Shrimp on a treadmill makes big, well, splash on Today Show

Never one to be shellfish, Pacific University professor shares his running lower vertebrate

By Stover E. Harger Iii

The Forest Grove News-Times, Nov 24, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Courtesy of David Scholnick

David Scholnick, who teaches at Pacific's Forest Grove campus, was on the Today show Tuesday morning to discuss his experiments with a Pacific White shrimp exercising on an underwater treadmill. This is a scene from the popular YouTube video.

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The Pacific University biology professor whose video of a shrimp running on a mini-treadmill became a YouTube sensation two years ago, appeared Tuesday morning on NBC’s “The Today Show.”

David Scholnick, who teaches at the university's Forest Grove campus, was on the show to discuss his work studying the respiratory systems of invertebrates and lower vertebrates.

It was after a video of a portion of his studies, showing a Pacific White shrimp exercising on a submerged treadmill, made it onto video-sharing Web sites and into e-mail in-boxes around the country that his work received national and international attention.

Scholnick appeared on the show with fellow researcher Lou Burnett, who worked with him on the study. The work began in 2004 at the College of Charleston’s Grice Marine Laboratory and Hollings Marine Laboratory in South Carolina.

The video, which was viewed more than a million times after it hit YouTube in 2006, has been edited many times by fans and even given humorous soundtracks, ranging from rap music to the “Benny Hill Show” theme.

To see the original video, go to www.pacificu.edu/as/biology/faculty/DavidScholnick.cfm . For the remixed videos, search for “shrimp” and “treadmill” on www.youtube.com .

“My colleague, Lou Burnett, and I are hoping we can use the appearance on 'The Today Show' to highlight the importance of undergraduate research at our institutions,” Scholnick said in a Pacific press release. “[We hope to] draw some attention to how our work may help us gain a better understanding of the health of marine organisms and their importance to our oceans.”