Red crawfish get the blues

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Some red swamp crawfish got the blues, and folks at the Audubon Insectarium in New orleans are tickled pink. The critters, with shells ranging from indigo to sky blue with salmon-pink joints, have a home for life.

What nobody can explain is why these are crawfish of another color.

Every so often, a blue one shows up in the wild. But these hatched red.

Julie Delabbio -director of at the Northwestern State University Aquaculture Research Center in Lena - produced the first blues by accident. She was studying whether they'd grow faster or bigger if they spent more time exposed to light.

They did.

But the biggest and fastest change was from crimson to cerulean. About 60 percent of the crawfish brought into the lab turned blue. And when they shed their shells, the new shells were blue.

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)