Last fortnight we read the exciting news about the five newly described species of crabs found in the forests of Maharashtra and Goa. Initially, I too was drawn into the semantic debate about the usage of the word ‘discovery’. That, more so, as I have pictures of some of these recently ‘discovered’ crabs taken in Ambolighat (near Sawantwadi), back in 2010. But, like most of my mega-fauna obsessed pals, I too didn’t dig deep enough to find out their scientific names or if taxonomic work had been undertaken. The obvious result was that even though we all technically knew about their existence and they walked around in plain sight, they were unknown to science as a distinct species.

Land crab