It is thought that Red Spirals are galaxies in the process of transition from young to old. They are more massive than blue spirals and are found on the outskirts of large clusters of galaxies. Chris Lintott stated: "We think what we’re seeing is galaxies that have been gently strangled, so to speak, where somehow the gas supply for star formation has been cut off, but that they’ve been strangled so gently that the arms are still there." The cause might be the Red Spiral's gentle interaction with a galaxy cluster. He further explained: "The kind of thing we’re imagining that as the galaxy moves into a denser environment, there’s lot of gas in clusters as well as galaxies, and it’s possible the gas from the galaxy just gets stripped off by the denser medium it’s plowing into."