Every bristle on this animal has to be rebuilt from scratch several times a year.
A shrimp grows by shedding its whole external shell, and for a species that has invested in a coat of setae that means growing an entire new coat inside the old one before the swap, then backing out of the old shell without breaking the new tufts, which are soft. The discarded shell keeps the shape, the hair and the color, which is why an empty Saron molt looks convincingly like a dead Saron and fools photographers regularly.
For a few hours afterward the animal is soft, pale and defenseless, and everything it has spent its life doing - hiding under debris, matching the rubble, holding still - is worth nothing, because it cannot hold anything at all. So it molts deep inside a crevice and waits.
The pinecone texture the name refers to is that coat at its densest. Mottled brown and green, five centimeters, out on the rubble at night.
- dense bristles giving a pinecone texture
- mottled brown, green and cream
- shorter front legs than its relatives
- up to 5 cm
