The text is a transcript of a video where the narrator, presumably a wildlife enthusiast, is documenting a day exploring the wildlife of West Virginia, USA. The narrator works alongside a field herpetologist, Tim Brust, who has spent many summers studying the various creatures in West Virginia. They are specifically searching for the elusive burrowing crayfish, also known as the blue crayfish.
The journey starts with the discovery of a stream system in the middle of the forest, a great place to look for small woodland frogs and salamanders. They then learn that the species they are searching for, the burrowing crayfish, lives underground in areas known as seeps, where groundwater reaches the earth's surface from an underground aquifer. These crayfish hide under rocks and are found in areas known as seeps, defined as a wet place where groundwater reaches the earth's surface from an underground aquifer.
The team spends much of the day flipping rocks, searching for the elusive crayfish. They find several salamanders, including a large, slimy salamander, and a burrowing crayfish, but not the blue one they are searching for. They continue their search, finally finding a blue crayfish under a large rock. The crayfish is described as being as blue as the sky, and is seen as a "jewel" of the West Virginia hillsides.
The team then takes detailed photographs and marks the GPS coordinates of the find, as it is possible that this is a new subspecies of the crayfish. The narrator suggests naming the crayfish the "sapphire crayfish," but this is still up for debate among scientists. The episode ends with the narrator expressing hope that the crayfish will officially be named the "sapphire crayfish" in the future.
1. The text is a narrative from a nature documentary filming in West Virginia.
2. The crew is following an old gravel country road in search of rare creatures.
3. The team is working with a field herpetologist named Tim Brust.
4. They are specifically looking for a rare and elusive crustacean known as the blue crayfish.
5. The blue crayfish is a burrowing species that lives underground in areas known as "seeps".
6. Seepage is a wet place where groundwater reaches the earth's surface from an underground aquifer.
7. The burrowing crayfish hides under rocks, similar to fully aquatic crayfish.
8. The crew flipped rocks to uncover potential crayfish, but found a variety of other creatures instead.
9. They found a large slimy salamander, which they referred to as a "giant slimy salamander".
10. Salamanders can detach their tails, a trait known as "causal autonomy".
11. The crew found a fossorial crayfish, but it was not the blue crayfish they were looking for.
12. The team continued searching, despite coming across nothing but rocks.
13. The crew found a blue crayfish under a rock, after lifting a large rock.
14. The blue crayfish is a species that is subterranean and can go down as deep as eight feet under the ground.
15. The blue crayfish breaches to search for food in little pools of water underneath the rocks.
16. The blue crayfish is the size of an average crayfish and is a female, as determined by the absence of grappling legs underneath.
17. The blue crayfish has a regenerated claw, suggesting it lost a claw to a predator at some point.
18. The blue crayfish can survive in water, but it needs to come to the surface to breathe.
19. The blue crayfish has gills, like aquatic crayfish, but it can breathe air.
20. The blue crayfish is a unique find, and there is a possibility that it could be a new subspecies of crayfish.
21. The blue crayfish has been classified as a new discovery by scientists, and it is in the process of being described.
22. The common name for the blue crayfish, if it is officially classified as a new subspecies, could be the "sapphire crayfish".
23. The narrative ends with a call to check out another brightly colored creature of the West Virginia mountainsides - the cave salamander.