Japanese crayfish
Amazing fact
Japanese crayfish move the small legs under their bellies to send fresh water to their eggs.
札幌市円山動物園
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
Japanese crayfish move the small legs under their bellies to send fresh water to their eggs.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Japanese crayfish
- Scientific name
- Cambaroides japonicus
- Japanese name
- ニホンザリガニ
- Group
- Freshwater animals
- Class
- Malacostraca
- Order
- Decapoda
- Family
- Cambaroididae
- Genus
- Cambaroides
A crayfish of cold, clear headwater streams, spring-fed channels, and mountain lakes and ponds in Hokkaido and northern Tohoku.
A crayfish endemic to Japan, with a brownish body and no spines on its claws or head.
An omnivore that eats mainly fallen leaves, along with insects. Eggs laid in spring are carried under the belly.
How the Japanese crayfish lives
Males and females mate in autumn. The eggs hatch in early summer. They shelter beneath fallen wood and piles of fallen leaves.
札幌市円山動物園Basic data
- Size
- Body length: about 5–7 cm
- Lifespan
- about 10 years in the wild, about 10 years in captivity
- Diet
- Accumulated organic matter and insects, among other foods
- Range
- Hokkaido, Aomori, Akita and northern Iwate
- Conservation status in Japan
- Vulnerable (VU)Ministry of the Environment of Japan, Red List 2020
Where the Japanese crayfish has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 札幌市円山動物園 — ニホンザリガニChecked: 2026-11-03
- Ministry of the Environment of Japan, Red List 2020Checked: 2026-11-07
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
The conservation status in Japan is the category in the Red Lists of the Ministry of the Environment of Japan, which assess the risk of extinction for wild animals in Japan.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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