A bizarre looking crustacean appeared in Central Park on Wednesday morning. The creature was spotted by The Pool around 103rd Street close to Central Park West, and can be seen in the video below, taken by @erutisworks.
The Pool is known for wildlife sightings of “birds, fish and amphibians,” as the Central Park Conservancy website states, but we’re not sure what to make of this.
MORE: Humpback Whale Spotted in NYC’s Hudson River
We’ve reached out to the Central Park Conservancy to see if they can tell us what this thing is, and why it’s in the park. And if anyone reading this thinks they have an answer, please leave it in the comments!
Update: the commenters were right. The Conservancy confirmed this was indeed a crayfish. A representative told us they can be found at both The Pool and The Loch.
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It’s a crayfish – or as we used to call them down south, a crawdad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crayfish
It’s a crayfish — one of the many types of wildlife are found in NYC: in the air, on the ground, under the ground, in the waters (fresh, salt, brackish). Lucky us, lucky them!
Sure , its a crawdad. We had them by the scores in VA.
It’s a crayfish. They are a regular menu item in the restaurants in the South.
It’s a crawfish. Boil him and a few of his friends up with lots of cayenne pepper, Andouille sausage, a few whole onions, some taters and corn on the cob
Crawdad! Will it survive the winter though?
Yep, in NJ they were called crayfish – just a mini lobster and quite common. I’m surprised they aren’t common in NYC streams.
Agree. Definitely a crawdead aka crayfish. I grew up in Texas catching them with bacon and a screw sinker on a string in near stagnant drainage streams. Good for eating with spices noted above (for the tails, at least.) Don’t let anyone know the body of water where he was spotted, lest you have a ton of southerners fishing for them!
Crawdad dining etiquette : Pinch the head, suck the tail….
oops! got that backwards- been a while.. I meant to say pinch the tail, suck the head. It don’t matter much- just get em in ya any way u can and you’ll be happy.
I hope some kind soul placed it back in the water…
I remember seeing several of them years ago near Bethesda Fountain.
Obviously an escapee from the Broilery. Still a little butter on his backside.
This is a fresh water crayfish. While I didn’t realize we had them in Central Park, I am not surprised. They travel when there is is rain. Hope this helps!
They’re everywhere! We saw them all over a stream in the north woods of central park today. We think it’s an invasive species of crayfish, normally found in the south.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procambarus_clarkii
It’s a crawfish. Dozens of them, especially around the Meer and 103rd St. pool. They’re featured on the guide to the species that the Nature Center publishes.
Crawfish are considered an invasive species and an aggressive in the UK; I would assume that they are non-native to NYC, too, but there are probably many, many more of them out there. They live in the muddy banks of ponds and slow-moving streams, and cold doesn’t affect them any more than it would a crab or lobster. They are a long-time favorite in Sweden, cooked in much the same manner as they are in the south, in boils called kräftskiva (minus the cob corn, which is not a thing in Sweden).
I remember seeing some of these in the brook that falls into the Pool (if memory serves…) in the 1990s when i lived nearby. Long ago and far away. Greetings from Paris.
It’s a crayfish. I saw it yesterday. It was a family too! There were baby crayfish as well. I took two pictures as well.
I have seen people fishing for them off the piers on the Hudson but never in the river in Central Park
Teenagers fish for them in the fetid water north of the Pool. I always wonder if they actually eat them!
Back in 97-98 a group of us caught a few of these babies each and took them home as pets…I ended up eating mine and getting sick because I cooked them after they had already died…..there is a freshwater stream/waterfall behind the Central Park pool where you can catch these beauties and make them fight or keep them as pets as long as you can…All that’s needed is a nice size bucket and a stick
As children, we used to go to Central Park’s Conservatory Water, where the model boats are, and go fishing for crayfish there. We’d tie a rock to a string and tie some ham to it as well. The crayfish would start climbing the string and then you could pull it up. We’d catch anywhere from 15-25. People were always curious and ask what we’d do. My dad would respond that we eat them, jokingly, but really we’d just throw them back. Good times!