****:CRAWFISH OR CRAYFISH? Crawfish, or Crayfish? There are heated arguments about which is the correct name. The name crawfish was used in 1817 by Thomas Say, the first American zoologist to study these animals. Crayfish was coined by the English scientist, Thomas Huxley, about 50 years later. In this part of the country they are also commonly called "crawdad", "crabs" or, in the southern part of the state, "mudbugs ". Whatever you prefer to call them, there is hardly an acre of water in Illinois (unless it is the depths of Lake Michigan) or any acre of wet land, where these small freshwater relatives of the lobster are not found. About a hundred species are known in North America, of which a half dozen are abundant in this state. From head to tail, a crawfish is crowded with a large assortment of appendages with special uses for each. In front are a pair of big saw- toothed pincers for defense and capturing food; then four pairs of walking legs, two with small slender nippers and two without, also used for clinging, digging, handling food, and grooming the body. About the head are three pairs of "feelers" for exploring and warning of danger; a pair of beady black eyes on the ends of moveable stalks; three pairs of "jaw-feet" and three sets of jaws that chew sidewise. The flexible 6- jointed abdomen ends in a flaring tail made up of five hinged scoops used for catapulting the animal, when alarmed, backwards in a smokescreen of mud. As a rule, mature crawfish mate in <b>...</b>
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