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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time for an episode from the Vault. This one originally

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Speaker 1: published November. It's called Crabs Eat Everything Around Me Part one.

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Speaker 1: It's about you know, it's about crabs eating stuff. I

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Speaker 1: don't think there's any simpler way to put it than that.

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Speaker 1: My welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of

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Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And today we're gonna be talking about crabs. I think

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Speaker 1: this will be the first episode in a in a

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Speaker 1: series that we're doing here at least two parts to this,

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Speaker 1: because the crabs are ravenous and we're gonna be talking

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Speaker 1: all about crabs eating things. You know, this is kind

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Speaker 1: of a holiday tradition for so I figured how many

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Speaker 1: years ago it was that we did uh, we did

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Speaker 1: Christmas Crabs. We talked about the Crabs of Christmas Island

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Speaker 1: as our Christmas episode, and and so it feels appropriate

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Speaker 1: that as we enter into the holiday season here with

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Speaker 1: in November and December, that we should return to the

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Speaker 1: world of crabs and the feasts that crabs engage in.

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Speaker 1: Have you ever noticed how the crabs come earlier every year?

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Speaker 1: At least it feels that way. But yes, anyway that

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Speaker 1: this will be a feast day of an episode because

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Speaker 1: it will all be about crabs feasting sometimes things feasting

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Speaker 1: on crabs, mostly what crabs themselves feast on. It's funny

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Speaker 1: how crabs are are a natural source of feasting related content. Uh, Rob,

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Speaker 1: I I think you saw my note about this beforehand,

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Speaker 1: but I discovered the strangest Google results phenomenon before we

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Speaker 1: came in here. What I found out earlier today was

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Speaker 1: that when I do a Google search for crabs, it's

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Speaker 1: five letter word crabs. You'd think the first result would

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Speaker 1: be what like Wikipedia page for this animal, but no,

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Speaker 1: the first result is seafood restaurants featuring crabs. They're trying

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Speaker 1: to sell me some crab legs and drawn butter. And

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Speaker 1: then the second result is the is like a health

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Speaker 1: node about pubic lice. And then finally the third thing

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Speaker 1: in the result is about the actual animals, the decapod crustaceans. Well, um,

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Speaker 1: after you mentioned this, I had to try it out

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Speaker 1: for myself. And and granted I'm not going in like fresh,

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Speaker 1: you know, I do use Google quite a bit um. Uh.

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Speaker 1: So for me, when I did a search for crabs

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Speaker 1: c R A B s um, the number one hit

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Speaker 1: is sponsored seafood content, but then it's the wiki for

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Speaker 1: the decapod crustaceans, and then it's pubic lice in number

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Speaker 1: at number three um, and then it's more pubic lice,

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Speaker 1: and then it's some stuff about the crab nebula I

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Speaker 1: think video content about the crab nebula uh, and then

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Speaker 1: it's back to pubic lice once more, before rounding out

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Speaker 1: page one search results with the Britannica dot com article

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Speaker 1: about decapod crustaceans. Okay, so as our top three go basically,

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Speaker 1: Google just thinks I'm going to be more interested in

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Speaker 1: uh in in the lice than you are. I have

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Speaker 1: no idea. I mean it could. I mean we were

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Speaker 1: both probably searching for crabs all morning um and and

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Speaker 1: perhaps yeah days before as well. So it seems like,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how these algorithms work, but

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Speaker 1: it seems like they would have gotten into their robotic

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Speaker 1: minds that these are gentlemen who are interested in decapod crustaceans,

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Speaker 1: and we should serve them up even more of it. Guy,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, it's all mysteries in there. Who knows

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Speaker 1: the mind of the machine crabs that that order all

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Speaker 1: those results for us? Um, But I wanted to come

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Speaker 1: back to uh this uh image in amber. So there's

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Speaker 1: a study that was just published in Science Advances earlier

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Speaker 1: this year by Javier lukeway at All, and it was

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Speaker 1: called Crab and Amber reveals an early colonization of non

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Speaker 1: marine environments during the Cretaceous. So this discovery concerns a

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Speaker 1: fossil found in a piece of amber mind in modern

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Speaker 1: day me and Mar dating back roughly a hundred million

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Speaker 1: years or so, so squarely in the middle of the

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Speaker 1: Cretaceous period, containing a remarkably well preserved specimen of a

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Speaker 1: crab bearing the author's note, large compound eyes, delicate mouthparts,

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Speaker 1: and even gills. Basically it's wholly intact. The whole thing

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Speaker 1: is in there. Yeah, it's quite impressive looking in the

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Speaker 1: way that it is um its body. It's position too,

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Speaker 1: it looks like it is like throwing up its clause

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Speaker 1: and a defensive position that we've all seen. And I

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Speaker 1: think or you haven't seen it in person, you've probably

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Speaker 1: seen a picture of it, of a crab like on

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Speaker 1: the beach saying stand back, mammal, do not make me

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Speaker 1: pinch you. Um. So it's as if, through you know,

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Speaker 1: across uh, this is vast stretch of time, the crab

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Speaker 1: is warning us to stay back with such ferocity that

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Speaker 1: the very forces of geology like conspired to preserve this

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Speaker 1: this uh, this ants it's doing. And yeah, maybe I

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Speaker 1: maybe I sound silly, but I give this image five

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Speaker 1: out of five coal hods. I am profoundly stirred by

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Speaker 1: this crab trapped in amber. And and not just because

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Speaker 1: it you know, it looks like that haunting mosquito and

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Speaker 1: amber prop from Jurassic Park. But but there's something a

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Speaker 1: little bit more to this too, because it raises these

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Speaker 1: questions like how did a crabred million years ago get

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Speaker 1: stuck in tree resin to become part of a fossilized

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Speaker 1: piece of amber. We don't know the answer to this,

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Speaker 1: but the researchers hypothesized, well, maybe this was a crab

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Speaker 1: that lived a partially arboreal lifestyle. There are crabs today

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Speaker 1: that climb trees as part of their lifestyle. So maybe

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Speaker 1: this crab was climbing trees for some reason. Uh and uh,

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Speaker 1: and and maybe it's also just because it causes you

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Speaker 1: to realize that crabs existed and we're already beginning to

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Speaker 1: come out of the oceans to move inland from the

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Speaker 1: beaches hundred million years ago when dinosaurs were at their apex.

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Speaker 1: And I always love those realization moments where you have like, oh, yes,

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Speaker 1: animals of this kind and this kind actually did live

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Speaker 1: alongside one another, terrestrial dinosaurs and terrestrial or semi terrestrial crabs.

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Speaker 1: And Robert, I think you'll be very familiar with the

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Speaker 1: the the did they fight mindset. Right as soon as

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Speaker 1: you imagine that, the my sort of like eight year

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Speaker 1: old boys brain starts going, did they ever fight each other?

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Speaker 1: Dinosaurs versus crabs? I don't know how much of a

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Speaker 1: fight that would have been, but I guess more more

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Speaker 1: relevantly I could say, did they ever eat one another?

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Speaker 1: And Uh, you actually gotta give you credit because you

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Speaker 1: turned up the source on this for the copper Light

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Speaker 1: study that found a pretty good case that yes, at

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Speaker 1: least the eating was going one way. Yeah, but the

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Speaker 1: details of this I was surprised at because you know

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Speaker 1: not not to say that that some like smaller you know,

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Speaker 1: beach combing dinosaur wasn't also hunting and gobbling up crabs.

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Speaker 1: But the evidence here points to a different mode of consumption, right.

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Speaker 1: So this is a study published in Scientific Reports in

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Speaker 1: The lead author was a professor Karen Chin, who is

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Speaker 1: Curator of Paleontology at Colorado University Boulders Museum of Natural History.

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Speaker 1: And uh so this was by by Chin, Feldman and

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Speaker 1: Tashman called Consumption of Crustaceans by mega herbivorous Dinosaurs, dietary

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Speaker 1: flexibility and Dinosaur life history Strategies. So this is a

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Speaker 1: copper light study, and you've gotta love a copper light study.

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Speaker 1: Copper light, of course, is fossilized animal dung. This is

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Speaker 1: dung that has become a mineral of the Earth. And

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Speaker 1: the top line on this is that, uh collections of

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Speaker 1: fossilized dinosaur feces from seventy five million years ago found

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Speaker 1: in modern day Montana revealed that some giant herbivorous dinosaurs

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Speaker 1: weren't always strictly herbivorous. Now, this would not be the

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Speaker 1: first time a subject like this has come up on

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Speaker 1: the show before, I think It was in our episodes

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Speaker 1: on the Minotaur that we talked about evidence of bovines,

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Speaker 1: cows and bulls and related animals sometimes eating flesh and

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Speaker 1: in addition to their mostly vegetable diets. But it looks

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Speaker 1: like maybe something similar was going on with giant herbivorous dinosaurs.

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Speaker 1: So these feces probably belonged to hadrosaurs or the duck

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Speaker 1: build dinosaurs. And it looks from the contents of these

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Speaker 1: copper lights like these giant herbivores sometimes would supplement their

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Speaker 1: vegetable diets by eating rotten wood and crustaceans. You can

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Speaker 1: tell by these, uh, these remains preserved in the fossilized

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Speaker 1: dung which are full of wood, fiber and crustacean shells. Now, again,

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Speaker 1: this this raises these wonderful questions like how did this happen? Why?

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Speaker 1: And you could imagine it's possibly some kind of accident,

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Speaker 1: maybe a duckbill dinosaurs eating a rotten log for some reason,

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Speaker 1: trying to get some kind of nutrients from all this

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Speaker 1: rough rotten wood, and the rotten log just happens to

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Speaker 1: be full of crabs. But to come back against that,

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Speaker 1: against the accident hypothesis, I just want to read briefly

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Speaker 1: from the press release describing this study. Quote, the size

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Speaker 1: of the crustacean shell bits in the copper lights indicate

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Speaker 1: the crustaceans were at least two inches in length and

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Speaker 1: perhaps larger. Uh. And this is according to the lead author,

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Speaker 1: Karen Chin. Individual crustaceans comprised from twenty six of the

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Speaker 1: width of a common had restored beak, suggesting it was

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Speaker 1: unlikely that crustaceans were unwittingly swallowed. Uh So, the ideas,

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Speaker 1: it looks like whatever these crustaceans were, maybe they were crabs.

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Speaker 1: We don't know for sure what they were, but there

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Speaker 1: have been fossilized crab claws found from around the same

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Speaker 1: area and going back even further in time, So there

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Speaker 1: were crabs around these station. Shells could have belonged to

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Speaker 1: crabs that were smashed up too much in the in

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Speaker 1: the copper light to know for sure, but they could

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Speaker 1: have been crabs, and they would have been big enough

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Speaker 1: that it kind of seems unlikely they just accidentally went

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Speaker 1: into the hadrosaur's mouth. It seems like the hadrosaur would

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Speaker 1: kind of have to choose to eat the crab. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I'm also For me, it just makes me wonder,

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Speaker 1: like what was the digestive system of a hydrosaur, Like

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Speaker 1: it was just it seems like an industrial processing plant.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's just rotten wood. Uh, it's all these

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Speaker 1: these are these these fairly large like whole crustaceans and

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Speaker 1: or their shells embedded in it, and you just you

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Speaker 1: just eat that down because you're still hungry. And it

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Speaker 1: may not have been about just obtaining raw calories like

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Speaker 1: they may have been searching for a specific nutrient like

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Speaker 1: we see in some other cases of otherwise herbivorous animals

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Speaker 1: sometimes eating say bones or something where they're looking out

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Speaker 1: certain types of minerals, maybe calcium or something. It could

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Speaker 1: have been the case that maybe eating eating crustaceans like

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Speaker 1: crabs for the drsaurs was linked to the reproductive cycle.

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Speaker 1: They may have been seeking to bulk up on calcium

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Speaker 1: or something. We don't know though, but oh whatever the

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Speaker 1: answer there, I just I love it. So mega herbivorous

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Speaker 1: or so called herbivorous dinosaurs eating crabs or crab like

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Speaker 1: crustaceans seventy five million years ago and crabs a hundred

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Speaker 1: million years ago getting frozen in amber for all of time. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it just it just fills my you know, I got

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Speaker 1: butterflies under my skin, all over my limbs. It's like,

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Speaker 1: this makes me so happy. Yeah, I mean for the crabs.

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Speaker 1: Though this is just another couple of pages in the

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Speaker 1: history of the crab planet, well right, because it all

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Speaker 1: it raises the question going the other way, the one

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Speaker 1: we're saying we didn't know if we could answer. But

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Speaker 1: so it looks like some dinosaurs in some cases eight

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Speaker 1: crabs or crab like animals, other crustaceans. But the other

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Speaker 1: question would be did crabs ever eat dinosaurs? I don't

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Speaker 1: know about you. I could not find anything, any evidence

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Speaker 1: to directly address that question. As far as I know,

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Speaker 1: there is no physical evidence anybody's aware of, uh, to

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Speaker 1: settle this issue. But I would say, if we can't

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Speaker 1: find an answer to the question based on everything else

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about in the series, I think

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Speaker 1: I would argue that in the absence of any evidence,

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Speaker 1: our default assumption should be yes. I believe so. I

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Speaker 1: think based on what we know about the nature of

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Speaker 1: crabs in general and the sort of things they do eat,

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Speaker 1: it it only makes sense that that they would they

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Speaker 1: would partake of dinosaur meat if they came across it

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Speaker 1: in their environment Alright, well, I say from here on out,

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Speaker 1: for the rest of the series, we're just going to

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Speaker 1: be looking at crabs eating all kinds of stuff. So,

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Speaker 1: uh so, rob if you're ready, let's let's begin the

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Speaker 1: crab feast. Yeah. But like just like with human feast,

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Speaker 1: it's not enough to know what you're going to be eating.

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Speaker 1: It's it's also about how you're going to eat. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know that, So we should we should probably start

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Speaker 1: there with how crabs go about, uh consuming their various feasts. Right. So,

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Speaker 1: crabs are of course a verse subgroup of the order

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Speaker 1: of decapod crustaceans, So the decapod as in having ten feet,

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Speaker 1: they are crustaceans. So there, you know, creatures with an exoskeleton.

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Speaker 1: In order to grow bigger, they have to molt, so

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Speaker 1: they have to shed their hard exoskeleton and come out

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Speaker 1: with a soft one while they can rapidly increase in

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Speaker 1: size and then reharden that. Crabs of course live in

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Speaker 1: all kinds of environments. They originally come from the ocean,

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Speaker 1: but over time and evolutionary history, like we saw with

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Speaker 1: the crab preserved in amber, they started to move out

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Speaker 1: away from the ocean and eventually into freshwater environments, and

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Speaker 1: there are even land crabs. So as to the question

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Speaker 1: of how and what do crabs normally consume, well, there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of different species of crabs, and some

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Speaker 1: of them have different dietary specialization, so there's no one

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Speaker 1: answer to that question. But if you just want to

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Speaker 1: sort of be general overall, it seems like the majority

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Speaker 1: of crabs are not especially picky. Uh. Many crabs appear

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Speaker 1: to be omnivorous opportunists who will eat pretty much anything

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Speaker 1: they can shove into their mouths, and this can include

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Speaker 1: everything from vegetation just gobbling up algae and fresh plant

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Speaker 1: material leaf litter to uh to eating meat of course,

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Speaker 1: scavenging scavenging carry in which crabs do a lot, or

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Speaker 1: just getting little bits of organic or animal detritus, to

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Speaker 1: actively hunting live prey with their claws, which some crabs

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Speaker 1: do so as to diet. Crabs are all over the map.

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Speaker 1: But the next thing I wanted to mention this was

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Speaker 1: new information to me when when I was getting ready

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Speaker 1: for this episode. So animal bodies, you know, they've usually

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Speaker 1: got some kind of special equipment to help them extract

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Speaker 1: the maximum amount of nutritional value from their food, and

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Speaker 1: this often involves either chemically or mechanically breaking down the

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Speaker 1: food from its original form, often to increase the surface

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Speaker 1: area or the ease of access to nutrients by the

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Speaker 1: digestive system, So there might be some kind of chemical

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Speaker 1: breakdown as well. So you know, you know, you know

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Speaker 1: the equipment. You've got Humans have teeth that we chew

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Speaker 1: with and that that mashes food up and increased surface area.

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Speaker 1: You've got gastric acid secreted by the cells in the

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Speaker 1: lining of your stomach. But then you know they're all

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Speaker 1: kinds of other strategies. Spiders will vomit digestive enzymes over

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Speaker 1: and into their prey to uh sort of reduce the

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Speaker 1: nutritious parts down to a fluid or mush that they

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Speaker 1: can then slurp up with the mouth. And they also

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Speaker 1: do have a form of chewing with their jaws, which

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Speaker 1: are called chillissory. But crabs have one of the most

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Speaker 1: glorious digestive aids I think I've ever read about. So

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Speaker 1: if you ask the question do crabs have teeth, I

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Speaker 1: think the answer would have to be yes and no

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Speaker 1: in a couple of ways. So Obviously, crabs do not

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Speaker 1: have teeth like us. Uh. They typically eat first by

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Speaker 1: using their claws to tear food into small chunks before

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Speaker 1: bringing it up to their mouth parts, and then they

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Speaker 1: usually have a number of different moving mouth parts. These

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Speaker 1: consist of um these things called maxilla heads, also known

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Speaker 1: as jaw legs, which are sort of like hands within

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Speaker 1: the mouth. These are are modified a little leg parts

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Speaker 1: that will sort of grab bits of food and pass

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Speaker 1: them inward and onward to other parts of the mouth

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Speaker 1: known as the mac silly and the mandibles, which can

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Speaker 1: further shred the food apart into smaller pieces that can

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Speaker 1: be swallowed. But then once the food is swallowed, it

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Speaker 1: is inside the digestive system where the most amazing feature appears,

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Speaker 1: and it's this. Crabs, along with other related crustaceans, have

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Speaker 1: an organ known as a gastric mill, which is more

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Speaker 1: or less teeth inside the stomach. They've got gut teeth.

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Speaker 1: They can chew with the insides of their stomachs, And

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Speaker 1: this is another one that really got me. This is

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Speaker 1: also worth googling some pictures of if you can, because

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Speaker 1: there there are some uh some photos you can find

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Speaker 1: on the Internet of like gastric mills, how having been

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Speaker 1: extracted from the inside of a of a crabs digestive system,

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Speaker 1: and they it's hard to describe how they look. They've

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Speaker 1: they've got the kind of they're like a semi translucent

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Speaker 1: pinkish orange, uh sci fi weapon hood. I don't know

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Speaker 1: it's but it's also kind of beak like. It's very unnerving.

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Speaker 1: I think, what are the interesting things about about the

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Speaker 1: way of crab eats? And especially as evident if you're watching,

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Speaker 1: um it's a close up video of a crab eating,

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Speaker 1: is that there even more so with other creatures this

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Speaker 1: there's this sense of meticulous um disassembly. Uh, the crab

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Speaker 1: is not so much I mean, it is consuming, but

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Speaker 1: it is also just uh just taking whatever it is

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Speaker 1: consuming completely apart. It is disassembling matter and putting it

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Speaker 1: into itself. Well, yeah, the crab makes you think about

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Speaker 1: how much how much humans actually need to use tools

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Speaker 1: for the kind of disassembly that they do leading into

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Speaker 1: into eating say meat or something you know, like so

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Speaker 1: humans devote a huge amount of their tech know logical

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Speaker 1: energy over the history of time into creating like tools

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Speaker 1: for butchery of food, cutting food into smaller and smaller

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Speaker 1: pieces that are manageable that you can bite into, chew up,

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Speaker 1: and all that. The crab they've they've got their disassembly

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Speaker 1: tools right there on their body. They've got the claws,

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Speaker 1: they've got the maxilly and the mandibles, and then once

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Speaker 1: the food's inside, they've got additional opportunities for chewing. You

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Speaker 1: don't have to stop chewing once you have swallowed. So

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Speaker 1: the way the gastrit mill works is that it's sort

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Speaker 1: of choose the food from inside the stomach by grinding

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Speaker 1: it between these hard parts like plates or surfaces that

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Speaker 1: are moved around by powerful gut muscles. And so while

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Speaker 1: I was reading about the gastrit mill, I came across

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Speaker 1: a really interesting piece of research from twenty nineteen that

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Speaker 1: I just had to mention as as we're going along here,

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Speaker 1: and this was by Jennifer R. A. Taylor, Maya S. Devrees,

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Speaker 1: and Damian O Alias published in the Proceedings of the

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Speaker 1: Royal Society be In in nineteen called Growling from the

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Speaker 1: Gut co Optation of the gastric mill for Acoustic communication

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Speaker 1: in ghost Crabs. So the short version of this discovery

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Speaker 1: is that you've got this animal, the ghost crab scientific

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Speaker 1: names quadrata, and it will sometimes make a threatening sound

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Speaker 1: by way of having evolved. Quote a novel stridulation apparatus

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Speaker 1: on the clause that is used during agonistic interactions. So,

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Speaker 1: strigulation is any sound that is made by an animal

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Speaker 1: rubbing pieces of its skeleton or exoskeleton together. The very

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Speaker 1: common example you can think of is the sounds made

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Speaker 1: by crickets or grasshoppers. That's strigulation. They rub parts of

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Speaker 1: their legs or their carapists together, and that makes this

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Speaker 1: chirping sound that is useful to the animal for some reason,

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Speaker 1: maybe for maybe for mating, or maybe as warning signals

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Speaker 1: or something. The ghost crab appears to use this stridge

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Speaker 1: relation of rubbing its claws as a as a warning sign,

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Speaker 1: as signs like Hey, I'm threatened, I am dangerous. I've

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Speaker 1: got these big claws. You do not want to get

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Speaker 1: near me. But in addition to the strigulation they make

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Speaker 1: with their with their claws, to quote from the abstract

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Speaker 1: of this paper, by a tailor at all quote, but

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Speaker 1: they also produce a rasping sound without their claw apparatus.

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Speaker 1: We investigated the nature of these sounds and show that

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Speaker 1: oh quadrata adopted a unique and redundant mode of sound

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Speaker 1: production by co opting the gastric mill the grinding teeth

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Speaker 1: of the fore gut. Acoustic characteristics of the sound are

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Speaker 1: consistent with strigulation and are produced by both male and

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Speaker 1: female crabs during aggressive interactions. Uh so, yes they are.

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Speaker 1: Actually they can like chirp like a cricket with the

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Speaker 1: grinding teeth inside their stomachs in order to have a

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Speaker 1: redundant way of making this aggressive sound display that they

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Speaker 1: when they're being threatened. And the authors actually speculate as

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Speaker 1: to why they would have this redundancy why be able

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Speaker 1: to make this sound with two different parts of their body?

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Speaker 1: They write, quote, A key advantage of using gastrixtrigulation over

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Speaker 1: the claw apparatus is that it provides signal while freeing

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Speaker 1: up the chel a for postural display and attack readiness.

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Speaker 1: So you know, basically this this allows you to have

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Speaker 1: claws out to be maximally visually threatening and maybe maximally

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Speaker 1: dangerous if a fight actually does start, while still making

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Speaker 1: the grinding scary sound. So yes, anyway, crabs and related

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Speaker 1: crustaceans gastric mills. The chewing doesn't have to stop once

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Speaker 1: you go down the gullet. And like we said, a

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Speaker 1: lot of crabs are not very picky eaters, So who knows,

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Speaker 1: maybe maybe if you could be taken apart into small

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Speaker 1: enough pieces, you would go down the gullet. Than I

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Speaker 1: guess from here we're going to start getting into the

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Speaker 1: various meals of the crabs. You know, what do they

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Speaker 1: use this uh, this fabulous uh equipment for? And I

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Speaker 1: guess that I was thinking that one of the best

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Speaker 1: places to start would be talking about crabs eating humans,

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Speaker 1: because obviously that's going to be one of the most

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Speaker 1: pressing questions to us the humans, right. Uh, Sure it eats,

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Speaker 1: but will it eat me? How delicious am I? Do

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Speaker 1: I deserve to be eaten by crabs? Um? And I

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Speaker 1: think it's an understandable question. I mean, on one hand,

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Speaker 1: like we are concerned with with this question with any

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Speaker 1: creature on some level, you know, we have to have

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Speaker 1: that that that that box checked off or or empty?

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Speaker 1: Will it eat me? Uh? Is it incapable of eating me?

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Speaker 1: Does it want to eat me? Uh? These are always

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Speaker 1: questions that we have about other creatures in the animal

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Speaker 1: kingdom and the various horror movies and animal creature flicks

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Speaker 1: that we uh we watch. They don't help matters either, because,

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Speaker 1: on one hand, we have our giant crab movies in

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00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:00,760
Speaker 1: which giant crabs, you know, in addition to occasionally wanting

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Speaker 1: to take over the world or destroy whole cities, they

396
00:23:03,280 --> 00:23:06,280
Speaker 1: want to grab people with their claws and either try

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00:23:06,400 --> 00:23:09,440
Speaker 1: to eat them, or it's implied that that crab is

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00:23:09,480 --> 00:23:11,720
Speaker 1: grabbing you because it wants to eat you, or, in

399
00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:14,479
Speaker 1: the case of Attack of the Crab Monsters by Roger Corman,

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Speaker 1: not just eat you but also absorb your soul and

401
00:23:17,320 --> 00:23:22,200
Speaker 1: intelligence in so doing. Right, But then, uh, we also

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00:23:22,280 --> 00:23:26,679
Speaker 1: have countless movies in which we see crabs scavenging, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, crawling around on the corpses of humans who

404
00:23:29,240 --> 00:23:32,159
Speaker 1: have probably been dispatched by some kind of slasher or

405
00:23:32,240 --> 00:23:34,560
Speaker 1: some sort of monster that it itself that it that

406
00:23:34,800 --> 00:23:37,960
Speaker 1: is not concerned with eating the human. Uh. This is

407
00:23:38,040 --> 00:23:41,040
Speaker 1: like a standard scene. And oh goodness, I was trying

408
00:23:41,040 --> 00:23:43,159
Speaker 1: to think of specific examples, and I couldn't come up

409
00:23:43,160 --> 00:23:44,399
Speaker 1: with one. But I know I've seen it over and

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Speaker 1: over again. Like cut from the you have a dark

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00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:51,359
Speaker 1: scene with something spooky happening, an attack is um is

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Speaker 1: shown or implied, and then it's daylight and cops are

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Speaker 1: discovering a body and their crabs on it. I can

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Speaker 1: think of two examples. One is in Joy Laws after

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Speaker 1: the initial tack attack at the beginning, when they discover

416
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:05,880
Speaker 1: the body of the first victim on the beach, their

417
00:24:05,920 --> 00:24:09,119
Speaker 1: crabs everywhere, and it makes the police sound sick. Um.

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Speaker 1: Second one is an even better movie. It is I

419
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Speaker 1: Know What You Did Last Summer, in which there's a

420
00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:20,680
Speaker 1: part where the nineties teen slasher movie where Jennifer Lovehwood

421
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Speaker 1: finds a body in the trunk of her car. She

422
00:24:22,359 --> 00:24:24,359
Speaker 1: did not put it there. I think she's being messed

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Speaker 1: with by a killer and it's covered in crabs that

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00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:31,080
Speaker 1: are presumably scavenging it. So yeah, and I think there

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Speaker 1: are various other films. I thought I've seen a Jellow

426
00:24:33,320 --> 00:24:35,760
Speaker 1: film where they're there there crabs on a body. It's

427
00:24:35,800 --> 00:24:38,040
Speaker 1: just it makes sense. They're discovering a body, put some

428
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:40,520
Speaker 1: crabs on it, um and uh, and it'll make it

429
00:24:40,560 --> 00:24:43,520
Speaker 1: a little a little creepier um. And then it it.

430
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:45,920
Speaker 1: You know, it does, because it's like this person is

431
00:24:45,960 --> 00:24:47,800
Speaker 1: not only dead, but now they are the domain of

432
00:24:47,840 --> 00:24:52,520
Speaker 1: the crabs. Um. So in thinking about this, though, it

433
00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:56,600
Speaker 1: reminded me of a bit of Um. I guess it's

434
00:24:56,680 --> 00:25:02,520
Speaker 1: folk wisdom that I learned from my mother in law, uh,

435
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:06,560
Speaker 1: and that is, don't eat crabs after hurricane. Have you

436
00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:09,440
Speaker 1: ever heard this before, Joe? I think maybe you and

437
00:25:09,800 --> 00:25:13,480
Speaker 1: I have talked about this off Mike, maybe, Okay, because

438
00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:16,080
Speaker 1: I was. I was looking around for more on this online,

439
00:25:16,119 --> 00:25:19,440
Speaker 1: and I found some sort of echoes of it, but

440
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:23,240
Speaker 1: I did not find enough on it that made me

441
00:25:24,040 --> 00:25:27,159
Speaker 1: satisfied that this is not something that just originated with

442
00:25:27,480 --> 00:25:30,840
Speaker 1: my mother in law or her family, or like, you know,

443
00:25:30,920 --> 00:25:33,600
Speaker 1: a local area that like her parents were in or something.

444
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:37,040
Speaker 1: But I'll continue to discuss it here and certainly if

445
00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:40,800
Speaker 1: anyone out there has heard the same thing or is

446
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:43,439
Speaker 1: privy to the same folk wisdom and has some insight

447
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:46,080
Speaker 1: into why it is, uh, well, obviously we would love

448
00:25:46,119 --> 00:25:50,280
Speaker 1: to hear from you. But the notion here seems to be,

449
00:25:50,600 --> 00:25:53,760
Speaker 1: uh that, Okay, those crabs in the wake of a hurricane,

450
00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 1: they have been feasting on the flesh of people who

451
00:25:56,160 --> 00:25:59,320
Speaker 1: died in the storm, and therefore they should be avoided.

452
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:02,960
Speaker 1: I can understand that. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's I

453
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:04,760
Speaker 1: guess a lot of it comes down to the idea

454
00:26:04,840 --> 00:26:08,560
Speaker 1: that if these crabs have been eating humans and we

455
00:26:08,760 --> 00:26:13,000
Speaker 1: eat those crabs, it's kind of cannibalism by proxy, right, Yeah,

456
00:26:13,280 --> 00:26:16,240
Speaker 1: And generally we don't eat like a lot of even

457
00:26:16,280 --> 00:26:18,320
Speaker 1: if we're eating meat, we're not eating carnivores, or we're

458
00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:21,320
Speaker 1: not eating animals that are that are eating a lot

459
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:24,680
Speaker 1: of meat. We tend to consume herbivores. Yeah. Well, I

460
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:26,919
Speaker 1: mean if you're eating seafoods, you're probably eating a lot

461
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:30,640
Speaker 1: of cars. Well yes, yes, the seafood for sure. But yeah,

462
00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:33,600
Speaker 1: but I also I did find some just looking around,

463
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:35,359
Speaker 1: I saw some people like asking and some of these

464
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:38,359
Speaker 1: like question websites saying is it okay to eat? Like

465
00:26:38,440 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 1: they were kind of applying the same concern to just

466
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:43,320
Speaker 1: see life in general, like should I be concerned that

467
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:47,520
Speaker 1: the fish that I'm eating might have themselves eating human flesh?

468
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:52,880
Speaker 1: Well that's a sticky idea, they'll get in your head. Yeah. Yeah.

469
00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:54,600
Speaker 1: So I decided to look into it a bit more.

470
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:56,040
Speaker 1: And I was looking. First of all, I was looking

471
00:26:56,080 --> 00:26:59,439
Speaker 1: at a few different sources in uh. They included Coastal

472
00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:03,840
Speaker 1: Angler magazine and also additions of the Sun Sentinel. Um.

473
00:27:04,080 --> 00:27:06,720
Speaker 1: And so it's worth remembering that hurricanes are destructive not

474
00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:09,159
Speaker 1: only the humans and human civilization, but they also impact

475
00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 1: marine environments. This can result in extra dead sea life

476
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:15,679
Speaker 1: in the water, and that includes crabs. And this can

477
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:19,920
Speaker 1: often be due to um reduced dissolved oxygen in the water,

478
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:25,080
Speaker 1: rapid salinity changes, and violence surf. And this can certainly

479
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:29,080
Speaker 1: impact crabbing as a human enterprise, either by damaging the

480
00:27:29,160 --> 00:27:33,080
Speaker 1: equipment that's necessary for crabbing or disrupting key crabbing locations.

481
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:36,720
Speaker 1: And this applies to other organisms as well. Um. It

482
00:27:36,800 --> 00:27:40,359
Speaker 1: can you know, be especially rough on oyster seed grounds

483
00:27:40,440 --> 00:27:43,200
Speaker 1: for instance. And as far as oysters go, the other

484
00:27:43,320 --> 00:27:46,919
Speaker 1: key issues related to hurricanes and other storms is flood

485
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 1: runoff from the mainland carrying various chemicals into their environment.

486
00:27:51,920 --> 00:27:54,399
Speaker 1: And as oysters or filter feeders, they can pick up

487
00:27:54,440 --> 00:27:59,040
Speaker 1: those chemicals um and that can then be composed a

488
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:02,159
Speaker 1: danger to human means consuming those oysters. Uh. And of

489
00:28:02,240 --> 00:28:05,080
Speaker 1: course there are other potential risks involved with eating raw

490
00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:07,480
Speaker 1: shellfish as well, But as far as I can tell,

491
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:11,399
Speaker 1: this doesn't really impact crabs so much. Um. But I

492
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:13,000
Speaker 1: wanted to look a little bit more about the you know,

493
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:15,679
Speaker 1: the idea of of corpse eating crabs First of all,

494
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:18,359
Speaker 1: I wanted to sort of check my my assumptions on

495
00:28:18,480 --> 00:28:20,800
Speaker 1: this and and find out, well it is as true

496
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:22,800
Speaker 1: or am I just sort of learning this from movies?

497
00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:27,399
Speaker 1: Do crabs want to eat human bodies? Um? And And

498
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:29,880
Speaker 1: luckily you know, there's a lot of material out there

499
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:35,000
Speaker 1: in the world of forensics UM in biology UM, human

500
00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:39,920
Speaker 1: corps in water may be set upon by fish, water, rats, crabs, um,

501
00:28:40,120 --> 00:28:43,160
Speaker 1: various other creatures. According to UM. One paper was looking

502
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:47,480
Speaker 1: at by zerin er Call and Urdum Hoskuler in post

503
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:51,440
Speaker 1: mortem animal attacks on human corpses came out and so

504
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 1: this applies to shallow water as well as deep water,

505
00:28:54,360 --> 00:28:58,560
Speaker 1: where crabs will uh may even gnaw the bones that

506
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 1: they find down there. Wow, now apparently some crabs are

507
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 1: going to be more indiscriminate than others. So yeah, yes,

508
00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:07,080
Speaker 1: you know, we have to be careful we talk about

509
00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 1: crabs because if there's not just one type of crab there,

510
00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:12,720
Speaker 1: they are multitude, and they all have different strategies and

511
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:17,240
Speaker 1: different environments and different temperaments. UM. I believe blue crabs

512
00:29:17,320 --> 00:29:23,040
Speaker 1: in particular are often observed to scavenge human flesh band

513
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:25,760
Speaker 1: and that probably has to do again with like environments

514
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:29,120
Speaker 1: in which law enforcement or finding bodies and bodies are

515
00:29:29,160 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: retrieved and uh, and that's gonna happen to be the

516
00:29:31,880 --> 00:29:35,760
Speaker 1: same environment where the blue crabs are active. Another type

517
00:29:35,800 --> 00:29:37,360
Speaker 1: of crab that we've talked about on the show before,

518
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 1: the coconut crab. Uh. They seem to generally be game

519
00:29:41,120 --> 00:29:43,800
Speaker 1: for for anything. So it seems like a safe assumption

520
00:29:43,840 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: to say that, yes, you've you've given the opportunity. The

521
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:49,760
Speaker 1: coconut crab would feast on human flesh as well, But

522
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:51,959
Speaker 1: as for other species, I would say, check with your

523
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:53,840
Speaker 1: local crab. I don't know if they want to eat

524
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 1: you or not. UM, And a lot of it's gonna

525
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,560
Speaker 1: depend on are you where that crab is, what is

526
00:29:59,600 --> 00:30:03,040
Speaker 1: that crab normally and so forth. Now, I was also

527
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:07,480
Speaker 1: looking at an article title Decomposition and Invertebrate Colonization of

528
00:30:07,600 --> 00:30:11,160
Speaker 1: Cadavers in Coastal marine Environments by GAYL. S Anderson from

529
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:14,480
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, and in this the author points

530
00:30:14,520 --> 00:30:19,240
Speaker 1: out that um in saltwater environments, crabs, crayfish, and barnacles

531
00:30:19,280 --> 00:30:22,040
Speaker 1: are generally the most important arthropods from a forensics point

532
00:30:22,080 --> 00:30:25,920
Speaker 1: of view, and they point out that crabs, especially we'll

533
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:27,640
Speaker 1: we'll just get right in there. They'll go for the

534
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 1: facial flesh and the eyes, the open orifices of the

535
00:30:32,040 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 1: face are I mean, just think about this practically, Joe,

536
00:30:34,760 --> 00:30:39,800
Speaker 1: don't to like, if you're gonna start munching on a human, Uh,

537
00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:42,160
Speaker 1: all those holes in the face, that's just a great

538
00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:44,880
Speaker 1: place to get started, you know. Yeah, that's the that's

539
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:48,360
Speaker 1: like the oysters on a chicken. Yeah, so that's that's

540
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:52,520
Speaker 1: generally where they start. But once they get going, apparently

541
00:30:52,560 --> 00:30:56,040
Speaker 1: they can rapidly d flesh a body. Um. I was

542
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:58,160
Speaker 1: looking around to see if I could find some hard

543
00:30:58,240 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 1: numbers on that because I know a lot of times

544
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:03,560
Speaker 1: it is of key interest in forensics. Um, you know, Okay,

545
00:31:03,720 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 1: animals will do this to a body, Scavengers will do

546
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:08,640
Speaker 1: this to a body. How long does it take for

547
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 1: them to do it? Because then we can time the

548
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:14,160
Speaker 1: you know, the death of of this particular individual, or

549
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:17,560
Speaker 1: we can time when their body entered this environment. I

550
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 1: could not find any any time. That doesn't mean they're

551
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:22,440
Speaker 1: not out there. So if you know those, if you

552
00:31:22,480 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 1: haven't to have like a you know, some sort of

553
00:31:24,360 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 1: study that involves a stop watch, a human cadaver and

554
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of blue crabs, then send it my way.

555
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:31,640
Speaker 1: I would look to take a look at it. Do

556
00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:37,040
Speaker 1: your personal eco friendly funeral plans involve crabs crab burial?

557
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:40,480
Speaker 1: I mean, why not? Why not? So I want to

558
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: come back to the question. Okay, uh So, First of all, okay,

559
00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:45,520
Speaker 1: I think we can say it's safe to say that

560
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:50,800
Speaker 1: crabs definitely will de flesh the human form um. Now,

561
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:53,840
Speaker 1: as for this idea of there being something bad about

562
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 1: eating those crabs after they have tasted human flesh, um, again,

563
00:31:59,360 --> 00:32:03,880
Speaker 1: I think there is a sort of superstitious view there,

564
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:06,120
Speaker 1: and there's perhaps this you know, revulsion of the idea

565
00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:08,120
Speaker 1: that you might eat something that has eaten people, and

566
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:10,600
Speaker 1: then you know, to some extent you are engaging in

567
00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:14,160
Speaker 1: cannibalism by proxy. Now, where this gets interesting, though, is

568
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 1: when you start looking at the subject of cholera and crabs. Um, Joe,

569
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:21,480
Speaker 1: had you ever uh were you privy did any of

570
00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:25,080
Speaker 1: this information before? No? I mean cholera And I know

571
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:28,320
Speaker 1: cholera is typically a water borne illness that has spread

572
00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:32,960
Speaker 1: through contamination of water sources by infected people. Yeah, yeah,

573
00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:34,840
Speaker 1: and uh, and so when you think about cholera, you

574
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:38,720
Speaker 1: tend to think about. You didn't think about a sewage.

575
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:41,320
Speaker 1: You think about you know, you know, poor water treatment,

576
00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: water sources, that sort of thing. UM. But apparently crabs

577
00:32:47,600 --> 00:32:51,680
Speaker 1: and UH and some other shellfish can also UH be

578
00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:55,800
Speaker 1: a means of acquiring cholera. Now as and I was

579
00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:58,000
Speaker 1: looking around him mostly mostly when we're talking about this,

580
00:32:58,080 --> 00:33:02,640
Speaker 1: we're talking about UH some some particular situations. And there

581
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:05,640
Speaker 1: have been particular outbreaks that have been linked to the

582
00:33:05,720 --> 00:33:10,239
Speaker 1: consumption of crabs that that are infected with cholera um,

583
00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:15,120
Speaker 1: or at least they have cholera like clinging to the bacterium,

584
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 1: clinging to their their shells, UH, to the hard parts

585
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: of their body. For instance, there was an outbreak in

586
00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:26,880
Speaker 1: nine in coastal Louisiana and it was blamed on improper

587
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:30,120
Speaker 1: storage or cooking of crab the crab and the crab

588
00:33:30,360 --> 00:33:33,320
Speaker 1: and in questions seem to have have you know, the

589
00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:37,160
Speaker 1: cholera bacterium clinging to it. Apparently there was a similar

590
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 1: case in Texas UH previous decades. I was able to

591
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:45,400
Speaker 1: find some news footage from the late seventies from like

592
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:49,400
Speaker 1: from Louisiana Public television where they were talking about this UH,

593
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 1: and it was quite interesting because you know, it was

594
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:52,440
Speaker 1: it was a big deal. There were a lot of

595
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:55,520
Speaker 1: questions like, Okay, what's happening here, Why did these crabs

596
00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:58,800
Speaker 1: have cholera? Why are people you know, what's going on?

597
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:00,800
Speaker 1: And then there was concern over how is it gonna

598
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:05,160
Speaker 1: impact the crabbing industry and just people's lives in general. Um,

599
00:34:06,160 --> 00:34:08,560
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, it was quite interesting because you know,

600
00:34:08,800 --> 00:34:13,279
Speaker 1: to be clear, cholera is generally we think about it

601
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:15,360
Speaker 1: as a as a human situation. You know, this is

602
00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:21,440
Speaker 1: where you you find the cholera. Cholra are pathogenic to humans. UM,

603
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:27,759
Speaker 1: So they're not actually you know, infecting uh, the crustaceans

604
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:30,520
Speaker 1: in question here, but it would be a situation of

605
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:34,680
Speaker 1: them being in waters infected uh, that that are tainted

606
00:34:34,760 --> 00:34:38,600
Speaker 1: by cholera or potentially and this seems to be like

607
00:34:38,719 --> 00:34:42,120
Speaker 1: a less firm point. It seems like potentially if you

608
00:34:42,239 --> 00:34:45,160
Speaker 1: had these crabs coming in contact with the bodies of

609
00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:48,239
Speaker 1: humans that had cholera, they could partitually get it that way.

610
00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:50,719
Speaker 1: But it seems like for the most part we're talking

611
00:34:50,800 --> 00:34:55,080
Speaker 1: about just water that is say, tainted by untreated sewage,

612
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:58,560
Speaker 1: and and you have people in the population that had

613
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:02,400
Speaker 1: cholera contributing to said sewage. I see, So it seems

614
00:35:02,440 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 1: like moral of the story is definitely properly cook your

615
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 1: your your seafood. Yes, definitely, that's that's that's a proper storage,

616
00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:14,200
Speaker 1: proper cooking. Um. And that seemed to be the main

617
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:16,240
Speaker 1: point they were getting to in this situation. I believe

618
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:18,279
Speaker 1: based on some of the follow up information was looking

619
00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:20,719
Speaker 1: at from the CDC, it seems like this had to

620
00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:26,160
Speaker 1: do with UM with with the with pollution of the water,

621
00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:30,240
Speaker 1: either due to some sort of a sewage situation, sewage treatment,

622
00:35:30,400 --> 00:35:33,800
Speaker 1: or sewage run off from something else, potentially something linked

623
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 1: to U two ships UM but um. Looking also at

624
00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:42,200
Speaker 1: the CDC, they point out, quote, brackish and marine waters

625
00:35:42,280 --> 00:35:46,720
Speaker 1: are the natural environment for the ideologic agents of cholera

626
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:52,120
Speaker 1: H Vibrio colorad UH zero group zero one or zero

627
00:35:52,200 --> 00:35:55,840
Speaker 1: one three nine. There are no known animal hosts for

628
00:35:56,080 --> 00:36:01,840
Speaker 1: Vibrio colorade. However, the bacteria attached themselves easily to chitten

629
00:36:01,960 --> 00:36:06,279
Speaker 1: containing shells of crabs, shrimps, and other shellfish, which can

630
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: be a source for human infections when eating raw or undercooked. Now,

631
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:13,279
Speaker 1: I know what you're saying. You're you're probably thinking to yourself, well,

632
00:36:13,320 --> 00:36:16,520
Speaker 1: that still doesn't answer the question can can Does that

633
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:18,719
Speaker 1: mean you can catch cholera from a crab that eighty

634
00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:21,479
Speaker 1: human being with coolera? I'm still I'm still not sure.

635
00:36:22,200 --> 00:36:23,960
Speaker 1: I don't but but I don't think any of the

636
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:26,719
Speaker 1: evidence is pointing to that being like the primary way

637
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:29,000
Speaker 1: that you would get sick from, uh, you know, for

638
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:31,840
Speaker 1: meeting a crab, or that has anything to do with

639
00:36:32,120 --> 00:36:36,839
Speaker 1: with concerns over eating crabs post hurricane. So I'm not sure.

640
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:38,799
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I can't ask my mother in law

641
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:42,440
Speaker 1: anymore about this, but I have this suspicion that perhaps

642
00:36:42,560 --> 00:36:46,600
Speaker 1: it's kind of a kind of like a Cajun stew

643
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:49,080
Speaker 1: of like maybe a little bit of folklore in there.

644
00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:52,880
Speaker 1: Also maybe a little bit uh, left over stemming from

645
00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:57,000
Speaker 1: this late seventies um, you know, fear about cholera and

646
00:36:57,120 --> 00:36:59,880
Speaker 1: the crabs. Uh, and you know, perhaps some other stuff

647
00:36:59,880 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 1: to on in there as well, um uh. And also

648
00:37:02,600 --> 00:37:06,400
Speaker 1: maybe she was just you know, messing with me. Yeah nothing.

649
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:09,080
Speaker 1: Maybe that's familiar with the ways of the of coastal

650
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:11,839
Speaker 1: Louisiana and so forth. Well, I mean, I would say,

651
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:15,480
Speaker 1: whatever the base of this, uh, this piece of advice

652
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:19,200
Speaker 1: or folk wisdom is, I would say that it's probably

653
00:37:19,480 --> 00:37:21,400
Speaker 1: always going to be different. I mean, unless you're in

654
00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:24,800
Speaker 1: some kind of like farmed bond villain scenario, it's always

655
00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:27,120
Speaker 1: going to be difficult to know whether or not a

656
00:37:27,239 --> 00:37:31,000
Speaker 1: crab that you have actually acquired to eat like what

657
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:33,880
Speaker 1: it has been eating in its past. Yeah. I mean,

658
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:36,279
Speaker 1: you just never really know if it had eaten a

659
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:38,400
Speaker 1: part of a human or not. But the odds are

660
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:43,439
Speaker 1: probably against it. Yeah. Yeah. And um, and in terms

661
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:46,120
Speaker 1: of other crab and just crabs in general, like eating humans,

662
00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:48,400
Speaker 1: like another area to get into as well, would a

663
00:37:48,480 --> 00:37:51,800
Speaker 1: crab kill a human and eat it? And uh, this

664
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:53,560
Speaker 1: does come up from time to time. I think there

665
00:37:53,680 --> 00:37:55,840
Speaker 1: was you know, largely you know, unproven and to a

666
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:59,920
Speaker 1: certain extent at least discredited theory that coconut crabs consume

667
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:03,520
Speaker 1: to aviator Amelia Earhart, or at least consumed her remains

668
00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:06,319
Speaker 1: after she crashed. Um. Again, I don't think there's any

669
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:08,280
Speaker 1: proof for this, and and I don't know that anyone

670
00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:10,960
Speaker 1: is actually arguing that the crab crabs would have killed her,

671
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 1: but um uh, you you know, it's one of those

672
00:38:16,560 --> 00:38:18,840
Speaker 1: things where you can make any kind of argument for Okay,

673
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:22,440
Speaker 1: what if somebody was sufficiently injured and then crabs came

674
00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:27,359
Speaker 1: upon them. Could the crabs deal the killing blow? Could

675
00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:29,239
Speaker 1: the crabs be the one to finish you off? And

676
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:31,719
Speaker 1: I guess it's like with the dinosaurs, like could have

677
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:36,160
Speaker 1: Could crabs kill a dinosaur? Well, I guess so if

678
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:39,279
Speaker 1: they had enough of an advantage, uh, you know, if

679
00:38:39,320 --> 00:38:42,800
Speaker 1: the if the prey was severely weakened. Um, But I

680
00:38:42,840 --> 00:38:44,640
Speaker 1: don't know. It seems kind of pointless to to worry

681
00:38:44,640 --> 00:38:47,280
Speaker 1: about this too much. I mean not to be insulting,

682
00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:50,880
Speaker 1: but a crab is not really a particularly analytical creature,

683
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:52,840
Speaker 1: so I don't think it could size us up and

684
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:55,680
Speaker 1: figure out what part of the body it needed to

685
00:38:55,800 --> 00:38:58,800
Speaker 1: attack in order to finish us off. We are not

686
00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:02,560
Speaker 1: part of a crab abs like natural uh you know,

687
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:06,000
Speaker 1: habituated diet, so I don't think it would have instincts

688
00:39:06,040 --> 00:39:08,720
Speaker 1: about what part of the body to attack to finish

689
00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:11,040
Speaker 1: us off. So I would say, if a crab attacks

690
00:39:11,120 --> 00:39:14,239
Speaker 1: the human is probably just randomly pinching at whatever parts

691
00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:16,480
Speaker 1: of the body it can get at. So my guess

692
00:39:16,520 --> 00:39:18,879
Speaker 1: would be that it would be very unlikely for even

693
00:39:18,960 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 1: the most powerful crabs, even your coconut crabs, to to

694
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:27,000
Speaker 1: really initiate a successful deadly attack on a human. But

695
00:39:27,120 --> 00:39:29,000
Speaker 1: there is something about maybe it comes back to that

696
00:39:29,120 --> 00:39:32,640
Speaker 1: defensive display of the crab. It's so impressive, even though

697
00:39:32,680 --> 00:39:36,439
Speaker 1: it's small, uh, that it just reverberates through the human

698
00:39:36,480 --> 00:39:39,880
Speaker 1: psyche and takes on the form of say, crabs attacking

699
00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:45,840
Speaker 1: hercules and myth or crabs rising up against humanity in

700
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:49,560
Speaker 1: Roger Corman films. And so we just get it just

701
00:39:49,640 --> 00:39:51,880
Speaker 1: shows how effective that display is. We're like, we we

702
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:54,080
Speaker 1: know that crabs not actually gonna come over here and

703
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 1: and and whoop us uh, but but it takes on these, uh,

704
00:39:58,400 --> 00:40:01,319
Speaker 1: these enormous forms in our mind mind right, I mean,

705
00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:03,919
Speaker 1: the the rasp of the gastric mill does not lie.

706
00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:06,759
Speaker 1: There's no reason to go messing around with that thing,

707
00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:09,800
Speaker 1: putting your fingers into its pinchers and stuff. But I

708
00:40:09,880 --> 00:40:12,879
Speaker 1: am generally curious though, So if anyone out there again,

709
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:15,400
Speaker 1: if you've heard anything about this, um, this bit of

710
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:18,719
Speaker 1: a folk wisdom that you shouldn't eat crabs after a hurricane,

711
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:21,600
Speaker 1: or that eating crabs that of eating humans is is

712
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:25,960
Speaker 1: is somehow specifically a bad idea. Uh, fill me in.

713
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:28,120
Speaker 1: I would love to know more before we move on.

714
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:30,600
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say about the coconut crabs thing.

715
00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:34,279
Speaker 1: I had also come across that people supposedly claiming that

716
00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:37,719
Speaker 1: that Amelia Earhart was eaten by coconut crabs, really without

717
00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:39,960
Speaker 1: any evidence to say that. I think people were just

718
00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:43,719
Speaker 1: kind of guessing, oh, what if this happened. Um. But

719
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:47,080
Speaker 1: but that did make me think back on on Charles

720
00:40:47,200 --> 00:40:50,840
Speaker 1: Darwin's comments about how coconut crabs actually being delicious and

721
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:53,480
Speaker 1: under their tails having that big mass of fat which

722
00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:57,360
Speaker 1: turned into wonderful limpid oil. Remember that, Oh yes, I

723
00:40:57,440 --> 00:41:00,160
Speaker 1: do remember that. Yeah, you know, this reminds me was

724
00:41:00,239 --> 00:41:02,800
Speaker 1: I was looking around, um, you know, doing various searches

725
00:41:02,880 --> 00:41:06,080
Speaker 1: on fatalities related to coconut crabs, and I did find, um,

726
00:41:06,239 --> 00:41:09,719
Speaker 1: I think a couple that occurred. Uh. And but they

727
00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:12,440
Speaker 1: didn't have anything to do with crabs attacking people. They

728
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:15,280
Speaker 1: had to do with the coconut crabs haven't eaten something

729
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:18,279
Speaker 1: that contained a toxin and then when that crab was

730
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:23,080
Speaker 1: consumed by humans resulted in fatality. Oh, that would make sense.

731
00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:27,280
Speaker 1: So I think, oh, yeah, ultimately crabs dupos the greatest

732
00:41:27,600 --> 00:41:30,239
Speaker 1: risk to human beings in the form of you know,

733
00:41:30,520 --> 00:41:33,440
Speaker 1: of of tainted food, of one sort or another, but

734
00:41:33,560 --> 00:41:35,000
Speaker 1: that can be that can be said for a lot

735
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:38,440
Speaker 1: of things. It's as with our past Thanksgiving episodes on

736
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:42,719
Speaker 1: dangerous foods. Um, you know, any kind of if food

737
00:41:42,840 --> 00:41:48,120
Speaker 1: is cooked improperly or stored improperly, prepared improperly. Um, you know,

738
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:51,440
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty easy to get into dangerous zone. Oh yeah,

739
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:53,279
Speaker 1: I mean one of the points we made repeatedly in

740
00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 1: that series is if you're actually just like tallying up

741
00:41:56,080 --> 00:41:59,960
Speaker 1: edge cases, all kinds of strange things can seem very dangerous.

742
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:04,880
Speaker 1: You know, Uh, improperly washed, packaged greens, bottles of peanut

743
00:42:04,960 --> 00:42:07,600
Speaker 1: butter and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, I mean, I'll

744
00:42:07,600 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 1: go ahead and throw this out there. Don't try and

745
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:13,320
Speaker 1: eat um a live crab hole. I think you're probably

746
00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:15,320
Speaker 1: going to hurt yourself. May have to go to the

747
00:42:15,360 --> 00:42:17,920
Speaker 1: hut of the hospital over that. Yeah, don't go for

748
00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:28,920
Speaker 1: the had restore Crudeau. Yeah, alright. The next example of

749
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:31,360
Speaker 1: the next course in the crab Feast I wanted to

750
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:35,839
Speaker 1: talk about is, uh, maybe the I can't remember for sure.

751
00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:38,160
Speaker 1: This may have been the thing I was reading about

752
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:41,399
Speaker 1: that gave me the idea to do this episode. Um,

753
00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 1: And this is one where you can actually watch the

754
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:47,760
Speaker 1: video I'm about to talk about yourself, because the subject

755
00:42:47,840 --> 00:42:52,160
Speaker 1: here is a field recording that was uploaded by the

756
00:42:52,239 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 1: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute or in Bari, originally captured

757
00:42:57,200 --> 00:42:59,560
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven. You can find it on their

758
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:02,759
Speaker 1: YouTube channel now. And this took place on an expedition

759
00:43:02,880 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 1: led by a researcher named Peter Brewer. So the team

760
00:43:07,160 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 1: here was investigating oil seeps and methane hydrates along the

761
00:43:12,719 --> 00:43:16,200
Speaker 1: seafloor off the coast of British Columbia. Again, this was

762
00:43:16,239 --> 00:43:18,319
Speaker 1: back in two thousand eleven, so this would have been

763
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:21,120
Speaker 1: on in the ocean off the west coast of Canada.

764
00:43:22,080 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 1: And methane hydrates are a very strange and fascinating phenomenon.

765
00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:28,440
Speaker 1: I again didn't know a lot about them before I

766
00:43:28,880 --> 00:43:32,680
Speaker 1: started researching for this episode, and this has really captured

767
00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:38,439
Speaker 1: my mind. So these are essentially chunks of solid icy

768
00:43:38,640 --> 00:43:45,200
Speaker 1: material containing large amounts of methane alongside regular water molecules.

769
00:43:45,400 --> 00:43:48,759
Speaker 1: So it's got methane gas or H four, which is

770
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:53,319
Speaker 1: a naturally forming hydro hydrocarbon. Methane is the primary constituent

771
00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:56,279
Speaker 1: of so called natural gas, as well as being a

772
00:43:56,440 --> 00:44:01,040
Speaker 1: byproduct of bacterial decomposition of organic matter that gets buried

773
00:44:01,120 --> 00:44:03,160
Speaker 1: down in the sediment at the bottom of the ocean,

774
00:44:04,040 --> 00:44:08,120
Speaker 1: and pockets of natural gas underneath the modern sea floor,

775
00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:11,560
Speaker 1: or just generally any methane content in the sediment or

776
00:44:11,680 --> 00:44:15,600
Speaker 1: the or the bedrock below the ocean. Sometimes the methane

777
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:19,800
Speaker 1: in these pockets get exposed so that gas can escape

778
00:44:19,920 --> 00:44:22,400
Speaker 1: up through little holes or rifts in the in the

779
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:27,080
Speaker 1: sea floor and float away. But sometimes, under the right conditions,

780
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:32,160
Speaker 1: methane that escapes from these pockets does not just float away. Sometimes,

781
00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:35,440
Speaker 1: because of very high pressure at the bottom of the

782
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:39,840
Speaker 1: water column and extreme cold in the deep ocean, the

783
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:44,720
Speaker 1: methane gas becomes trapped along with water ice in chunks

784
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:49,719
Speaker 1: of this strange frozen solid. These are methane hydrates, and

785
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:52,960
Speaker 1: to be clear, the name is a little bit misleading

786
00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:57,200
Speaker 1: because methane hydrates are actually not a new chemical compound

787
00:44:57,880 --> 00:45:02,279
Speaker 1: joining water molecules and methane molecules with chemical bonds. Rather,

788
00:45:02,680 --> 00:45:06,640
Speaker 1: methane hydrates are what's known in chemistry technically as a

789
00:45:06,920 --> 00:45:10,520
Speaker 1: class rate, which is a composite in which you've got

790
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:13,920
Speaker 1: molecules of one kind of substance. In this case, methane

791
00:45:14,520 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 1: that are physically trapped within the crystal structure of another

792
00:45:18,680 --> 00:45:22,399
Speaker 1: type of substance, in this case water ice, so little

793
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:27,120
Speaker 1: molecules of methane stuck within a lattice structure of water ice.

794
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:32,239
Speaker 1: And because of this unusual structure, methane hydrates can make

795
00:45:32,320 --> 00:45:35,799
Speaker 1: a literally flammable ice. So you can have a big

796
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:39,040
Speaker 1: chunk of this stuff. It looked pretty much like regular ice.

797
00:45:39,160 --> 00:45:40,840
Speaker 1: You can set it in a dish on a table,

798
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:43,239
Speaker 1: but if you hold a match up to it, this

799
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:47,520
Speaker 1: is ice which will catch on fire and burn. And

800
00:45:47,680 --> 00:45:51,280
Speaker 1: for this reason, methane hydrates are sometimes called fire ice.

801
00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:55,760
Speaker 1: Now it's generally believed today that large amounts of solid

802
00:45:55,840 --> 00:46:00,319
Speaker 1: methane hydrates lie buried in formations underneath the sea floor

803
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 1: all around the world, though there's debate about exactly how much.

804
00:46:04,680 --> 00:46:08,480
Speaker 1: According to a range I found given on a page

805
00:46:08,520 --> 00:46:10,960
Speaker 1: by the U S Department of Energy, Fossil Energy and

806
00:46:11,080 --> 00:46:15,120
Speaker 1: Carbon Management site, there could be anywhere from two hundred

807
00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:19,359
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand trillion cubic feet of methane locked up

808
00:46:19,400 --> 00:46:22,560
Speaker 1: in hydrates around the world, from that two hundred fifty

809
00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:26,680
Speaker 1: all the way up to seven hundred thousand trillion cubic feet,

810
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:31,920
Speaker 1: and these hydrates contain a really dense concentration of hydrocarbons.

811
00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:34,560
Speaker 1: A claim I've seen cited in a number of sources

812
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:39,000
Speaker 1: is that one cubic meter of methane hydrate would typically

813
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:43,840
Speaker 1: contain a hundred and sixty four cubic meters of methane gas,

814
00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:48,160
Speaker 1: So a very small volume of this solid material, this

815
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:52,360
Speaker 1: icy stuff, the hydrate, if disrupted, will potentially release a

816
00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:55,920
Speaker 1: ton of gas, which, of course is one reason that

817
00:46:56,080 --> 00:46:58,880
Speaker 1: methane hydrates have people who think about climate change a

818
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:02,080
Speaker 1: little bit can cerned, because it seems that there is

819
00:47:02,080 --> 00:47:06,839
Speaker 1: actually a significant amount of potential greenhouse gases that could

820
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:10,280
Speaker 1: be released into the atmosphere locked up in these solid

821
00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:14,040
Speaker 1: icy forms, and if something causes these solids to melt,

822
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:16,759
Speaker 1: a lot more stuff can be released into the atmosphere.

823
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:20,840
Speaker 1: But anyway, so these methane hydrates exist in these you know,

824
00:47:21,040 --> 00:47:23,799
Speaker 1: rocky icy formations under the sea floor, but they can

825
00:47:23,840 --> 00:47:29,240
Speaker 1: also form spontaneously when methane and very cold water mix

826
00:47:29,440 --> 00:47:31,560
Speaker 1: under high pressure, like at the bottom of the ocean.

827
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:34,479
Speaker 1: So coming back to this video, I was talking about

828
00:47:34,719 --> 00:47:38,320
Speaker 1: the video captured by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

829
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: team in two thousand eleven. So they were doing a

830
00:47:42,280 --> 00:47:45,200
Speaker 1: survey for of these methane hydrates and oil seeps at

831
00:47:45,239 --> 00:47:48,680
Speaker 1: a depth of about one thousand, two hundred and sixty meters,

832
00:47:49,440 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 1: and the team came across a rift in the sea

833
00:47:52,080 --> 00:47:55,680
Speaker 1: floor that was producing this steady little trickle of bubbles

834
00:47:55,880 --> 00:47:59,799
Speaker 1: rising towards the surface. And while the researchers were looking

835
00:47:59,840 --> 00:48:03,840
Speaker 1: at the stream of bubbles, suddenly, hey, here comes a crab.

836
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:07,960
Speaker 1: It just there's a crab coming into frame, and the

837
00:48:08,080 --> 00:48:10,600
Speaker 1: narrator of the video suggests that the crab may have

838
00:48:10,760 --> 00:48:14,279
Speaker 1: been attracted by the pulsing in the water column at

839
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:17,320
Speaker 1: the side of the gas bend. But whatever the reason,

840
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:21,000
Speaker 1: this crab comes ambling over. It's walking along the bottom,

841
00:48:21,520 --> 00:48:23,440
Speaker 1: and then it comes right up to the hole in

842
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:25,520
Speaker 1: the ocean floor that the bubbles are coming out of.

843
00:48:26,320 --> 00:48:29,120
Speaker 1: And then, in the first of a series of real

844
00:48:29,320 --> 00:48:32,920
Speaker 1: awe buddy moments, it reaches out at the stream of

845
00:48:32,960 --> 00:48:36,719
Speaker 1: bubbles with its claws. It's trying to grab them, very

846
00:48:37,040 --> 00:48:41,720
Speaker 1: like you know, dog dog chasing its tail behavior. Presumably

847
00:48:41,920 --> 00:48:44,719
Speaker 1: it thinks that the movement in the water indicates some

848
00:48:44,920 --> 00:48:48,120
Speaker 1: kind of potential prey or other food source, and you

849
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:51,920
Speaker 1: see it repeatedly lunge at the bubble tower with its claws,

850
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:54,400
Speaker 1: but of course there's nothing to grab, so it just

851
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:58,040
Speaker 1: sort of hugs the bubble jet several times. But then

852
00:48:58,520 --> 00:49:01,560
Speaker 1: from here things start geting weirder, because again, what are

853
00:49:01,600 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 1: these bubbles their methane and what can potentially happen to

854
00:49:05,760 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 1: methane at this depth and temperature When mixed with water,

855
00:49:09,040 --> 00:49:11,800
Speaker 1: it can turn into methane hydrates. So the narrator of

856
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:15,520
Speaker 1: this video explains that the methane gas bubbles rapidly form

857
00:49:15,600 --> 00:49:19,440
Speaker 1: into solid pieces of methane hydrate as they stick to

858
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:22,879
Speaker 1: the crabs for limbs, so it's you know, reaching out

859
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:25,759
Speaker 1: to grab the methane bubbles. It thinks their food. Then

860
00:49:26,000 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: they the bubbles are freezing into a coating of fire

861
00:49:30,280 --> 00:49:34,600
Speaker 1: ice on this crabs clause and then trying to explain

862
00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:38,360
Speaker 1: what happens next, the narrator of this video hypothesizes that

863
00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:42,879
Speaker 1: the chemical reaction that transforms the methane gas into these

864
00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:46,759
Speaker 1: solid chunks of methane hydrate uh quote may have given

865
00:49:46,840 --> 00:49:51,880
Speaker 1: the sensation of something slightly warm and mushy. Uh So,

866
00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:55,120
Speaker 1: I guess this is just supposition on on the researchers part.

867
00:49:55,200 --> 00:50:00,400
Speaker 1: But maybe what they're suggesting here is that the crab thing, oh,

868
00:50:00,640 --> 00:50:04,359
Speaker 1: I've got some kind of potentially delicious organic goo, maybe

869
00:50:04,440 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 1: from a dead whale carcass or something, and it's all

870
00:50:06,719 --> 00:50:09,520
Speaker 1: over my claws. Now, so of course, when in doubt

871
00:50:09,600 --> 00:50:12,239
Speaker 1: try it out, you know, better eat it and see

872
00:50:12,280 --> 00:50:15,000
Speaker 1: if it's good. So the crab begins to try to

873
00:50:15,160 --> 00:50:18,880
Speaker 1: eat the methane hydrate off of its own claws, and

874
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:23,120
Speaker 1: this goes very poorly because the hydrate essentially freezes the

875
00:50:23,200 --> 00:50:26,840
Speaker 1: crabs mouth parts or mandibles, which reminds me of that

876
00:50:27,000 --> 00:50:28,800
Speaker 1: thing where you know, you stick your tongue to a

877
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: frozen flagpole, like in that Christmas movie, except I guess

878
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:36,120
Speaker 1: here the flagpole would be like stuck to your own

879
00:50:36,200 --> 00:50:39,200
Speaker 1: mouth and it would be coming along with you. And

880
00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:42,080
Speaker 1: the narrator of the video actually describes it as quote

881
00:50:42,080 --> 00:50:45,600
Speaker 1: a milk mustache of solid hydrate. Well, now I'm beginning

882
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:47,759
Speaker 1: I'm growing worried for this crab. This that is that

883
00:50:47,880 --> 00:50:50,239
Speaker 1: this has really taken a turn. I know, it went

884
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:52,920
Speaker 1: from like kind of cute and bumbling to like, oh no,

885
00:50:53,080 --> 00:50:55,680
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to this crab's mouth? Uh? And

886
00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:58,560
Speaker 1: apparently the crab does whatever it's feeling. It does not

887
00:50:58,800 --> 00:51:00,640
Speaker 1: like it at all, So it starts it's trying to

888
00:51:00,760 --> 00:51:04,239
Speaker 1: use its claws to remove the frozen methane coating from

889
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:07,200
Speaker 1: its mouth, and you can see it's scraping at the

890
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:10,080
Speaker 1: solid white mass of hydrate with the tips of its

891
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:13,560
Speaker 1: of its claws while shedding flakes of it into the

892
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:17,960
Speaker 1: surrounding water. And unfortunately, I do not know the answer

893
00:51:18,120 --> 00:51:20,399
Speaker 1: to the question did the crab ever get its mouth

894
00:51:20,480 --> 00:51:24,480
Speaker 1: on frozen I I hope so, but the researchers do

895
00:51:24,640 --> 00:51:27,759
Speaker 1: not have an answer to offer on this subject. On

896
00:51:27,880 --> 00:51:31,920
Speaker 1: the pessimistic side, the narrator claims that pure methane hydrate

897
00:51:32,040 --> 00:51:35,600
Speaker 1: is twenty times harder than regular water ice, though I

898
00:51:35,640 --> 00:51:39,520
Speaker 1: couldn't find independent corroboration of that fact. But on the

899
00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:41,799
Speaker 1: plus side, that like you can see in the video

900
00:51:41,960 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 1: that the crab is doing a decent job scraping pieces

901
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 1: of it off, Like you can see the flakes just

902
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:49,640
Speaker 1: coming off and floating up into the water. So I'm

903
00:51:49,640 --> 00:51:52,560
Speaker 1: gonna say with crabs, many things are possible, maybe all

904
00:51:52,640 --> 00:51:55,200
Speaker 1: things are possible. And I'm gonna say that it really

905
00:51:55,320 --> 00:51:58,440
Speaker 1: just it. It scraped and scraped and scraped with those uh,

906
00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:01,439
Speaker 1: those spiny tips until until it got its mouth parts

907
00:52:01,520 --> 00:52:04,680
Speaker 1: free and went on to di scavenge many a human corpse.

908
00:52:06,280 --> 00:52:09,400
Speaker 1: But anyway, I mean, so this is on top of

909
00:52:09,520 --> 00:52:12,239
Speaker 1: being just a strange and interesting example of a crab

910
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:15,360
Speaker 1: eating something that was not food, because you know, I

911
00:52:15,440 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 1: think anybody who has a dog will recognize that a

912
00:52:18,680 --> 00:52:21,239
Speaker 1: lot of animals have the impulse of like if if

913
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:24,960
Speaker 1: something is ambiguously presenting as maybe food, might as well

914
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:26,480
Speaker 1: put it in the mouth and give it a try.

915
00:52:27,719 --> 00:52:29,960
Speaker 1: But on top of that, it also shows an interesting

916
00:52:30,000 --> 00:52:32,840
Speaker 1: thing that we don't usually think about being land levers,

917
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:38,000
Speaker 1: which is the role of naturally forming hydrocarbons as a

918
00:52:38,120 --> 00:52:40,920
Speaker 1: part of the environment that animals would have to interact

919
00:52:41,040 --> 00:52:43,920
Speaker 1: with every day. You know, on on the sea floor,

920
00:52:44,160 --> 00:52:48,040
Speaker 1: there were actually all kinds of ways that organisms regularly

921
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:51,400
Speaker 1: interact with I don't know what you might call you know,

922
00:52:51,520 --> 00:52:55,239
Speaker 1: the constituents of the deep earth, uh, from from the

923
00:52:55,320 --> 00:53:00,200
Speaker 1: ecosystems that form around hydrothermal vents to these weird interactions

924
00:53:00,280 --> 00:53:04,200
Speaker 1: between animals and methane hydrates from under the under the

925
00:53:04,239 --> 00:53:07,720
Speaker 1: ground or under the sea floor. Obviously, for the crab

926
00:53:07,840 --> 00:53:10,880
Speaker 1: in this video, this was at least a very uh

927
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:15,920
Speaker 1: frustrating and unfortunate random encounter. But some animals actually have

928
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:20,799
Speaker 1: a much closer and more dedicated evolutionary relationship with these

929
00:53:20,920 --> 00:53:25,840
Speaker 1: same substances. With deep sea hydrates gas hydrates like methane hydrate,

930
00:53:26,600 --> 00:53:30,799
Speaker 1: they're actually marine biological communities that appear in some way

931
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:35,719
Speaker 1: to depend on methane hydrates for their energy needs. And

932
00:53:35,880 --> 00:53:38,520
Speaker 1: just one example I wanted to mention I found described

933
00:53:38,640 --> 00:53:42,160
Speaker 1: in a paper from published in the year two thousand

934
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:45,759
Speaker 1: and uh nat your viscin sho often um by a

935
00:53:45,880 --> 00:53:50,600
Speaker 1: cr fisher at all called methane ice worms hesio ska

936
00:53:50,800 --> 00:53:55,920
Speaker 1: methanicicola colonizing fossil fuel reserves and rob, I've got an

937
00:53:55,960 --> 00:53:58,040
Speaker 1: image for you to look at while I described this here.

938
00:53:58,120 --> 00:54:01,440
Speaker 1: But so in this case, the story behind this discovery

939
00:54:01,560 --> 00:54:05,120
Speaker 1: was that a bunch of researchers were conducting an exploratory

940
00:54:05,239 --> 00:54:08,480
Speaker 1: dive with a miniature submarine in the Gulf of Mexico

941
00:54:08,600 --> 00:54:12,160
Speaker 1: along the sea floor at a depth of fivetys. I

942
00:54:12,239 --> 00:54:15,799
Speaker 1: guess this was in the late nineties sometime, and they

943
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:20,320
Speaker 1: came across a large gas hydrate, a chunk of this stuff,

944
00:54:20,440 --> 00:54:23,399
Speaker 1: the fire ice that was They said about one meter

945
00:54:23,600 --> 00:54:26,759
Speaker 1: thick and two meters in diameter, and they said it

946
00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:29,120
Speaker 1: had recently breached the sea floor. So I guess this

947
00:54:29,200 --> 00:54:32,600
Speaker 1: has been this had been some subsurface for a long time,

948
00:54:33,080 --> 00:54:35,400
Speaker 1: and for some reason it had recently been you know,

949
00:54:35,800 --> 00:54:38,320
Speaker 1: berthed up from the bottom of the ocean and was

950
00:54:38,400 --> 00:54:41,320
Speaker 1: now exposed. And this was a big, old chunk of

951
00:54:41,400 --> 00:54:44,440
Speaker 1: this stuff. And then the authors write in their abstract

952
00:54:44,560 --> 00:54:48,360
Speaker 1: quote two distinct color bands of hydrate were present in

953
00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:52,680
Speaker 1: the same mound, and the entire exposed surface of the

954
00:54:52,800 --> 00:54:58,400
Speaker 1: hydrate was infested with two to four centimeter long worms,

955
00:54:58,760 --> 00:55:01,719
Speaker 1: since described as an new species, and they said the

956
00:55:01,800 --> 00:55:06,839
Speaker 1: density of the worms reached individuals for every square meter.

957
00:55:07,680 --> 00:55:12,200
Speaker 1: So this was a previously unknown type of polycyte worm

958
00:55:12,480 --> 00:55:16,040
Speaker 1: that appeared to make a habitat out of these gas hydrates.

959
00:55:16,280 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 1: It was originally called uh hesio ska methanic cola. I

960
00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:21,960
Speaker 1: think now it has a different name. I think now

961
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:24,920
Speaker 1: the genus is uh sears so s i r s

962
00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:30,160
Speaker 1: o e so sears so methanic cola uh So. This

963
00:55:30,239 --> 00:55:33,640
Speaker 1: would obviously raise the question, if you live around gas

964
00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:36,439
Speaker 1: hydrates at the bottom of the ocean, what do you eat?

965
00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:39,759
Speaker 1: How do you make a living well. Tissue samples were

966
00:55:40,160 --> 00:55:46,680
Speaker 1: consistent with the worms acquiring nutrition from a chemo autotrophic organism.

967
00:55:46,880 --> 00:55:49,600
Speaker 1: That would mean an organism that makes its own energy

968
00:55:50,120 --> 00:55:54,600
Speaker 1: by consuming geologic chemicals rather than than by sunlight like

969
00:55:54,680 --> 00:55:58,040
Speaker 1: a photosynthetic organism would. And the authors in this study

970
00:55:58,080 --> 00:56:01,520
Speaker 1: weren't able to prove anything conclusive Lee, but they hypothesized

971
00:56:01,560 --> 00:56:05,760
Speaker 1: that these worms, these new worms, were surviving by eating

972
00:56:06,120 --> 00:56:10,600
Speaker 1: chemosynthetic bacteria that colonized the surface of the gas hydrates.

973
00:56:10,600 --> 00:56:14,000
Speaker 1: So there would be bacteria that that form mats on

974
00:56:14,080 --> 00:56:18,320
Speaker 1: the surface of these frozen methane hydrates that would metabolize

975
00:56:18,800 --> 00:56:22,800
Speaker 1: chemicals contained within them in order for the bacteria to survive,

976
00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:26,120
Speaker 1: and then the worms would eat the bacterial mats. And

977
00:56:26,239 --> 00:56:29,399
Speaker 1: then the author's right quote, the activities of the polykeets

978
00:56:29,560 --> 00:56:33,600
Speaker 1: grazing on the hydrate bacteria and supplying oxygen to their

979
00:56:33,640 --> 00:56:37,239
Speaker 1: habitats appears to contribute to the dissolution of hydrates in

980
00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:40,480
Speaker 1: surface sediments. So I guess this would be one thing

981
00:56:40,560 --> 00:56:44,000
Speaker 1: that explains how these hydrates disappear over time once they're

982
00:56:44,040 --> 00:56:47,319
Speaker 1: exposed on the bottom of the ocean. But rob I've

983
00:56:47,320 --> 00:56:49,440
Speaker 1: also attached to an image for you to look at.

984
00:56:49,520 --> 00:56:53,759
Speaker 1: That's uh, I believe this is a micrograph close up

985
00:56:53,920 --> 00:56:56,520
Speaker 1: of the face of one of these polykeet worms that

986
00:56:56,600 --> 00:56:59,879
Speaker 1: lives on the hydrate. It is absolutely terrifying. It looks

987
00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:03,440
Speaker 1: like some sort of a dark destroyer unleashed from a shadows.

988
00:57:04,000 --> 00:57:06,600
Speaker 1: It has a kind of bristling fuzziness, which you would

989
00:57:06,600 --> 00:57:08,520
Speaker 1: think would make it a little more cuddly, but actually

990
00:57:08,600 --> 00:57:12,160
Speaker 1: makes it worse. Yeah, though those fibers are not for cuddling,

991
00:57:12,239 --> 00:57:14,239
Speaker 1: you can tell. And it looks like it has this

992
00:57:14,480 --> 00:57:19,400
Speaker 1: enormous mouth to like just suck down dreams. Very very true.

993
00:57:19,640 --> 00:57:21,920
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's mouth, I would say it's mouth actually

994
00:57:21,960 --> 00:57:25,080
Speaker 1: looks like if you ever see those um endoscopic images

995
00:57:25,240 --> 00:57:29,880
Speaker 1: of of the larynx or the voice box. Yeah, it

996
00:57:30,160 --> 00:57:32,520
Speaker 1: also reminds me it has the mouth of some of

997
00:57:32,600 --> 00:57:35,640
Speaker 1: the more terrifying muppets. I think you know where their

998
00:57:35,680 --> 00:57:38,800
Speaker 1: mouth is kind of articulated bad, Yes, like the the

999
00:57:38,880 --> 00:57:41,080
Speaker 1: hippiup aliens that has that kind of thing going on.

1000
00:57:41,480 --> 00:57:45,840
Speaker 1: Oh god, the Hippiepps are so evil. All right, Well,

1001
00:57:45,840 --> 00:57:47,240
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna have to call it right there

1002
00:57:47,280 --> 00:57:49,880
Speaker 1: for part one, but we will definitely be back next

1003
00:57:49,920 --> 00:57:53,000
Speaker 1: time to continue the crab feast. What will happen when

1004
00:57:53,040 --> 00:57:56,800
Speaker 1: crabs put other things in their mouths while their mouths freeze?

1005
00:57:57,400 --> 00:58:00,200
Speaker 1: Will they find it delicious? Um? You'll just have to

1006
00:58:00,240 --> 00:58:02,960
Speaker 1: tune in to find out. The world is a buffet

1007
00:58:03,080 --> 00:58:08,920
Speaker 1: and the customers or crabs all right? Uh? In the meantime, yes,

1008
00:58:09,040 --> 00:58:12,160
Speaker 1: certainly right in let us know where your thoughts are

1009
00:58:12,240 --> 00:58:15,280
Speaker 1: in the crabs that we discussed in this episode. Um.

1010
00:58:15,560 --> 00:58:17,400
Speaker 1: But in the meantime you can find other episodes of

1011
00:58:17,400 --> 00:58:19,600
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind in the Stuff to Blow

1012
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:22,440
Speaker 1: Your Mind podcast feed which you will find wherever you

1013
00:58:22,560 --> 00:58:25,919
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we have core

1014
00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:28,960
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind. On Monday's we

1015
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:31,960
Speaker 1: have listener mail, On Wednesdays we have artifact episodes, and

1016
00:58:32,040 --> 00:58:34,000
Speaker 1: on Friday we have Weird How Cinema. That's our time

1017
00:58:34,040 --> 00:58:36,760
Speaker 1: to set aside most serious concerns and talk about a

1018
00:58:36,840 --> 00:58:40,000
Speaker 1: weird movie. Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio

1019
00:58:40,120 --> 00:58:43,040
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get

1020
00:58:43,080 --> 00:58:45,400
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or

1021
00:58:45,400 --> 00:58:47,600
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, just

1022
00:58:47,760 --> 00:58:50,360
Speaker 1: to say hello, you can email us at contact at

1023
00:58:50,400 --> 00:59:00,480
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1024
00:59:00,520 --> 00:59:03,040
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1025
00:59:03,080 --> 00:59:05,680
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1026
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