Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: we are back with part two in our series on
Speaker 3: hermit crabs. Now a rob on a recent vacation, you
Speaker 3: got to oversee the fields of hermit crabs as they
Speaker 3: crawl about doing their busy, busy business, and so you
Speaker 3: got very into the idea of talking about these animals.
Speaker 3: And it turns out there is way more interesting stuff
Speaker 3: to say about hermit crabs than you might think. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of interesting research on them. They kind of
Speaker 3: has implications beyond the hermit crab just as an animal
Speaker 3: in itself, and can even inform us maybe about human
Speaker 3: economics and sociology and strange corners of knowledge like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so definitely go back and listen to the previous
Speaker 2: episode if you did not all read, because we'll touch
Speaker 2: on the basics of what hermit crabs are and what
Speaker 2: they are not. For example, they are not considered true crabs,
Speaker 2: but I mean in our hearts they're true crabs, but
Speaker 2: technically speaking, not true crabs.
Speaker 3: There's no moral implication there, it's just a different taxonomic divisions.
Speaker 3: So the so called true crabs are decapod crustaceans ten
Speaker 3: footed crusty animals in the info order Brachyura. These hermit
Speaker 3: crabs belong to a cousin infraorder called Anomura a n
Speaker 3: o m. A Animura, which are not technically true crabs,
Speaker 3: but they are also decapod crustaceans. They also have ten
Speaker 3: legs five pairs of legs, generally five an tennie though
Speaker 3: in the animurans often even though they have five pairs
Speaker 3: of legs, often like the last pair of legs will
Speaker 3: will be diminished or hidden in some ways, so they
Speaker 3: can often look like they have eight legs even though
Speaker 3: they do really have ten. Maybe the last pair is
Speaker 3: kind of tucked in somewhere, and that's certainly the case
Speaker 3: in hermit crabs. Because, of course, the really characteristic thing
Speaker 3: about most of the eight hundred plus species of hermit
Speaker 3: crabs is that they are specially evolved anatomically and behaviorally
Speaker 3: to depend on shelter, most often a type of mobile shelter,
Speaker 3: such as the abandoned shell of another animal, most often
Speaker 3: a gasterpod of some kind, and in the last episode,
Speaker 3: we talked a lot about hermit crabs dependence on in
Speaker 3: fierce competition for these shells that they use as their
Speaker 3: mobile shelters.
Speaker 2: That's right, they have this unique relationship with their environment,
Speaker 2: not only scavenging. Certainly generally with hermit crabs, you have
Speaker 2: the scavenging of old shells, particularly snail molls, skells, that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. And then as we discussed with terrestrial
Speaker 2: hermit crabs, which is a minority of hermit crab species,
Speaker 2: you will see not only the acquisition of these discarded shells,
Speaker 2: but then the alteration of these shells to make something
Speaker 2: that is more in line and more with what the
Speaker 2: crab want wants, and also makes it more economic, like
Speaker 2: from an energy standpoint for the crab. So there are
Speaker 2: all these fabulous ins and outs without even getting to
Speaker 2: the point of like comparing the competition for hermit crab
Speaker 2: shells to say, the human housing market.
Speaker 3: Now, I thought it would be a good place to
Speaker 3: start today to talk about some alternatives to snail shells
Speaker 3: in the hermit crab shelter world. So, as we talked
Speaker 3: about last time, hermit crabs do most often look for
Speaker 3: gastropod shells as their mobile shelters. These shells originally belonged
Speaker 3: to snails, periwinkles, whelks, animals of that sort, and these
Speaker 3: original animals died and left the shells behind for crabs
Speaker 3: to take up and in some cases remodel to their specifications.
Speaker 3: There is, though I don't know if I've ever heard
Speaker 3: this before. I was reading online that there is apparently
Speaker 3: sort of a myth or an urban legend that hermit
Speaker 3: crabs have to kill the snails to take their shells
Speaker 3: from them, and that does not appear to be true.
Speaker 3: Hermit crabs appear to scavin shells from snails that died
Speaker 3: for other reasons. That died either were killed by in
Speaker 3: some cases other snails, predatory other snails, or just died
Speaker 3: for whatever reason. A shell is empty now, and in
Speaker 3: some cases a hermit crab can take it up and
Speaker 3: added into the hermit crab shell economy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the type competition is not for shells currently occupied
Speaker 2: by snails. The competition among terrestrial hermit crabs is for
Speaker 2: the shells occupied by other hermit crabs.
Speaker 3: So, while across this whole family of animals, snail shells
Speaker 3: are the most popular for a mobile shelter, there are
Speaker 3: some examples of hermit crabs that use other types of
Speaker 3: objects and in some cases even living organisms for shelter.
Speaker 3: So on the less exciting end, some species make their
Speaker 3: homes in plant structures, maybe hollow pieces of bamboo or
Speaker 3: coconut shells, other plant matter like that. But there are
Speaker 3: also these interesting relationships between hermit crabs and for example,
Speaker 3: c anemones. Rob I know you have something in that
Speaker 3: on that you're going to get into in a bit,
Speaker 3: but first I wanted to talk about coral and sponges.
Speaker 3: So there is a paper that was published in Plus
Speaker 3: one in twenty seventeen by Momoko Igawa and Makoto Kato
Speaker 3: called a new species of hermit crab, Diogenes heterops sama
Speaker 3: coola replaces a mutualistic sepunculin in a walking coral symbiosis. Again,
Speaker 3: this was the year twenty seventeen, and shout out I
Speaker 3: came across this finding because of an article in the
Speaker 3: Conversation I found by Sarah Minott, which is a summary
Speaker 3: of this finding. So rob I included some images of
Speaker 3: this hermit crab with its natural with its coral companion.
Speaker 3: Here this is Diogenes heteropsamacola. And I would say it's
Speaker 3: one of the weirder looking ones we've found. It does
Speaker 3: look like a hermit crab in the front, but with
Speaker 3: a huge kind of foot shaped mass of pink bar
Speaker 3: soap hanging off its back. So the hermit crab itself
Speaker 3: is is bright red and white, sort of candy cane
Speaker 3: color scheme, with very tall eye stalks and these long
Speaker 3: featherlike antennas. So this is a marine species of hermit crab.
Speaker 3: And then I've got another picture for you to see here, Rob.
Speaker 3: This is with the crab's abdomen exposed, So this is
Speaker 3: outside of its shelter. The abdomen, while the front is
Speaker 3: very red and white and has a crabby appearance, the
Speaker 3: abdomen looks kind of like a like a grub. It's
Speaker 3: like a train loocent whiteworm. So this paper and plus
Speaker 3: one documents the discovery of a hermit crab species that
Speaker 3: takes up mobile shelter in what are known as solitary
Speaker 3: corals or sometimes walking corals. The species of hermit crab
Speaker 3: was found in southern Japan by scientists affiliated with Kyoto University. Again.
Speaker 3: The new species name is Diogenes heteropsama cola. And it's
Speaker 3: a very tiny crab. It's just a few millimeters in length.
Speaker 3: So you might wonder why select a chunk of living
Speaker 3: coral as shelter instead of the shells favored by the
Speaker 3: vast majority of hermit crabs. Well, apparently, one major advantage
Speaker 3: for the crab is the very fact that the coral
Speaker 3: is living and thus structurally dynamic. So most hermit crabs
Speaker 3: have to engage in this obsessive, ongoing survey of the
Speaker 3: housing market, trading up for bigger shells as they grow,
Speaker 3: which as we know, can involve aggressive competition. This is
Speaker 3: because the size of each gastropod shell is basically fixed.
Speaker 3: I mean, in some cases in some species they might
Speaker 3: do some interior remodeling, but the overall dimensions of the
Speaker 3: shell are not going to change much. This species, when
Speaker 3: it lives inside a wad of living coral, does not
Speaker 3: have this problem. It has found a forever home because
Speaker 3: the cavity occupied in the living coral can actually grow
Speaker 3: along with the crab. Another thing mentioned in this article
Speaker 3: is that coral provides active defenses. Whereas a dead gastropod
Speaker 3: shell is a type of armor, it provides a solid
Speaker 3: barrier against predators. The corals can actually sting.
Speaker 2: That's right. So you have this added level of like
Speaker 2: chemical weapon and like living self repair armor. It's just
Speaker 2: a fabulous upgrade exactly. And apparently it is not only
Speaker 2: the hermit crab that benefits from the symbiotic relationship. The
Speaker 2: coral benefits as well, and that would make this an
Speaker 2: example of the symbiosis we call mutualism. If only the
Speaker 2: crab benefited and the coral was not affected either way,
Speaker 2: it would be what is called commensalism. But this is
Speaker 2: mutualism because they both get a benefit. So what is
Speaker 2: the benefit.
Speaker 3: For the coral. It appears to be that the hermit
Speaker 3: crab gives the coral the benefit of mobility. So the
Speaker 3: coral in question is of the genus Heteropsamia, and this
Speaker 3: is not the kind of coral that forms into large
Speaker 3: structured reefs. So this is a solitary coral, or again
Speaker 3: sometimes called a walking coral. Rabi attached some pictures of
Speaker 3: this coral for you to look at in its normal form,
Speaker 3: just sitting there on the ocean floor. It looks kind
Speaker 3: of like a blob with some you can see the
Speaker 3: polyp cups and the tentacles on top. These corals can
Speaker 3: be found in small masses, usually about two to three
Speaker 3: cent meters in diameter, sitting on flat sandy seafloors, and
Speaker 3: their polyp cups and feeding tentacles are positioned facing up
Speaker 3: into the water. One danger for an organism like this
Speaker 3: is that it has to be positioned correctly in order
Speaker 3: to survive. But the coral mass is not ambulatory. It
Speaker 3: can't walk around, so imagine being sort of a small
Speaker 3: rock with a mouth and I guess kind of finger teeth.
Speaker 3: Alone on the seafloor, it is at risk of either
Speaker 3: being buried by sediment or being knocked over and left
Speaker 3: upside down, both of which could be a death sentence
Speaker 3: for the coral. So Heteropsamia has evolved a relationship with
Speaker 3: another organism, not the hermit crab. This is an organism
Speaker 3: known as a cupunculated worm. This is a small worm
Speaker 3: that lives in a cavity on the underside of the coral,
Speaker 3: and it carries the coral around with it when it
Speaker 3: crawls along the bottom. It seems that in some cases,
Speaker 3: specifically in areas around the Amami Islands, which are islands
Speaker 3: that they're part of Japan but way south of the
Speaker 3: main Japanese islands. In these cases, the hermit crabs have
Speaker 3: taken over the role that was once played by the
Speaker 3: worms in this relationship. So how would this swap occur
Speaker 3: between you know, going from the coral partnering with the
Speaker 3: worm to the coral partnering with the hermit crab, Because
Speaker 3: as you know, a lot of times these tight symbiotic
Speaker 3: relationships are very sort of finely tuned by evolution. Like
Speaker 3: they it would not usually be easy to just swap
Speaker 3: one animal in for another. Well, the author of this
Speaker 3: feature I was reading interviewed the lead author of the paper,
Speaker 3: Momoko Igawa, and she explained that the normal process of
Speaker 3: establishing a relationship between a coral and a supunculate worm
Speaker 3: goes like this. So when the coral is young, it
Speaker 3: begins by attaching itself to a tiny shell and begins
Speaker 3: to grow around the shell as it matures and builds
Speaker 3: its solid base. So the coral lands on a small
Speaker 3: shell that is already inhabited by a worm. So there's
Speaker 3: already a relationship between the worm and the inanimate shell.
Speaker 3: The worm is using the shell for shelter, and then somehow,
Speaker 3: you know from the worm's point of view, the shell
Speaker 3: just suddenly it keeps getting bigger and like it grows
Speaker 3: all around it. And this is the coral taking up
Speaker 3: residence on the shell and growing around it, forming a
Speaker 3: sort of perfect little cavity for the worm to hide in.
Speaker 3: And according to Igawa, it seems likely that a similar
Speaker 3: process led to hermit crabs inhabiting the corals, and in
Speaker 3: the end the benefits that they would trade off are similar.
Speaker 3: So the mobility of the crab protects the coral from
Speaker 3: being buried in sand or stuck upside down, and the
Speaker 3: coral helps protect the crab from predators.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is fair fascinating. Again, it just kind of
Speaker 2: takes the basic concept of the hermit crab that I
Speaker 2: think most people are familiar with to some degree and
Speaker 2: just takes it into like weird areas. And indeed, I
Speaker 2: have another example here to discuss, and this is where
Speaker 2: we get into into deep sea hermit crabs. And I
Speaker 2: think you know, if you've ever heard us talk about
Speaker 2: deep sea biology before, you know that the things can
Speaker 2: get weird down there. And so I want to talk
Speaker 2: about some of these hermit crabs from the family parapap Gurity.
Speaker 2: By the way, as long as we're talking about names here,
Speaker 2: you know, did we stop me if we already talked
Speaker 2: about this, but did we talk about the family of
Speaker 2: hermit crabs, Diogenidae being named after Diogenies the.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Diogenes the cynic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who of course lived in a tub according to
Speaker 2: the story.
Speaker 3: So right, So yeah, Diogeny the synec. He was an
Speaker 3: ancient Greek philosopher who supposedly would live in i think
Speaker 3: the marketplace of Athens, just in a big ceramic jar.
Speaker 3: And as a cynic philosopher, his big thing was, you know,
Speaker 3: that one should not act against their nature according to
Speaker 3: the expectations of others. So he was he was very
Speaker 3: you know, against society's rules and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is that, in a way kind of a perfect
Speaker 2: model for us to look to in naming the hermit crabs.
Speaker 2: So anyway, we're talking about deep sea hermit crabs here,
Speaker 2: and in particular one that wears not a deceased mollusk,
Speaker 2: but the living body of a cea. An enemy is
Speaker 2: Mary kay Wixton described for you know aa back in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen. Young crabs of this of these, this particular
Speaker 2: type start out inhabiting a Pilford shell, you know, typical
Speaker 2: you know, snail shell or what have you. But then
Speaker 2: the cea, anemony of the family hor Methadaae, settles on
Speaker 2: the shell, over grows it, and then ultimately dissolves that
Speaker 2: shell to become the living housing of the crab. And
Speaker 2: as much with the example we were talking about earlier
Speaker 2: with the coral, grows and expands with the hermit crabs.
Speaker 2: So now this is indeed another example of the forever
Speaker 2: home of a bio armor that will grow with the crab. Brilliant.
Speaker 2: Now the enemity gains mobility this way, you know, the
Speaker 2: hermit crab is like, hey, you stick with me, baby,
Speaker 2: I'll show you the world. And so the crab also,
Speaker 2: as with the coral example, gains chemical production from predators,
Speaker 2: specifically protection against octopods and this species. The species in
Speaker 2: this particular rite up is not specified or was perhaps
Speaker 2: not known at the time. I get to think one
Speaker 2: of the exciting things about hermit crabs, particularly marine hermit crabs,
Speaker 2: is we keep discovering new species and we keep making
Speaker 2: new discoveries about how they lift their strange life in
Speaker 2: the ocean, especially the deep ocean. Now, according to a
Speaker 2: twenty twenty study by gusmo at All published in Molecular Phylogenetics.
Speaker 2: There are some cases where these deep water hermit crabs
Speaker 2: simply carry around protective sea anemies on their intact shells,
Speaker 2: and in these cases especially, the crab actually selects and
Speaker 2: places the organisms on its own shell, you know, goes
Speaker 2: out shopping besides which ones it wants and places them there. However,
Speaker 2: the author stresses that quote c aneminies can also mount
Speaker 2: shells unaided triggered by mollusk derived substances in periostrasum of
Speaker 2: the shell. So the exact mutualistic relationship differs depending on
Speaker 2: the species of the hermit crab. But it's pretty amazing
Speaker 2: here the idea that like, in some cases the hermit
Speaker 2: crab is shopping, in other cases it is sought out.
Speaker 3: Oh, I want more detail on exactly what the shopping
Speaker 3: is like. Does the crab like crawl along and sort
Speaker 3: of feel around the anemone, like pick it up and
Speaker 3: put it on there? Like what is the selection process?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they're very very choosy as we see,
Speaker 2: even just with their selection of snail shells and whatnot.
Speaker 2: I'm to terrestrial hermit crabs.
Speaker 3: Oh that's true. Yeah, the selection of the gasterpodshell involves
Speaker 3: an awful lot of feeling. Usually, you know, it's not
Speaker 3: just like looking at it. They go and they feel
Speaker 3: all over it. They turn it around, they climb inside
Speaker 3: it and try it out, and sometimes decide they don't
Speaker 3: want it. I mean, that's the whole thing. Like, sometimes
Speaker 3: they do try it out and decay and that's not
Speaker 3: right and they go back to the old one.
Speaker 2: And then sometimes is the case with the shells, and
Speaker 2: might be the case with cnemonies as well, is that
Speaker 2: they are also making choices that their survival depends upon.
Speaker 2: So sometimes they will go with a shell that they
Speaker 2: don't like all that much, or they is not their
Speaker 2: first choice or even their second choice, but they need
Speaker 2: to survive until they can get something better. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: perhaps that's the case here as well. But again, researchers
Speaker 2: are still making fantastic discoveries regarding deep water hermes. For example,
Speaker 2: a twenty twenty two team from the University of Tokyo
Speaker 2: discovered a new species of anemone. This is Stylobatis calcifer,
Speaker 2: named after the fire demon Calcifer from the novel and
Speaker 2: studio Ghibli film. How's moving Castle? This is the one
Speaker 2: that's in the Disney dub is voiced by Billy Crystal.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah wait, this is the it's like for cooking
Speaker 3: the food, right they like yes, they're cooking bacon and
Speaker 3: eggs and stuff in the pan over this boy.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah. A very fun character. Great movie. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and inspired inspired the name for the anemone, and it
Speaker 2: lives on the shells of a particular hermit crab species.
Speaker 2: And I included an image of this for you here, Joe. Now,
Speaker 2: there may be some lighting in the image I provided,
Speaker 2: but it still looks beautiful. It's it's like this. It
Speaker 2: does look very fiery. It looks like a creature that
Speaker 2: is composed of within flame.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's beautiful. And I can see why you
Speaker 3: might call it that given the animation style of that
Speaker 3: in House Moving Castle. Like the way the flame just
Speaker 3: kind of bobs and undulate. It's almost like the way
Speaker 3: you might see the I don't know, flesh of a
Speaker 3: jellyfish moving underwater or something. And I can imagine that
Speaker 3: if you see this anemony in motion, it probably looks
Speaker 3: something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty great. If you want to find
Speaker 2: some of these images for yourself. There was a twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two Mongbay article by Liz Kimbro that you can
Speaker 2: look up, and that's one of the sources I was
Speaker 2: looking at for the section of the episode. Now, on
Speaker 2: the subject of deep sea hermit crabs, we should also
Speaker 2: talk about hydrothermal vent environments. We've talked about hydrothermal events
Speaker 2: plenty of times in the show before. These are deep
Speaker 2: sea seabed fissures that release geothermically heated water that can
Speaker 2: result in very biologically active oases in the deep ocean
Speaker 2: that provide home to many different unique species of organism. Now,
Speaker 2: one of the more famous vent dwellers is the Kiwa
Speaker 2: tay lari or Hoff crab, which is actually a squat lobster.
Speaker 2: And this is not a hermit crab, but it is
Speaker 2: kin to hermit crabs. It's not a quote unquote true crab.
Speaker 2: But in two thousand and four, researchers discovered the first
Speaker 2: known hermit crab to recide at a hydrothermal vent. This
Speaker 2: one was dubbed Peraggio pageeras Vento Lattis, and it was
Speaker 2: discovered in the waters off Taiwan, and this was I
Speaker 2: was thinking about this in a paper by raphael LEA. Matre,
Speaker 2: then in a twenty eleven paper by kome At All
Speaker 2: these hermit crabs were found elsewhere on the Nico Seamount.
Speaker 2: This is a submarine volcano in like southern Japanese waters.
Speaker 2: Now I was mentioning some of this to my wife
Speaker 2: as I was researching it, and when I brought up
Speaker 2: the idea of hydrothermal event crabs, her question was where
Speaker 2: do they get their shells? Do they have shells? And
Speaker 2: I hadn't really thought about this, but yeah, it does
Speaker 2: seem that while this species prefers gastropod shells, they would
Speaker 2: prefer to have standard like snail shells. They are indeed
Speaker 2: scarce in these habitats, these hydrothermal vents, so they'll end
Speaker 2: up having to use something else. It's not their first choice,
Speaker 2: but they will use the empty tubes of the syboglintid worm.
Speaker 2: This is like a tube worm, and they will use
Speaker 2: these discarded empty tubes for their shell if they cannot
Speaker 2: get an actual gastropod shell. Ah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I had read some unspecified references to hermit
Speaker 3: crabs using worm tubes as mobile shelter, and I wonder
Speaker 3: if it might be talking about this or maybe related
Speaker 3: animals that use other worm tubes as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty fascinating. I do want to point
Speaker 2: out this is not an obligate hydrothermal vent dweller, though.
Speaker 2: You do have various organisms that have to have that
Speaker 2: hydrothermal vent environment, and it is something that very much
Speaker 2: defines them. These creatures apparently can live beyond the hydrothermal vents,
Speaker 2: but have been observed to reside there. So see anemones,
Speaker 2: coral tubeworm, discarded tubworm tubes. So many different things can
Speaker 2: become housing for a hermit.
Speaker 3: Crab thinking outside the snailshell. Yes, and of course all
Speaker 3: these things we're talking about are things that you would expect.
Speaker 3: They're like an adapted relationship in some way, things you
Speaker 3: would expect to see with some regularity in nature. You
Speaker 3: can find weird, isolated examples of hermit crabs using all
Speaker 3: kinds of stuff as a temporary shelter if they are
Speaker 3: in a jam.
Speaker 2: That's right. We mentioned like the intense competition for shell
Speaker 2: and the cascading events that will occur when a conflict
Speaker 2: between hermit crabs over a shell resolves, and then somebody's
Speaker 2: left out. Usually it's the whichever crab lost in the
Speaker 2: combat now has no shell, and in those cases, again,
Speaker 2: its survival is on the line, so it may use
Speaker 2: something like even like a discarded pop top I saw
Speaker 2: referenced in one article. Doesn't mean it's happy about it,
Speaker 2: but it will use it for the time being. Now
Speaker 2: there's another wrinkled to this whole, you know, not true
Speaker 2: crabs story, because there's another cousin to true crabs, known as,
Speaker 2: of course, the king crab. I think a lot of
Speaker 2: you've heard of the king crab. Sometimes it winds up
Speaker 2: on the menu. Right. There are over one hundred species
Speaker 2: of king crabs, and while we don't know for certain,
Speaker 2: it is widely hypothesized that king crabs derived from hermit
Speaker 2: crab ancestors. This brings us once more to the topic
Speaker 2: of carcinization. This is convergent evolution, in which non crab
Speaker 2: crustaceans evolve crab like bodies, and in this case we're
Speaker 2: specifically dealing with what's referred to as the hermit to
Speaker 2: king hypothesis, which we should stress is not universally accepted,
Speaker 2: but it does seem to be the current scientific consensus,
Speaker 2: though again again not everyone agrees though, but thankfully this
Speaker 2: is not one of those scientific consensus issues that has
Speaker 2: been politicized, though I guess it would be. It would
Speaker 2: be maybe amusing if it were. As Noah and Glenner
Speaker 2: point out in the Origin of King Crabs. This is
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, published in Zoological Journal of the Lenaean Society.
Speaker 2: The hypothesis itself dates back to the nineteenth century and
Speaker 2: has been controversial that long as well. It's not a
Speaker 2: new controversy. They signed an eighteen ninety five paper by
Speaker 2: French entomologist Eugene Louis Bouvier who lived eighteen fifty six
Speaker 2: teen forty four. This guy studied molus and crustaceans early
Speaker 2: in his career, and they summarize that the basic idea
Speaker 2: is that quote, king crabs are secondarily calcified hermit crabs
Speaker 2: that left the protective gastropod housing and transformed to a
Speaker 2: crab like form.
Speaker 3: That is such a strange, wonderful path. If that is
Speaker 3: in fact the case of what happened with king crabs,
Speaker 3: that you would get what was originally some type of
Speaker 3: crustacean ancestor that evolved to have this obligate relationship with
Speaker 3: external shelter, so its backside is this soft, windy, wormy
Speaker 3: little thing that is protected by a shell. And it
Speaker 3: makes this i don't know what would seem to be
Speaker 3: a very dramatic and irreversible kind of evolutionary right turn
Speaker 3: or left turn, whatever you want to call it, that
Speaker 3: it goes down this weird road of depending on these
Speaker 3: external shells, and then part of that family goes it
Speaker 3: back in the other direction, changes course again, abandons the shells,
Speaker 3: and becomes fully hardened on the outside.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's one of the crazy things about evolution,
Speaker 2: these various changes that occur over time, like you know,
Speaker 2: the different species evolving different forms of wings, you know,
Speaker 2: different morphological approaches to the same basic concept, and then
Speaker 2: creatures like flightless birds that just yeah, like I don't
Speaker 2: really need to do that anymore, I have, it's not necessary,
Speaker 2: and it really was. It was a huge pain in
Speaker 2: the butt to do it to begin with.
Speaker 3: Oh, actually, you know what I think would be a
Speaker 3: great parallel example is marine mammals. You know, so the
Speaker 3: all terrestrial life comes from what was originally in the sea,
Speaker 3: and these animals came evolved from animals that once lived
Speaker 3: exclusively in the sea. All marine mammals evolve from terrestrial mammals.
Speaker 3: They were once you know, four footed, quadrupedal mammals wandering
Speaker 3: around land, and they evolved to go back to full
Speaker 3: time water life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's like this line from like, oh, thank goodness,
Speaker 2: I'm out of here for just a little bit, out
Speaker 2: of the fierce competition of the water. And then you know,
Speaker 2: millions upon millions of years later, something that will become
Speaker 2: an orca goes back in again and says, you know,
Speaker 2: I think I got it this time. I think I'm ready.
Speaker 2: I'm going back. And then, of course plenty of things
Speaker 2: that don't become orchis that don't they are not success
Speaker 2: stories as well, I suppose.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So again, the hermit to king hypothesis goes back to
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century, and initially the evidence was largely morphological
Speaker 2: king crabs lithoughtids. They don't really look like hermit crabs,
Speaker 2: certainly not to the average crab looker. The body shape
Speaker 2: is drastically different, but a few key details would seem
Speaker 2: to remain.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you're looking for body features that king crabs
Speaker 3: have in common with hermit crabs, like like, what would
Speaker 3: they be?
Speaker 2: All right? So first please and claw asymmetry. So the
Speaker 2: plan is the abdomen of the crab. And as we've
Speaker 2: already pointed out, the hermit crab has a highly asymmetrical
Speaker 2: abdomen that evolved to slide into asymmetrical spiral shells. And
Speaker 2: as we mentioned already, their right pincher is usually larger
Speaker 2: so as to cover the opening of the shell when
Speaker 2: they retreat into it, you know, it becomes the door
Speaker 2: for the shell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though of course there are multiple There are the
Speaker 3: right handed hermit crabs in the left handed hermit crabs,
Speaker 3: so some are reverse. The diogenids actually are the reversed
Speaker 3: ones the left handed ones.
Speaker 2: That's right mouthparts are another one apparently hermitson kings between
Speaker 2: hermitson que kings there are only like minor differences. Also,
Speaker 2: the sieda on the grooming legs one seedyle type, for example,
Speaker 2: is only present in parigrid hermit crabs and king crabs.
Speaker 2: This according to a twenty fifteen study published in Actazoologica.
Speaker 2: Also there's some detail as an internal organ organization. Also,
Speaker 2: there are various correspondences in the vascular system between kings
Speaker 2: and hermits. And then adding to this hypothesis is the observation,
Speaker 2: of course that carsonization may be a thing in general,
Speaker 2: with crab like forms seemingly having evolved multiple times in
Speaker 2: shallow water habitats.
Speaker 3: So it's just a plan that works. And if you
Speaker 3: already have the basic blueprints in place and you can
Speaker 3: evolve in the in the crab shape direction, a lot
Speaker 3: of animals will eventually evolve down that path.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and more recently we have phylogenetic evidence that has
Speaker 2: been presented to back up the hermit to king hypothesis.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think outside of dedicated crab experts,
Speaker 2: we also have to throw in that the mere title
Speaker 2: of the hypothesis is instantly attractive. You know, it's like
Speaker 2: Popper to prints hermit to King. So it's for at least,
Speaker 2: you know, the average consumer of all this information. It's
Speaker 2: hard to shake that that the social implications of this,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's a you know, it makes it
Speaker 2: a little more fun and engaging too. Again non scientists,
Speaker 2: and maybe to scientists as well. I mean, it's the
Speaker 2: kind of thing you probably can't help their reference, at
Speaker 2: least in the opening matter, for a study or a paper.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. But it's also just a great thing to
Speaker 3: think about if you're ever going out for a nice
Speaker 3: king crab dinner.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 3: That this this could well be the descendant of a
Speaker 3: of a hermit crab. So finally, for today's episode, I
Speaker 3: wanted to talk a bit more about the shell economy
Speaker 3: in hermit crabs that do trade in gastropod shells. So,
Speaker 3: of course, last time we talked about the importance of
Speaker 3: exogenous shells for hermit crabs survival and about this this
Speaker 3: weird ordered mass behavior that can urge from hermit crabs
Speaker 3: shell exchanges. So I was reading an interesting article in
Speaker 3: Scientific American by a researcher named Ivan Chase who's a
Speaker 3: professor emeritus at Stonybrook University, called hermit crabs trade up
Speaker 3: by exchanging shells in q so. In this article, Chase
Speaker 3: talks about how hermit crab research has informed thinking about
Speaker 3: the sociology and economics of a concept that we brought
Speaker 3: up specifically when talking about hermit crabs last time, but
Speaker 3: actually is a broader general just dynamic term, and that
Speaker 3: term is a vacancy chain. So Chase's formal definition of
Speaker 3: a vacancy chain goes like this quote an organized method
Speaker 3: of exchanging resources in which every individual benefits by claiming
Speaker 3: a more desirable possession abandoned by another individual. And this
Speaker 3: can be illustrated directly by watching hermit crab behavior. So
Speaker 3: Chase opens the article by telling a story of just
Speaker 3: some observations he personally made in a tide pool on
Speaker 3: Long Island in nineteen eighty six where this was an
Speaker 3: area where there were hermit crabs, and he brought in
Speaker 3: an empty snail shell and just dropped it in the
Speaker 3: tide pool, and he talks about how he waited a
Speaker 3: few minutes, and then finally a little hermit crab comes along.
Speaker 3: It checks out the shell, feels it out with its claws,
Speaker 3: you measures it. It does the full walkthrough, and it decides, yes,
Speaker 3: I want this new shell. So it trades shells, abandons
Speaker 3: its old shell, and walks away with the new one.
Speaker 3: But it doesn't stop there, because another crab eventually comes along,
Speaker 3: checks out the abandoned shell, decides it likes that one
Speaker 3: better than its current shell, walks away with that, and
Speaker 3: then a few minutes later it happens again. Another one
Speaker 3: comes along. This one has a shell that's in really
Speaker 3: bad shape. It's like a shell that is not the
Speaker 3: right size as a whole in it, and it likes
Speaker 3: the abandoned shell better than its very dilapidated current shell
Speaker 3: walks away with the secondary abandoned shell. Now, he never
Speaker 3: mentions if any hermit crab came along to claim the
Speaker 3: shell abandoned by this third animal, But I guess at
Speaker 3: each point it becomes less and less likely because less
Speaker 3: desirable shells are being traded away from And so maybe
Speaker 3: you know, there's not a crab in the general area
Speaker 3: that would prefer a shell that is like very small
Speaker 3: and already has a big hole in it. But multiple
Speaker 3: animals here have gotten a shell that was better than
Speaker 3: the one they started with, and so multiple animals are
Speaker 3: walking away from this series of trades happy. And so
Speaker 3: based on this observation, Chase looked into Chase and other
Speaker 3: colleagues in this area looked into questions like what is
Speaker 3: the average number of trades that occur after a vacancy
Speaker 3: first appears, or what starting conditions lead to more trades
Speaker 3: in the subsequent series, and so forth. So Chase did
Speaker 3: research on a species of hermit crab called Pagurius longic
Speaker 3: carpus aka the long wristed hermit crab, which is native
Speaker 3: to the east coast of North America, and there are
Speaker 3: a few general findings. First of all, crabs usually traded
Speaker 3: up for larger shells, and this should not be surprising
Speaker 3: since part of the reasoning behind shell trading is that
Speaker 3: it allows individual crabs to grow. Crabs grow, of course,
Speaker 3: you know, like other crustaceans, they have to grow through molting,
Speaker 3: but when they get bigger, the shell that they have
Speaker 3: currently doesn't get get any bigger, so they have to
Speaker 3: find a bigger shell to inhabit. And of course there
Speaker 3: could be other reasons for seeking a shell, such as
Speaker 3: maybe getting a shell in a better condition, but one
Speaker 3: of the main ones is you need a bigger one
Speaker 3: as you grow. Next, general observation is that the average
Speaker 3: there was a pretty consistent average number of trades in
Speaker 3: vacancy chains, and it was about two point five if
Speaker 3: it was between two and three, and this could vary
Speaker 3: depending on conditions. For example, vacancy chains that started with
Speaker 3: a larger empty shell were longer than those that started
Speaker 3: with smaller empty shells, so a big empty shell leads
Speaker 3: to more trades overall. And so the really interesting thing
Speaker 3: about a vacancy chain is how even in an environment
Speaker 3: where multiple individuals are competing aggressively for scarce resources, you
Speaker 3: know the number of shells is limited, this is a
Speaker 3: scarce resource. A vacancy chain can mean that everybody in
Speaker 3: the chain wins. It's not a single winner take all competition,
Speaker 3: but one in which many participants all get an upgrade.
Speaker 3: So you could almost view the survival value of the
Speaker 3: empty shell that is placed into the environment at the
Speaker 3: start of the chain, that the value of that shell
Speaker 3: being kind of distributed or averaged across multiple beneficiary because
Speaker 3: it doesn't only help the first taker who directly occupies
Speaker 3: that shell, but indirectly helps all of the subsequent crabs
Speaker 3: in the chain because they all get a better shell
Speaker 3: than they started with. Oh and one thing Chase says
Speaker 3: in this article is that our researchers performed similar experiments
Speaker 3: on Caribbean land hermit crabs, and I think those were
Speaker 3: the that was the species you saw on your trip.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, that was the one. Again, we did not
Speaker 2: get to directly observe competition for shells or the changing
Speaker 2: out of shells, though obviously this was taking place just
Speaker 2: when we were looking the other way, or you know,
Speaker 2: in parts of the island we aren't went on, or
Speaker 2: you know, underneath the leaves of the various plants and
Speaker 2: so forth. But at one point, my son and another
Speaker 2: child on the island who had a lot of fun
Speaker 2: like watching the crabs and running around, they did find
Speaker 2: a hermit crab that was unhoused. That a naked hermit crab,
Speaker 2: if you will. So I suspect this was the result
Speaker 2: of some sort of competition.
Speaker 3: Mm man, feel bad for that crab.
Speaker 2: They did as well. They were like, we got to
Speaker 2: help this guy get a new shell. So I think
Speaker 2: they were like trying to find some from him. But
Speaker 2: you know, in retrospect, it's like, come on, you guys.
Speaker 2: Maybe they were really into it. So maybe they spent
Speaker 2: an hour looking for shells. But hermit crabs do this
Speaker 2: non stop. They are always looking for shells. So you
Speaker 2: can imagine the frustration where the hermit crab is like, really,
Speaker 2: you guys just started doing this. I've done this my
Speaker 2: whole life, trust me, just let me find it. There's
Speaker 2: very little you can do in this situation. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to live in this half a coconut that you
Speaker 2: just provided.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's nice that they offered.
Speaker 2: It's nice that they tried. I like that they were
Speaker 2: gentle with the crabs and looking out for their well being.
Speaker 3: But to come back to the idea of vacancy chains
Speaker 3: as a concept, another thing Chase mentions that's interesting is
Speaker 3: that researchers have observed two different kinds of vacancy chains
Speaker 3: in hermit crab synchronous and asynchronous, and these are about
Speaker 3: the relationship of the trade series to time. Asynchronous chains
Speaker 3: are the kind that I described a minute ago, where
Speaker 3: like you know, he dropped one empty shell and a tidepool.
Speaker 3: One crab came along and found it, made a trade.
Speaker 3: You know, several minutes later, another one comes along makes
Speaker 3: a trade. That is, that is something that occurs with
Speaker 3: like each step in the process having some kind of
Speaker 3: delay in between. Synchronous trades are, on the other hand,
Speaker 3: are the kind more like we talked about in the
Speaker 3: previous episode, where the animals actually organize themselves in a
Speaker 3: line by size while they're still in their original shells
Speaker 3: and anticipating a trade, and then all suddenly trade at
Speaker 3: the same time. The synchronous trades happen really fast and actually.
Speaker 3: Chase describes particular scenarios that can cause these trades to arise.
Speaker 3: I wanted to read briefly from the article with one
Speaker 3: such scenario he describes, so Chase writes, quote. One of
Speaker 3: the strangest examples involves a predatory snail that attacks other
Speaker 3: kinds of snails, including some whose shells hermit crabs particularly like.
Speaker 3: As the predatory snail grasps the prey, snail drills a
Speaker 3: hole in its shell with a rasp like tongue and
Speaker 3: injects digestive enzymes. Nearby hermit crabs gather round following the
Speaker 3: scent of chemicals released by the injured snail. When the
Speaker 3: predatory snail finally pulls its prey from its protective casing,
Speaker 3: a process that can take as long as an hour,
Speaker 3: the nearest crab dives into the now empty shell. In turn,
Speaker 3: another crab immediately snatches the first crab's old shell, and
Speaker 3: so on. Instead of following the careful inspection rituals that
Speaker 3: we observed on Long Island, crabs at the scene of
Speaker 3: a mollusk murder make split second decisions choosing new homes
Speaker 3: based on vision alone. So I thought this was kind
Speaker 3: of interesting that these different conditions can arise, where in
Speaker 3: some cases animals making trades through the vacancy chain have
Speaker 3: plenty of time to examine what the new shell they're
Speaker 3: looking at and make an informed decision about whether they
Speaker 3: want to make the trade. Other times there's like this immediacy,
Speaker 3: like all these crabs are gathered around, and so crabs
Speaker 3: are making rapid exchanges, and I have to wonder if
Speaker 3: in cases like that, they're more likely to make an
Speaker 3: error and exchange for a shell that is actually not
Speaker 3: as good as they think it is at first, or
Speaker 3: maybe is not even as good as the shell they abandoned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's kind of a musical chairs aspect of the
Speaker 2: whole scenario, isn't there.
Speaker 3: So the more hurry there is in the market, the
Speaker 3: less information you can get and the less you're able
Speaker 3: to make sure you're making a good decision.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess you see versions of that
Speaker 2: in the human housing market as well. Right, Yeah, when
Speaker 2: competition is really intense, you have people doing things like
Speaker 2: buying houses sight unseen, you know, just getting in there,
Speaker 2: making big cash offers and so forth. So, Yeah, even
Speaker 2: though as we discussed, there are experts who weigh in
Speaker 2: and say, well, you really can't go one to one
Speaker 2: on this. You know, there's a great deal of nuance
Speaker 2: to human housing market as well as the hermit crab
Speaker 2: competition for shells. But we can't help but compare the
Speaker 2: two and it does seem like there are some interesting
Speaker 2: things that line up.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, So you wouldn't want to do what
Speaker 3: people sometimes do and just like observe a behavior in
Speaker 3: animals and then say, ah, well there is just that's
Speaker 3: what humans do as well. I mean, like you would
Speaker 3: need evidence that that is actually what humans do as well.
Speaker 3: But vacancy chains have been studied in animals other than
Speaker 3: hermit crabs, and they have absolutely been studied in human domains,
Speaker 3: such as in human residential real estate. So, for example,
Speaker 3: Chase talks about some research in the United States in
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixties that found that each new housing unit
Speaker 3: constructed triggered a vacant and sy chain that allowed not
Speaker 3: just one family to move into the newly constructed unit,
Speaker 3: but allowed multiple families to move into what they considered
Speaker 3: better housing, better apartments, And Chase refers to one study
Speaker 3: that found average chain lengths of two point four and
Speaker 3: another that found averages of three point five, so a
Speaker 3: lot like with the shells, the construction of a desirable
Speaker 3: new place to live may benefit not only the people
Speaker 3: who directly move in there, but also the people who
Speaker 3: choose to move into the living space vacated by the
Speaker 3: first residents, and so on and so on, for an
Speaker 3: average of maybe you know, somewhere between two and four
Speaker 3: resident moves. In fact, the Harvard sociology professor Harrison White,
Speaker 3: who apparently coined the term vacancy chain, found that vacancy
Speaker 3: chains were also created with certain types of job openings,
Speaker 3: such as the retirement of a pastor at a church
Speaker 3: that opens a spot a new pastor to move in,
Speaker 3: and then somebody and then a pastor moves into that
Speaker 3: position vacated by the person who made the first move,
Speaker 3: and so on. And this was studied across multiple professions
Speaker 3: and fields, including everything from sports coaches to drug dealers,
Speaker 3: and researching the subfield has generally found that when a
Speaker 3: vacancy opens somewhere between two point five and three point five,
Speaker 3: people are able to move into better paying or more
Speaker 3: desirable positions through the operation of a vacancy chain and
Speaker 3: chase speculates that this phenomenon probably applies to certain types
Speaker 3: of consumer goods as well, in addition to housing and
Speaker 3: job openings. One example, though there's not great research on
Speaker 3: this to back this up, but one example might be
Speaker 3: like cars. This would probably only apply to consumer goods
Speaker 3: where there's like a robust market for used options, but
Speaker 3: again this has not been formally studied.
Speaker 2: This does remind me of various headlines though that came
Speaker 2: up during the pandemic. I believe about the value certain
Speaker 2: used cars and how there was intense competition for them. However,
Speaker 2: I don't really retain like car news all that well,
Speaker 2: so maybe listeners out there remember these stories as well,
Speaker 2: something about the value for an intense competition for used
Speaker 2: cars in particular models. They might have something some way
Speaker 2: line up. It might line up with what we're talking
Speaker 2: about here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, so maybe we can come back to that
Speaker 3: in a minute. When because I was thinking about like,
Speaker 3: what are the qualities of resources that do lead to
Speaker 3: these vacancy chains versus resources that don't, and Chase actually
Speaker 3: gets into that toward the end of his article. So
Speaker 3: he postes an interesting question like why is it that
Speaker 3: vacancy chains tend to benefit on average about three parties
Speaker 3: in markets as different as hermit crabshells, human apartments, and
Speaker 3: football coaching positions. It's kind of weird that we would
Speaker 3: see this range of roughly two point five to three
Speaker 3: point five beneficiaries across such wildly different domain and Chase
Speaker 3: writes quote My guess is that some as yet undiscovered
Speaker 3: correspondence between the demography of humans and hermit crabs explains
Speaker 3: the effect their birth and death rates, perhaps or the
Speaker 3: rates at which new resource units are produced and used.
Speaker 3: But these are hunches, so we don't really know the answer.
Speaker 3: But one thing we do know is that vacancy chains
Speaker 3: do only seem to occur with certain types of resources,
Speaker 3: resources with particular properties. So there are not vacancy chains
Speaker 3: created by like boxes of breakfast cereal at the grocery store,
Speaker 3: or you know, like cans of artichokes. A vacancy chain
Speaker 3: resource tends to be something that is both scarce and
Speaker 3: highly coveted, so they're very important to the consumer and
Speaker 3: they're hard to get. They tend to be resources that
Speaker 3: can be possessed by only one competitive unit at a time,
Speaker 3: though this unit could be a group such as like
Speaker 3: a family that occupies a house, but the group has
Speaker 3: to function as like a single unit competing for the resource,
Speaker 3: and the resource cannot be claimed unless it is empty
Speaker 3: or vacated by the previous owner. And these principles are
Speaker 3: generally true of the human resources studied, such as housing
Speaker 3: and jobs, but they're also true of hermit crab shells.
Speaker 3: But this makes vacancy chains kind of interesting because they
Speaker 3: are a circumstance that arises in a market that seems
Speaker 3: to be based on the type of resource being competed
Speaker 3: for rather than any characteristics of the competitors. And in
Speaker 3: the end, Chase raises the question of whether experiments in
Speaker 3: hermit crabs could maybe help us create better economic and
Speaker 3: sociological models that would be predictive in certain human economies.
Speaker 3: Interesting question, but then again there's always the danger with that.
Speaker 3: You don't want to think, Aha, I've discovered a principle
Speaker 3: in hermit crabs, Therefore I can just apply it to humans.
Speaker 3: You would need good, independent evidence that it actually does
Speaker 3: apply to humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you couldn't just like, all right, I want to
Speaker 2: game my position in the company, so I'm going to
Speaker 2: buy a bunch of hermit crabs. I'm gonna label their
Speaker 2: shells with the names of all of my coworkers, my bosses,
Speaker 2: my competitors, and then I'm just gonna do what the
Speaker 2: hermit crabs do. Not a good idea, right, So, yes.
Speaker 3: You do not want to fall into the trap of
Speaker 3: I have observed hermit crabs, therefore I understand humans. But
Speaker 3: I do think it's very interesting that you have these
Speaker 3: similar principles that appear to be in operation in these
Speaker 3: hermit crab economies and human economies.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, you know, this does not bear a lot
Speaker 2: of discussion. But as one final tangent for this episode,
Speaker 2: I want to point out that in twenty fifteen, apparently
Speaker 2: some UFO ologists looked at some NASA Mars Curiosity rover
Speaker 2: footage and in the lower guy, yeah lo fi visual
Speaker 2: information that was collected, they spotted a hermit crab on
Speaker 2: the surface of Mars m Yeah. Also, I think a
Speaker 2: scorpion and maybe a humanoid being. Alf was Alf there possibly, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think we have to assume it was Alf. Alf
Speaker 2: hermit crab and a scorpion. You know, obviously you can
Speaker 2: go back to our episodes that we did in the
Speaker 2: last several months talking about this very situation. What happens
Speaker 2: when you have low detail, low quality information and you
Speaker 2: really want to see humans or humanoids, aliens and so forth. Well,
Speaker 2: this is exactly what happens. You spot your Martian hermit crabs.
Speaker 3: Hold on, I'm trying to find the image. Oh okay,
Speaker 3: here it is. I've seen something on the Daily Express.
Speaker 3: Ye oh, you know what. I give it to them,
Speaker 3: Like that looks more like I'm not saying it is
Speaker 3: a hermit crab. It's not, but that looks more like
Speaker 3: a hermit crab than most of the things people see
Speaker 3: on Mars actually look like the thing they're saying there.
Speaker 2: So you're saying, there's hope.
Speaker 3: I'm saying it. Really it's got It's a nice, nicely
Speaker 3: selected anomalous image. It has a shadows falling on a
Speaker 3: rock in just a certain way so that it does
Speaker 3: look like legs. Kudos to them for digging up this one.
Speaker 2: I want to believe. All Right, we're gonna go ahead
Speaker 2: close out this episode, but you know we're gonna come
Speaker 2: back with a third hermit crab episode. We've got we've
Speaker 2: got some feelers out there, we've got some ideas. We
Speaker 2: think we have enough to dish out apart three. So
Speaker 2: again because again there's so much hermit crab research out there.
Speaker 2: There's so many different species of hermit crabs and they're
Speaker 2: all amazing. So tune in for more crab action on Thursday.
Speaker 2: Because yes, Stuff to Blow your Mind publishes core episodes
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