Post
by wodesorel » Fri Jun 26, 2020 5:01 pm
If he is ever a willing subject, more photos if how that thing attaches to his carapace would be amazing!
I mean.. Well.. Yeah. It could be a tumour. It's definitely an abnormal growth!! There are a few possibilities though as to how it formed, and I would not go panicking just yet. He needs to moult, and you need to see if it is there after. I have seen some weird exo presentations due to moulting glitches before, and I still think that is a strong possibility here!
I looked up to see if there are any records of tumour growths in crustaceans, and it's only been documented 15 times in decapods. Most of those were never confirmed by biopsy (it has to be diagnosed via the cellular structure) so the author of the compilation paper couldn't even guarantee all of them. I could not find images to compare, either. Now, I don't think that means a whole lot honestly, it just means that is how many it was written about! I've had what were supposed to be really rare conditions in cats and snakes where only a paper or two existed, but there is no way we could have statistically had that many animals with that rare of a condition that many times if it really was so rare.