Local teen makes amazing discovery

There is also a row of empty bottles and jars to store his specimens.

"I can notice the slight differences between two shrimps, and then I take them back to my room for further observation," said Zhang.

It is the microscope that his father bought him that makes the bedroom look more like a mini biology lab than anything else and it's a place where Zhang can devote himself to identifying shrimps or observing crabs day and night.

With the help of the microscope, Zhang immerses himself in decoding the natural world. Sometimes he spends hours simply examining a piece of fish scale, the leg of a crab or the antenna of an insect.

"I'm often amazed by what I see while placing these tiny and fragile things under the microscope. No matter how humble an insect is, each life is so d e l i c a t e l y and uniquely structured," said Zhang, who often works so late that his parents have to force him to go to bed.

It was his deep passion for nature that led Zhang into a new world of discovery.

Last year, a group of crabs caught Zhang's attention since they looked unusual compared with the commonly seen ones in Rongxian county, where he lives. He decided to take seven of them home. After much observation and copious research by reading related articles and documents, Zhang speculated that it must be a new species.

Although he felt inspired and excited, he was worried that his assumption based solely on morphological identification was not precise enough.