Pink Floyd Honored With New Shrimp Species Named After Band

A newly discovered species of pistol shrimp has been named to honor British psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd. And the naming has less to do with the fact that the shrimp has a “distinct, almost glowing-pink snapping claw” than Pink Floyd being the discoverers’ favorite rock band.

Named Synalpheus pinkfloydi, the species was described in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Zootaxa. The paper, titled “Synalpheus pinkfloydi sp. nov., a new pistol shrimp from the tropical eastern Pacific (Decapoda: Alpheidae),” said the samples on which the description is based were found on the Pacific coast of Panama.

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Pistol shrimps, also called snapping shrimps, can generate a large amount of sonic energy, much like rock bands. The shrimps can rapidly close their enlarged claws to create high-pressure cavitation bubbles, which create among the loudest sounds in the ocean when they implode — the impact is strong enough to kill small fish.

S. pinkfloydi is closely related and very similar-looking to a sister species, S. antillenis — found in the western Atlantic Ocean, including the Caribbean coast of Panama — which also has the pink claw. The physical differences between the two species are subtle, but there is over 10 percent difference in their genetic makeup. The two species likely diverged about 6.8-7.8 million years ago.

Arthur Anker of the Universidade Federal de Goiás in Brazil, Kristin Hultgren of Seattle University and Sammy De Grave of Oxford University Museum of Natural History were authors of the paper.

Lead author Anker said in a statement Tuesday: “I often play Pink Floyd as background music while I'm working, but now the band and my work have been happily combined in the scientific literature.”

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In their music and performances, Pink Floyd has often invoked animal imagery. Their 1969 double album “Ummagamma” contained a track called “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.” They released an album called “Animals” in 1977, which — based loosely on George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” — featured two tracks called “Dogs” and “Sheep,” with the remaining three tracks dedicated to pigs. Inflatable pigs often featured in their live shows, and a cow adorned the cover of their 1970 album “Atom Heart Mother.”

De Grave, another Pink Floyd fan, said in the statement: “I have been listening to Floyd since The Wall was released in 1979, when I was 14 years old. I've seen them play live several times since, including the Hyde Park reunion gig for Live8 in 2005. The description of this new species of pistol shrimp was the perfect opportunity to finally give a nod to my favorite band.”