SPINY lobsters might be social, but they sure don’t have a social care system. If these crustaceans detect disease in their fellows they take evasive action, even before the sick ones become infectious.
Mark Butler and colleagues at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, studied the behaviour of Caribbean spiny lobsters (Panulirus argus), some of which had been infected with a lethal virus. Given a choice, healthy lobsters avoided moving in with infected ones, probably by sniffing out the infection (Nature, vol 441, p 421).
This is the first time a wild animal has been shown to have such…
