are so vital as a bunch of different
Speaker 3: fish species.
Speaker 4: You can look at the diets of a lot of these.
Speaker 3: Organisms and they're like, you know, fifty to ninety percent
Speaker 3: hellbenders are that. It's almost like ninety five percent crayfish
Speaker 3: in their diets. Same things with with otters. You know,
Speaker 3: they're so vital to the ecosystem. If you don't have
Speaker 3: crayfish around then you know, things fall off. Crayfish also,
Speaker 3: there's certain species that live in crayfish burrows.
Speaker 2: It's just animal other people utilize their burrow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, organisms their burrows. Okay, so the go for tortoises yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, so like there's other critters. But I think
Speaker 1: there's like a couple hundred species that utilize gopher tortoise burrows.
Speaker 3: It's the same thing with crayfish. Yeah, there's a bunch
Speaker 3: of different vertebrates. But there's this animal called crawfish frog
Speaker 3: that is named aptly after the craw fish because they
Speaker 3: they live in the burrows of of of craw fish,
Speaker 3: specifically the burrowing types. Yeah, and so if you don't
Speaker 3: have them, you don't have these amphibians around. So they're
Speaker 3: really they're really important to the ecosystem.
Speaker 1: So like you have the burrow thing, so like mutualistic,
Speaker 1: and then you have like we did a several months ago,
Speaker 1: we did this podcast on min Hayden and the Gulf. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were talking about like because they're anyway without
Speaker 1: getting into it, people were talking about how important minhayden
Speaker 1: are and they get overlooked because they're just this tiny
Speaker 1: little fish. But they're like they're a forage base. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it kind of sounds like similar to what you're
Speaker 1: describing here, like they're a forage base for a lot
Speaker 1: of species, right.
Speaker 3: Right, absolutely super under underutilized and and and really ecosystem engineers,
Speaker 3: you know, they're making habitat for other things as well.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Yeah, Crawfish, Mudbucks, some fine table fair and
Speaker 1: some pretty vital players in our ecosystem. Who knew. Think
Speaker 1: about that next time you pull up to a crawfish ball.
Speaker 1: What a tasty and cool critter. I want to thank
Speaker 1: all of you for listening to Backwoods University as well
Speaker 1: as Bear Grease in this country life. It means a
Speaker 1: whole whole lot to all of us over here. If
Speaker 1: you like this episode, share it with a friend this
Speaker 1: week and stick around because there's a whole lot more
Speaker 1: on the way.