Acanthacaris caeca

Image: hankplank via Flickr

It's slim pickings in the deep sea. You need only look at the lobsters to see that. There's not much flesh on the exoskeleton!

Acanthacaris caeca is a lobster from the Caribbean, Florida and Brazil. Sounds like a nice place to be! Except they live some 300 to 900 metres (1,000 to 3,000 ft) below the water's surface. In burrows beneath soft mud. So... all that sun was a bit of a waste then.

The lobster itself looks like it's wasting away. They get to about 30 cm (a foot) long, but their claws and legs are incredibly slim and spindly. This really isn't one of those meaty ones you might see getting boiled alive, torn to pieces and laid out next to some tomatoes.

Unless someone's expensive dinner came back as a skeleton? And then died again and came back as the ghost of a skeleton?

Image: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Invertebrate Zoology

At least they have Claws of Shocking Cruelty +1. If anyone round here has been eating lobster, be glad this fearsome weaponry is in the hands one so distant, tiny-eyed and blind. You wouldn't want this kind of malice on stilts seeking out revenge.