Prawn

? Dendrobranchiata
Litopenaeus vannamei
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Arthropoda Subphylum: Crustacea Class: Malacostraca Order: Decapoda Suborder: Dendrobranchiata Bate, 1888
Superfamilies
Panaeoidea Aristeidae Benthesicymidae Penaeidae Sicyoniidae Solenoceridae Sergestoidea Luciferidae Sergestidae

Prawns are edible, shrimp-like crustaceans, belonging to the sub-order Dendrobranchiata. They are distinguished from the superficially-similar shrimp by the gill structure which is branching in prawns (hence the name, dendro="tree"; branchia="gill"), but is lamellar in shrimp. The sister taxon to Dendrobranchiata is Pleocyemata, which contains all the true shrimp, crabs, lobsters, etc.

The name "prawn" is often mis-applied, most often to shrimp, generally the larger species, such as Leander serratus; in the United States, according to the 1911 Encyclopedia, the word "prawn" usually indicates a fresh-water shrimp or prawn. In Middle English, the word "prawn" is recorded as prayne or prane; no cognate form can be found in any other language. It has often been connected to the Latin perna, a ham-shaped shellfish, but this is due to an old scholarly error that connected perna and parnocchie with prawne-fishes or shrimps. In fact, the Old Italian perna and pernocchia meant a shellfish that yielded nacre, or mother-of-pearl.

Commercial and culinary use

As used in commercial farming and fishery, the terms shrimp and prawns are generally used interchangeably. In European countries, particularly the United Kingdom, the word "prawns" is more commonly on menus than the term "shrimp", which is used more often in the United States. Australia follows this European/British use to an even greater extent, using the word "prawn" almost exclusively. ( Paul Hogan's use of the phrase "put another shrimp on the barbie" in a television advertisement was intended to make what he was saying easier for his American audience to understand, and was thus deliberately incorrect.)