Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're out
Speaker 1: for Thanksgiving break this week, but we've got some episodes
Speaker 1: for you from the vault. This one is called Crabs
Speaker 1: Eat Everything Around Me Part two. It originally published November.
Speaker 1: Let's dig in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and my
Speaker 1: name is Joe McCormick, and we're back with Part two
Speaker 1: of the Feast of Crabs. If you haven't heard part one,
Speaker 1: you should probably go back and listen to that one first.
Speaker 1: But I'm ready to jump right in. Yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 1: We're gonna continue with our exploration of various uh accounts
Speaker 1: of crabs eating curious things, eating things in curious ways,
Speaker 1: and so forth. This is kind of our they kind
Speaker 1: of tradition during the holidays towards the end of the
Speaker 1: year to dive into a crab related topic and see
Speaker 1: what it has for us. Now, we haven't talked a
Speaker 1: lot about mythology and folklore in in our crab journey
Speaker 1: thus far, and you know, part of it is. When
Speaker 1: you look around, crabs often don't have central roles in
Speaker 1: um in myth cycles. I mean there I think there's
Speaker 1: some exceptions to the rule, but a lot of times
Speaker 1: it's stuff like, uh, like Hercules is fighting the hydra
Speaker 1: and then a crab shows up and tries to to
Speaker 1: to nip at his heels and he dispatches it and
Speaker 1: goes back to fighting the hydra. That sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that sounds it was. So that's the crab cancer,
Speaker 1: right that became the constellation name from, or that has
Speaker 1: the same name as the constellation. I mean, he still
Speaker 1: gets a constellation out of the whole affair. But it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it can feel little bit disappointing
Speaker 1: if you're really into crab uh anatomy and into crab
Speaker 1: monster movies, UM, it can be a little a little
Speaker 1: bit of a letdown, Like, come on, you can't Hercules
Speaker 1: have more of a battle. Can't he just battle the crab?
Speaker 1: That sounds fun to me? Oh wait, I just had
Speaker 1: to look this up because I wasn't sure if I
Speaker 1: was remembering it right. But yeah, he he gets the
Speaker 1: constellation basically because Hara hates Heracles and the crab like
Speaker 1: bites him on the foot, and then Heracles kills the
Speaker 1: crab and Hera's like, well, good job biting him on
Speaker 1: the foot. I'll put you in the sky forever. The
Speaker 1: Greek gods. Well, I do have a fun one that
Speaker 1: I found though, that I want to share with everybody.
Speaker 1: This one I discovered in the book Japanese Mythology A
Speaker 1: to Z by Jeremy Roberts. I looked around to try
Speaker 1: and find some of the places as well and didn't offhand. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it can be found other places, but this
Speaker 1: is the only place I was able to find find it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to retell it for you here, but I'll
Speaker 1: stress that Jeremy roberts telling of it is is going
Speaker 1: to be more dramatic than mine, So definitely go to
Speaker 1: that source if you want to see it for yourself.
Speaker 1: So that's how it goes down. A young girl, uh
Speaker 1: buys a crab from a fisherman in order to save
Speaker 1: the crabs of life. She's doing, you know, the basic
Speaker 1: thing that a lot of little kids will do, where
Speaker 1: they suddenly, you know, they'll feel sorry for a captive
Speaker 1: animal or a food animal, and they want to to
Speaker 1: save it, and so that's what this girl does. She
Speaker 1: buys the crab, lets it go. Meanwhile, her father is
Speaker 1: in a similar scenario. He's trying to save a frog
Speaker 1: from a snake. I'm not sure why, but he's trying
Speaker 1: to do this. He's like, no, snake, you do not
Speaker 1: get to eat this frog. I'm not gonna let you
Speaker 1: do it, and the snake finally is like, okay, look,
Speaker 1: I'll spare the frog's life, but you have to let
Speaker 1: me marry your daughter, and dad agrees. So we don't
Speaker 1: know anything about this frog. It's not special, like it
Speaker 1: wasn't his brother who got turned into a frog or something.
Speaker 1: There has to be more to this story. Um know,
Speaker 1: I've been reading a lot about various yokai recently, and
Speaker 1: you know, with with those Chinese ghost stories, there's often
Speaker 1: some hidden meaning. You know, maybe it comes down to
Speaker 1: a turn of phrase, you know, something that's not going
Speaker 1: to be obvious in a pure English translation, or it's
Speaker 1: something metaphorical, etcetera. So I don't know exactly what is
Speaker 1: going on here, but I think it can't just be
Speaker 1: the fact that Dad just loves frogs and loves frogs
Speaker 1: more than he loves his daughter. Um, but at any rate,
Speaker 1: this is the scenario we find ourselves in. Okay, So
Speaker 1: what happens? Well that night the snake arrives, but arrives
Speaker 1: in human form and tries to claim his bride. And
Speaker 1: so Dad at this point has not even warned his
Speaker 1: daughter about what he agreed to. Uh. So he's he's
Speaker 1: able to buy a little time. He's like, look, look,
Speaker 1: just come back in a few days, and the snake agrees.
Speaker 1: So Dad has a little opportunity here to talk with
Speaker 1: his daughter. He tells her what has happened, and she
Speaker 1: is rightfully horrified. She hides away in her room in
Speaker 1: she praised to the gods for delivery from this uh,
Speaker 1: this snaky fate, and the gods do not answer her
Speaker 1: prayers because they're too busy putting crabs in the sky. Perhaps, yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't see that the gods are are listening to her.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, you know the the The two days pass
Speaker 1: and here comes the snake again. Only this time the
Speaker 1: snake has come in its serpentine form. It's an animal form.
Speaker 1: It enters her room, and just when it seems that
Speaker 1: she is completely abandoned to this fate, a thousand crabs
Speaker 1: burst through the door and consume the snake, just you know,
Speaker 1: completely deflesh it a thousand crabs. And so I guess
Speaker 1: the idea is like this is that that she spared
Speaker 1: the crab earlier and so she had she had a
Speaker 1: friend in the crabs, And or you could also look
Speaker 1: at it like the gods did actually reward her. They
Speaker 1: were listening, and they allowed all these crab saviors to
Speaker 1: come and yeah and yeah, save her from this snake
Speaker 1: and she marries this warm of crabs. I don't know, maybe,
Speaker 1: but but I love this because it's also like, oh man,
Speaker 1: this is something you could have, like a swarm of
Speaker 1: crabs tearing tearing an enemy apart like that should be
Speaker 1: in a film somewhere somehow, this whole thing could be
Speaker 1: adapted into some sort of like a weird horror tale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: crabs are not usually the hero of a story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this is maybe the only one I've really been
Speaker 1: able to find so far. But hey, if you know
Speaker 1: some good crab hero stories out there, right in because
Speaker 1: we love to hear from you, because yeah, generally it
Speaker 1: seems like crabs are going to be a minor character.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, let's think of Disney's a Little Mermaid, right,
Speaker 1: the crab is just there to be a friend to
Speaker 1: arial the Mermaid. Uh. I guess maybe he comes through
Speaker 1: a time or two. But he's he's not the focus,
Speaker 1: he's not the he's not the big central hero. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's a kind of mechanically intuitive
Speaker 1: pairing to have snakes and crabs together in a tale
Speaker 1: like this. Yeah, it does seem like it's some thing
Speaker 1: that storytellers around the world have come back to a
Speaker 1: few times. Um. For instance, there's this crab snake duology
Speaker 1: in the Aesop fable The Snake and the Crab. Also,
Speaker 1: speaking of Disney movies, it factors into Disney's The Sword
Speaker 1: in the Stone, which is a King Arthur movie that
Speaker 1: I imagine a number of you have seen and they're
Speaker 1: familiar with. It's an otherwise in my opinion, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a boring film. It doesn't have a lot
Speaker 1: going on, except it has this fabulous wizard battle between
Speaker 1: Merlin and this this evil witch who I think was
Speaker 1: created for the Like. It's not Morgana or anything, it's
Speaker 1: just it's just this witch that he battles Mab. I
Speaker 1: think her name is Mimm Mim. Yeah, I think you
Speaker 1: think you're right. So anyway, it's a battle between between
Speaker 1: two magic users and the whole the rules of the
Speaker 1: battle are that they have to fight each other. Uh,
Speaker 1: No one can turn invisible. You can only transform into
Speaker 1: real world animals, not into of fantasy animals. And we're
Speaker 1: going to see who who winds up on top. So
Speaker 1: it's a fabulous sequence where they jump in and out
Speaker 1: of various animal forms and there and you know, generally
Speaker 1: trying to counter each other. And in this it actually
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of of of another of a
Speaker 1: Japanese story about foxes that are engaging in a similar competition,
Speaker 1: magical foxes who are transforming themselves into different forms, and
Speaker 1: like one transforms into this and the other transforms into
Speaker 1: something to sort of uh counter that, and it just
Speaker 1: keeps going. And in this case, one of them transforms
Speaker 1: into a snake and the other transforms into a crab
Speaker 1: in order to of course clip that snake in half
Speaker 1: if it can. Yeah, this comes back to that mechanically
Speaker 1: intuitive pairing I was talking about, where I think people
Speaker 1: just have a natural tendency that goes like this. So
Speaker 1: first step, you see a thing that is longer than
Speaker 1: it is wide, and then the second step you automatically
Speaker 1: think about cutting or snipping a cross wise. So snakes
Speaker 1: are naturally long and crabs have by logical scissors on
Speaker 1: their legs. Yes, um, I also yeah, them is great
Speaker 1: in this. But also I have to say that Merlin
Speaker 1: has a wonderful animated mustache as long as we're we're
Speaker 1: focusing on November mustaches here, and it makes sense right
Speaker 1: because we think of the like the mouth parts of
Speaker 1: a crab, it's easy to to imply some sort of
Speaker 1: a mustache going on there as well. Oh yeah, it
Speaker 1: fits right in there. Now I want to say something
Speaker 1: else here. I thought that this is worth noting about
Speaker 1: the crab, the crab form, and about how the crab
Speaker 1: is just ultimately this winning design. In fact, it's such
Speaker 1: a winning design that, according to a two thousand twenty
Speaker 1: one Harvard University study, the crab like body plan evolved
Speaker 1: at least five times independently in both true crabs and
Speaker 1: false crabs. So that's at least five cases of carconization. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a term that was coined by evolutionary biologist l. A.
Speaker 1: Bora Dale in nineteen sixteen. And on top of this,
Speaker 1: the Harvard study points out that the crab body has
Speaker 1: been lost at least seven times, so this would be
Speaker 1: a process that they referred to as d carcinization. So, um,
Speaker 1: I love this idea. I mean this kind of falls
Speaker 1: into I think a popular meme about everything becoming crabs,
Speaker 1: about how, given enough time, the crab form will be
Speaker 1: the form of everything because it just works so exceedingly well. Now,
Speaker 1: I do enjoy that meme. I guess technically, if we
Speaker 1: want to be pedantic, it's about certain types of arthropods,
Speaker 1: Like you've already got certain a certain body plan to
Speaker 1: start with, and if you're starting there, things that are like,
Speaker 1: you know, lobster ish or something in one way or
Speaker 1: another often are shaped by their environment to become more
Speaker 1: crab like. But yeah, yeah, thumbs up to the meme.
Speaker 1: So the first crab I thought we might talk about
Speaker 1: here today, uh, sometimes referred to as the Yeti crab
Speaker 1: or the hoff crab, it's its actual name is is
Speaker 1: perhaps a better suited for this interesting creature. Now there
Speaker 1: are a few different varieties, uh, but the one of
Speaker 1: the first that was really discovered that really set the
Speaker 1: trend is Kiwa Hersuta. Kiwa is the name of the
Speaker 1: Maori sea god and then Hersuita is Latin for Harry.
Speaker 1: So Kiwa Hersuta was discovered by a team from the
Speaker 1: Monterey Bay Aquarium in two thousand six along the Pacific
Speaker 1: Antarctic Ridge south of Easter Island. And it is a
Speaker 1: is a wonderful looking creatures. This pale, hairy looking crab,
Speaker 1: kind of elongated looking. I would say it looks a
Speaker 1: little bit like, you know, some sort of a lobster perhaps,
Speaker 1: but it has no eyes and it lives on hydrothermal vents.
Speaker 1: So this discovery gave us not only a new species,
Speaker 1: but a new genus, that Kiwa genus. And there are
Speaker 1: other Ciwa crabs that have popped up, including Kiwa ty
Speaker 1: Larry found off the Southern found in the Southern Ocean
Speaker 1: off of Antarctica. And this species is probably my favorite,
Speaker 1: as in my opinion, it's a little more cute looking,
Speaker 1: it's less elongated, and it's more it's more plump. It
Speaker 1: looked um, I don't know, it just looks like like
Speaker 1: like it it it belongs in a cartoon, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: And it's a great example of the kinds of things
Speaker 1: we were just talking about, with these sort of converging
Speaker 1: forms of different types of of marine arthropods. Because technically
Speaker 1: the Kywa genus are not true crabs. I think they
Speaker 1: are a type of lobster or lobster related organism. But
Speaker 1: there it's they're super cool. I mean, they're also focusing
Speaker 1: just on tylery. Here it has a tiny habitat, a
Speaker 1: mere thermal envelope of a few square meters deep along
Speaker 1: the East Scotia Ridge. Um it's here that they live
Speaker 1: by these black smokers. These are vents, These a chimney
Speaker 1: like vents that spew dark water that reaches temperatures of
Speaker 1: roughly seven degrees farenheight or three degrees celsius. They live
Speaker 1: in heaps here, sometimes like six thousand crabs per square meter,
Speaker 1: and they're cramped in here because outside of this narrow
Speaker 1: proximity to the black smokers, the ocean is extremely cold.
Speaker 1: Uh so they're they're this fascinating example of extremophile life
Speaker 1: suspended between boiling eruptions and chilling darkness. Like this is
Speaker 1: the niche that they've carved out for themselves. It's also
Speaker 1: interesting to imagine how they would spread between one vent
Speaker 1: to another. You know that you almost have to imagine
Speaker 1: their lifestyle is like a uh, you know, living on
Speaker 1: these tiny islands in a way. Yeah, yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: they're so they're on these little little islands and uh
Speaker 1: and they're they're jocking position here. So you tend to
Speaker 1: find like the older, bigger crabs are are are towards
Speaker 1: the center, towards the heat, and the adolescents are having
Speaker 1: to to scramble for position on the outside. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: hot sulfur rich zone is is likely too much for
Speaker 1: their eggs, so the females seem to have to crawl
Speaker 1: off into the colder, darker waters to brood and they
Speaker 1: likely die there. They likely just don't have the energy.
Speaker 1: They spend all their energy going out to do that
Speaker 1: and they can't make it back. But the females. Then
Speaker 1: this releases a vast quantity of larvae into the water column,
Speaker 1: and some of these end up finding distant vents, others
Speaker 1: returning to their own vent um. So you have this
Speaker 1: is how we end up with with with with the
Speaker 1: larvae from from a particular hydrothermal vent location potentially ending
Speaker 1: up at other vents. Yeah, like a lot of organisms
Speaker 1: in the ocean. They've got this sort of broadcasting method
Speaker 1: of reproduction that allows allows uh the organisms to spread
Speaker 1: in their in their larval forms. Yeah, I was reading
Speaker 1: a great article about this in on the BBC website
Speaker 1: by Jonathan Amos wrote about them in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eighteen and points out the first of all, the last
Speaker 1: common ancestor of all these various Yeti crabs probably live
Speaker 1: thirty to forty million years ago in the eastern Pacific.
Speaker 1: And so what we have here are these different far
Speaker 1: flung ancestors due to the successful colonization of hydrothermal vents
Speaker 1: by dispersed larvae UM and so the other. Then the
Speaker 1: crazy thing about all this too is once they have
Speaker 1: found a place to thrive, that doesn't mean that this
Speaker 1: is a forever home UM. In Amos's words, these various
Speaker 1: events quote switch on and off through time. So event
Speaker 1: that has this thriving population of of of Vietti crabs
Speaker 1: around it may just suddenly turn off and then everything
Speaker 1: around it just dies in the cold um. And then
Speaker 1: it may turn back on later uh, and then it's
Speaker 1: a place that the larvae can can can can arrive
Speaker 1: at and life can sort of begin again until such
Speaker 1: time as it just turns off. Returning to the island analogy,
Speaker 1: you have to imagine like a small island that has
Speaker 1: a thriving ecosystem on it, and then suddenly it just
Speaker 1: gets like a dome clamped over it that turns it
Speaker 1: into a sub zero freezer. And then at some point
Speaker 1: maybe the dome is suddenly lifted and it's exposed to
Speaker 1: the sun again. Yeah, yeah, and so this is why
Speaker 1: any given species of yetti crab has to ultimately maintain
Speaker 1: multiple footholds at different events to survive. But it also
Speaker 1: drives home the delicate how just how delicate these event
Speaker 1: environments are, because um, if human activity wipes out, you know, potentially,
Speaker 1: just like it seems like just one or two of
Speaker 1: these vent habitats, they could potentially limit a given species
Speaker 1: holdings to an unsustainable level. Um. I don't know that
Speaker 1: researchers have really worked out. I mean we we I
Speaker 1: don't think we know enough about like you know, all
Speaker 1: the different places that they live. But yeah, it's it.
Speaker 1: Basically the idea is we we we don't know just
Speaker 1: how delicate the situation is if they're depending on vents
Speaker 1: that may again turn off and back on again at
Speaker 1: any given moment. They have to have a foothold in
Speaker 1: a certain number, and if you start digging into that
Speaker 1: number through deep sea mining or some other human venture,
Speaker 1: then yeah, you potentially put them in in an unsustainable place.
Speaker 1: Won't someone think of the dear crustaceans. I mean, they
Speaker 1: are so cute. I mean it is uh probably easier
Speaker 1: than than with a lot of arthropods in the ocean
Speaker 1: to generate sympathy for them because they look kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: these pale, fuzzy ticks. Uh, that doesn't really folks sympathy,
Speaker 1: does it. But they yeah, they're they're like plump and
Speaker 1: cute and I don't know, they're good well, also, Tylery,
Speaker 1: especially if you look at a picture of them from
Speaker 1: a from above, it also kind of looked with the
Speaker 1: pale colorization, it looks like a human skull from above,
Speaker 1: like there's a human skull with skull cover colored legs
Speaker 1: and claws coming out of it, which again doesn't sound
Speaker 1: very cute, I guess, but um, but but it makes
Speaker 1: it makes it a very interesting creature to look at. Now,
Speaker 1: I should again stressed that we have different varieties, and
Speaker 1: they have some different um different features. For instance, tay
Speaker 1: leery have special spikes for scaling up those chimneys of
Speaker 1: the black smokers. Meanwhile, there's a species found near Costa
Speaker 1: Rica which is Kiwa pura vita, which doesn't have claws
Speaker 1: at all. Um, So you have they have different varieties,
Speaker 1: but what they seem to all have in common is
Speaker 1: their namesake, hey, which isn't here at all, but set
Speaker 1: which they used to collect bacteria growing around the hydrothermal
Speaker 1: vents and also to grow it within these what if
Speaker 1: it's sometimes referred to as gardens on their bodies, and
Speaker 1: then they use their delicate mouthparts to scoop up and
Speaker 1: consume the bacteria. So they are you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: walking around growing their own food, collecting their own food,
Speaker 1: and then growing it on their own bodies. It's pretty great.
Speaker 1: Thank well. This actually connects directly to a couple more
Speaker 1: examples I wanted to talk about. So the first one
Speaker 1: is connected by the idea of these deep sea dwelling
Speaker 1: UH crustaceans that can be found around hydrothermal vents. So
Speaker 1: I came across another report of interesting crab feeding behavior.
Speaker 1: This this was from a short twenty six article and
Speaker 1: New Scientists by Sam Wong, and the subject of this, uh,
Speaker 1: this right up was video footage that had been captured
Speaker 1: by a robotic deep submersible that was based off of
Speaker 1: the Schmidt Ocean Institute's ship, the foul Core, and it
Speaker 1: had been exploring life around deep hydrothermal vents in the
Speaker 1: Pacific at a depth of thirty meters so way way down.
Speaker 1: This was in the Marianna region. Well, well, I have
Speaker 1: to slow down there. That it was called the foul Core.
Speaker 1: So it was named for the wish dragon in the
Speaker 1: Never Enning Story. I don't know, what's awesome? So well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know this foul Core in the Never Earning
Speaker 1: Story named after something else? Or is that original to
Speaker 1: the book? I don't know offhand, So I cannot answer
Speaker 1: your question. But that is its name, all right? Or
Speaker 1: are you gonna apply to set sail on the foul Core? Now? No,
Speaker 1: probably not, but I but I applaud the naming. Uh
Speaker 1: either way? Well, so, anyway, the submersible based off of
Speaker 1: this ship was um capturing footage of crabs that were
Speaker 1: that were around these hydrothermal hotspots, and this particular species
Speaker 1: was known as austin O Graya william See. Apparently not
Speaker 1: a whole lot is known about them, but they inhabit
Speaker 1: these hotspots, and like many other deep sea creatures, they
Speaker 1: tend to be pale and lacking eyes and so as
Speaker 1: to the diet of these crabs, they have been observed
Speaker 1: eating some regular things like snails and algae, but they
Speaker 1: have also been observed engaging in brutal cannibalism. You can
Speaker 1: find some video footage of this. Uh. It's it's of
Speaker 1: a particularly frenzied quality. It's just sort of like a
Speaker 1: big murder puddle of pale crabs ripping legs and claws
Speaker 1: off and and running away with them. Uh and and
Speaker 1: and of course, in addition to eating other things in
Speaker 1: their environment, but on this expedition, footage was captured of
Speaker 1: these crabs doing something a little gentler. They were appearing
Speaker 1: to groom one another, eating bacteria off of the shells
Speaker 1: of con specifics. So, for example, you can see one
Speaker 1: crab going up to an the crabs leg and just
Speaker 1: sort of picking at it, just picking it, not pulling
Speaker 1: the leg off and running away with it, as they
Speaker 1: might be wont to do in another situation, but just
Speaker 1: sort of like grazing along the outside of the leg,
Speaker 1: getting some of this, uh, this bacterial matting off of
Speaker 1: the surface of the of the exoskeleton. And this is
Speaker 1: really interesting behavior. It makes me wonder, like, what does
Speaker 1: this indicate about the the nature of the crab. Is
Speaker 1: it possible this could have some kind of social role
Speaker 1: within crab society, like the social grooming behaviors of primates.
Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, that seems kind of unlikely
Speaker 1: because these are you know, these are crabs. They're not
Speaker 1: they're not social mammals, um, you know. So it could
Speaker 1: just be that bacteria is delicious and here's some right
Speaker 1: now on on my on this neighbor's leg. But I
Speaker 1: guess we don't know that this kind of thing. I'd
Speaker 1: be interested to see more research about, like could there
Speaker 1: be a role for some type of social grooming within
Speaker 1: these within the deep see Arthur pod communities. Interesting interesting
Speaker 1: Now I have in the background here, Joe, I had
Speaker 1: to do some quick research, and first of all, I
Speaker 1: can confirm that the RV Falcore is in fact named
Speaker 1: after the wish dragon in the Never Ending Story. Um
Speaker 1: it was. It was originally called the c Falc, but
Speaker 1: then it was retro fitted um later um and I
Speaker 1: believe two thousand nine or so, and then it was
Speaker 1: renamed the foul Core. Now the name Falcore. Incidentally, Falcore
Speaker 1: is the English uh name for the wish dragon in
Speaker 1: the English translation of Michael Linda's The Never Ending Story.
Speaker 1: In the German the name is fukor uh fu c
Speaker 1: h you are derived from the Japanese term for lucky
Speaker 1: dragon fukur you uh if I'm saying that correctly, And
Speaker 1: apparently it was changed in the English translation because, um,
Speaker 1: the name future sounds too much like an English language
Speaker 1: swear word. Okay, well, I I feel very educated now,
Speaker 1: Um the way, did they change the name of the
Speaker 1: type of dragon in the movie because I remembered it
Speaker 1: from the movie as being a luck dragon? Is it
Speaker 1: a wish dragon in the book? I might have accidentally
Speaker 1: said wish dragon just now, but he is he is
Speaker 1: a luck dragon? Okay, wish dragon is a is a
Speaker 1: is a different film that I've also watched recently. We
Speaker 1: watched all the dragon films in Okay, we'll steady sailing
Speaker 1: to the Falcore. But let's get back to the world
Speaker 1: of crabs. What else did crabs eat? Okay? Well, so
Speaker 1: we talked about them growing bacteria on themselves and eating
Speaker 1: it off of themselves, and then in some cases performing
Speaker 1: grooming like behaviors where they graze bacteria off of each other.
Speaker 1: But I want to move on to another parallel finding.
Speaker 1: So Okay, if you are even the slightest bit crab curious,
Speaker 1: you probably know a bit about the type of crabs
Speaker 1: known as spider crabs. This involves many different species, all
Speaker 1: belonging to the super family known as magoid data. They're
Speaker 1: called spider crabs I think because their legs can get
Speaker 1: very long and spind lee, so in some cases they
Speaker 1: actually do look like spiders. One of these animals, maybe
Speaker 1: the most remarkable spider crab, is the Japanese spider crab
Speaker 1: or macro Kira camp Ferry, which is the largest extant
Speaker 1: arthropod in the world. So this is an ocean dwelling
Speaker 1: crab that still exists today. It's not some you know, devonian,
Speaker 1: your riptoride, giant sea scorpion or something. You can find
Speaker 1: these out in the ocean still, and the largest one
Speaker 1: on record had a leg span of around three point
Speaker 1: eight meters or more than twelve feet, and it weighed
Speaker 1: something like forty something pounds, So these things are enormous.
Speaker 1: They're mostly legs, so you know, they're not like a
Speaker 1: solid mass that big, but if they spread their legs out,
Speaker 1: it is it is bigger than human body. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can often find spider crabs at at aquariums and they
Speaker 1: always need to look at. I mean, they don't do much.
Speaker 1: They're they're they're they're not really action packed, but they're
Speaker 1: very impressive specimens. But there's actually another interesting thing about
Speaker 1: this superfamily, the Majoidea. About three quarters of the species
Speaker 1: in this superfamily are examples of what is known as
Speaker 1: decorator crabs. Decorator crabs are animals that live in symbiotic
Speaker 1: relationships with many different kinds of sessile organisms by attaching
Speaker 1: those organisms to their exoskeletons. Rob, I've got some images
Speaker 1: for you to look at. Uh. There are many different
Speaker 1: kinds that live in relationships with many different kinds of
Speaker 1: other species, but generally, a decorator crab wears other plants
Speaker 1: or animals as clothing on the outside of its shell
Speaker 1: as a form of camouflage to blend into its surroundings,
Speaker 1: and it does this by hooking these other organisms onto
Speaker 1: little bristles on its exoskeleton called ct S E T
Speaker 1: A E, which I've seen compared to velcro. So this
Speaker 1: might be a sort of natural precedent for for velcrow technology.
Speaker 1: There are lots of different kinds of other creatures that
Speaker 1: get roped into this. Some particular species of decorator crabs,
Speaker 1: uh prefer algae, some prefer sponges, some look for certain briozoans,
Speaker 1: and some like anemonies that can sting. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: think yeah. There's been some some interesting studies we've probably
Speaker 1: talked about in the show before about these uh, these
Speaker 1: anemone wielding crabs uh, and then what what? They usually
Speaker 1: have one on each claw and then if one gets
Speaker 1: taken away, they can care one in half to have
Speaker 1: to again that sort of thing where these the boxer crabs, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. Well, yeah, so that example in particular
Speaker 1: of anemon ees that can give you a hint that
Speaker 1: sometimes these decorations on the outside of the shell do
Speaker 1: more than simply camouflaged the animal as it hides among
Speaker 1: the rocks and the other flora and fauna populating the
Speaker 1: sea floor. Some of these decorator crabs select organisms that
Speaker 1: play a specific defensive role. So I was looking at
Speaker 1: a table of findings of this sword published in a
Speaker 1: book called Animal Camouflage, Mechanisms and Function edited by Martin
Speaker 1: Stevens and Semi Merlita. And this was from Cambridge University
Speaker 1: Press in two thousand eleven, and it lists a bunch
Speaker 1: of different examples of different types of majoid crabs, along
Speaker 1: with research identifying their preferred decorations and possible reasons for
Speaker 1: that preference. So, for example, there is a type of
Speaker 1: crab known as the Innocus philangium or the leeches spider crab.
Speaker 1: It appears to prefer a type of brown algae known
Speaker 1: as dick yota dick atoma for the parts of its
Speaker 1: body most exposed to predators. And it turns out that
Speaker 1: this species of algae is not only good camouflage, it
Speaker 1: is chemically noxious. So it hides that this crab hides
Speaker 1: the vulnerable parts of its body behind something that predators
Speaker 1: would probably find disgusting or even poisonous. Uh. Maybe, like
Speaker 1: if you were trying to, you know, protect yourself from
Speaker 1: tigers by covering your back in bottles of bleach, you know,
Speaker 1: a tiger gets in there and starts biting it's it's
Speaker 1: not gonna want any of that. Also along these lines,
Speaker 1: there's an Atlantic spider crab called stin O c o
Speaker 1: ops for cot Us that preferentially attaches a species of
Speaker 1: stinging anemony to its carapace. And in both cases these
Speaker 1: decorations would appear to provide additional defenses beyond just masking
Speaker 1: the body in the environment. But the crab from this
Speaker 1: list that I wanted to focus on has a different
Speaker 1: relationship with its preferred decoration organism. It likes to eat
Speaker 1: its own camouflage. So the animal in question is known
Speaker 1: as noo Mithrax ursus, or the hairy seaweed crab, and
Speaker 1: I think the Latin name of its of its species ursus,
Speaker 1: implies that it's also known as the bear seaweed crab
Speaker 1: or sign bear. And folks, I just want to say,
Speaker 1: off the bat, this is a beautiful crab. In some
Speaker 1: cases it looks like a cartoon animation of a crab
Speaker 1: being electrocuted. It's got like animated electricity lines all around it.
Speaker 1: Also sometimes it looks like a burst of fireworks from hell.
Speaker 1: It is just a gorgeous Arthur pod and I can
Speaker 1: definitely see where the name comes in because it it
Speaker 1: is it looks like it's furry like the bear, you know, yeah, totally. Um. So,
Speaker 1: it has some natural hairs that that stick out from
Speaker 1: its exoskeleton. But it's also generally well actually not in
Speaker 1: all environments, but in some environments it covers itself in
Speaker 1: uh in in these decorations that give it this additionally
Speaker 1: hairy look. So according to an entry, I was reading
Speaker 1: about it from the Museum's Victoria database the Australian Um
Speaker 1: Natural History Museums. Uh these are found in rocky shores
Speaker 1: and reefs around New Zealand and Southeastern Australia, and I
Speaker 1: was further reading about this this species in a in
Speaker 1: a research paper published in the New Zealand Journal of
Speaker 1: Marine and Freshwater Research ch in nineteen ninety four by
Speaker 1: Chris Woods and Colin McClay called masking and Ingestion Preferences
Speaker 1: of the spider crab no no mythrax Ursus. And what
Speaker 1: the researchers here say is that in laboratory tests, specimens
Speaker 1: of this crab not a mithrax Ursus, were found to
Speaker 1: have preferences when it came to which organisms they would
Speaker 1: mask with. So it wasn't just any algae, there are
Speaker 1: certain kinds of algae they like to put on their shells,
Speaker 1: and specifically it was types of branched algae like how
Speaker 1: op terrorists specific era and coralina office analis. And I
Speaker 1: actually just want to read in full a part from
Speaker 1: the introductory section of this paper that describes the process
Speaker 1: of attaching pieces of algae to the body, because I
Speaker 1: found it really fascinating to picture this routine as the
Speaker 1: crab does it. Uh, and so as a note to
Speaker 1: help understand what I'm about to read here, the words
Speaker 1: chilly and cheli peds refer to the clause. The cheli
Speaker 1: are the claws and the chelipads are the claw legs.
Speaker 1: Pad isn't foot so the author's write quote. The masking
Speaker 1: behavior of in Ursus begins with the selection of a
Speaker 1: clump of algae. The crab then selects a single piece
Speaker 1: of alga, using the chili in a cella over cella
Speaker 1: technique to correctly measure the piece of algae to the
Speaker 1: required size. So they're measuring it out using their claws
Speaker 1: as a as a as a ruler. Basically, this piece
Speaker 1: of alga is then snipped off using the cheli and
Speaker 1: transferred to the mouth parts, where the cut end is
Speaker 1: roughened and trimmed of any projections, while the uncut end
Speaker 1: is held by both chelipeds. Okay, so holding it in
Speaker 1: the claws and then chewing on the snipped end, putting
Speaker 1: it in the mouth parts to chew on it. Then
Speaker 1: once you've chewed up the cut end, good uh quote,
Speaker 1: one cheli pad is then used to transfer the piece
Speaker 1: to a part of the body. Attachment is accomplished by
Speaker 1: rubbing it against the hooked set so that the end
Speaker 1: becomes entrapped by the city. If the algal piece does
Speaker 1: not attach it first, it is transferred back to the
Speaker 1: mouth parts to be manipulated, and then taken back to
Speaker 1: the side of attachment and rubbed against the hook set
Speaker 1: until it attaches. If the piece of alga fails to
Speaker 1: attach after a number of attempts, it is discarded and
Speaker 1: a new piece is selected. I don't know why, but
Speaker 1: I found this kind of surprising. Something seemed kind of
Speaker 1: complex and and crafty about this process. Yeah, I mean it.
Speaker 1: It's it's a process that may seem, you know, out
Speaker 1: of beyond the the abilities of what we might might
Speaker 1: generally attribute to a crab. But then again, we think
Speaker 1: about the way they eat, which we discussed in the
Speaker 1: first episode, and it does sound like a natural extension
Speaker 1: of that, Like, this is an animal that is very
Speaker 1: that excels at taking things apart um uh you know
Speaker 1: I usually so it can fit those things in its
Speaker 1: mouth uh and can consume it. But this is kind
Speaker 1: of a specialized version of the same thing, manipulating living things, um,
Speaker 1: and then using the pieces of that thing that you
Speaker 1: have manipulated. It ends up being this kind of kind
Speaker 1: of like biomancy that the crab practices. Yeah, totally. I
Speaker 1: just love that detail about it chewing the snipped end
Speaker 1: of the alga in order to roughen it so that
Speaker 1: it attaches to the velcrow on its back. Now, another
Speaker 1: interesting fact this paper mentions is that there is a
Speaker 1: lot of turnover in the crabs algae mask. Apparently not
Speaker 1: to mithrax Ursus replaces a good ten to twenty of
Speaker 1: its algae cover every twenty four hours, So that would mean,
Speaker 1: you know, every roughly five to ten days, it's got
Speaker 1: a new coat of algae on it. And apparently decorator
Speaker 1: crabs that use algae in particular can be very strategic
Speaker 1: about its benefits as camouflage. For example, previous research, so
Speaker 1: not this study, but other studies they cite, had found
Speaker 1: in some decorator species that when you put a crab
Speaker 1: in a tank where it is surrounded by algae that
Speaker 1: doesn't match the color of the algae on its current mask,
Speaker 1: it will basically strip itself of the old algae and
Speaker 1: redecorate itself with the new algae to match its environment.
Speaker 1: And also research has shown that when given the option,
Speaker 1: crabs will tend to stay hidden within masses of algae
Speaker 1: that match the color of their existing mask. So these
Speaker 1: crabs can distinguish between different types of masking materials and
Speaker 1: they can make calls about masking and hiding behaviors to
Speaker 1: maximize the camouflage effects. Wow, that's really it's really impressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it. It goes beyond just this near sort of
Speaker 1: automatic behavior that's taking place with anything that it happens
Speaker 1: to come across. Right, So, yeah, it's not just sort
Speaker 1: of like rubbing up against a bunch of algae and
Speaker 1: getting it stuck on there. It's picking the algae that
Speaker 1: will that will do the best job of camouflage. But
Speaker 1: the researchers in this study found a different kind of
Speaker 1: discrimination in the selection of the masking material when it
Speaker 1: came to Noto Mithrax ursus. They found that the algae
Speaker 1: species the crabs preferred to mask with where the same
Speaker 1: ones they preferred to eat. So, if you make like
Speaker 1: a ranked list of all of the algae that the
Speaker 1: crab will go to first to eat, which ones does
Speaker 1: it like to consume the most, that is going to
Speaker 1: be the same as the list that it will choose
Speaker 1: to put on its carapace and on its legs. So
Speaker 1: in a way, here it looks like the camouflage is
Speaker 1: doubling as food storage. This crab is hiding behind a
Speaker 1: mask of its own lunch, so the algae on its
Speaker 1: back will help it blend in with its environment, make
Speaker 1: it look like a bunch of seaweed rather than a crab,
Speaker 1: so predators are you know, are less likely to spot it.
Speaker 1: But then also it can eat that seaweed. It can
Speaker 1: eat that algae if it gets hungry. It's like if
Speaker 1: we were to imagine a like an army sniper in
Speaker 1: one of those gilly suits. But they insisted on only
Speaker 1: camouflaging themselves with their favorite leafy greens, so that they
Speaker 1: could snack on it whilst while stalking, you know, and
Speaker 1: and waiting on their their target to appear. This gilly
Speaker 1: suit is a super food kale only kale gilly suit.
Speaker 1: I love it, though, I guess it does make me
Speaker 1: wonder maybe there is an answer to this. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but it makes me wonder which way the adaptation goes? Like,
Speaker 1: how how did it end up matching the food preferences
Speaker 1: and the masking preferences? Um? So, like, was it because
Speaker 1: a certain type of algae was the best, you know,
Speaker 1: provided the best camouflage cover, the animal evolved to prefer
Speaker 1: eating that kind or was it the kind that's most
Speaker 1: delicious and nutritious it evolves to prefer for masking. M Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. Yeah, the crabs are silent on
Speaker 1: the matter. Thank you, thank you. All Right, up next
Speaker 1: we have this will be a shorter little section here,
Speaker 1: but this is something you you you pinpointed and then
Speaker 1: I followed up by looking at a source on it.
Speaker 1: But this is the idea of crabs eating This is
Speaker 1: so much crabs eating something remarkably different, but crabs doing
Speaker 1: it in a way we didn't expect. And that's crabs
Speaker 1: eating quote unquote eating through their gills. Yeah, this is interesting,
Speaker 1: so circumventing the delicate mouth parts that you don't even
Speaker 1: have to raise a jaw leg for this meal. Right.
Speaker 1: So this concerns the invasive or at least invasive in
Speaker 1: um uh North America, and I believe in Africa as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: the the invasive green shore crab, which we've discussed on
Speaker 1: the show before. I believe in their native European waters,
Speaker 1: they are sometimes harvested for food, and there have been
Speaker 1: efforts in North America, where it is certainly invasive, to
Speaker 1: encourage its use in cooking. You know, what are some
Speaker 1: culinary uses for this? And I think there have been
Speaker 1: some some ideas of using it as like a uh
Speaker 1: you know, like like a soup base and so forth. Um,
Speaker 1: that's the same tactic you see with like invasive lion fish,
Speaker 1: hinging on the fact that if you really want humans
Speaker 1: to make a species disappear, make them desire that species
Speaker 1: for some reason or another, such as making it an
Speaker 1: ideal main course at a dinner. Sure. I think we've
Speaker 1: actually covered the green shore crabs in a different capacity
Speaker 1: on the show before. I don't remember what it was though,
Speaker 1: So u has pointed out in a two thousand seventeen
Speaker 1: study from the University of Alberta, the green crabs are
Speaker 1: pretty snazzy consumers in their own right because they can
Speaker 1: again quote unquote eat by absorbing nutrients, specifically the amino
Speaker 1: acid um loose sign across their gills. And this was
Speaker 1: the first demonstration of crustaceans being able to do this.
Speaker 1: Now that the crabs are notoriously hearty, as you often
Speaker 1: see with an invasive species um, so their bility disability
Speaker 1: might enable them to survive long periods between meals. So
Speaker 1: I don't have anything to eat, but I can absorb
Speaker 1: some some necessary amino acids, or it might help them
Speaker 1: cope with changes in salinity. So offsetting salinity changes via
Speaker 1: the amino acids that they can absorb just straight through
Speaker 1: their gills. Okay, so they would not be fully like
Speaker 1: sucking in chunks of food through their gills and eating
Speaker 1: like that. It's it's specifically getting these particular amino acids,
Speaker 1: these particular nutrients out of the water around them as
Speaker 1: they breathe. Yeah, so you know that's again why we
Speaker 1: put eat in quotation marks here. I guess it's kind
Speaker 1: of like our humans eating when we absorb vitamin D
Speaker 1: via sunlight that sort of thing. Are we are we
Speaker 1: eating when we get a you know, some sort of
Speaker 1: a vitamin injection or something. Yes, okay, I've got something
Speaker 1: I was wondering about. Rob You may have seen. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a very popular genre of internet video, uh, feeding
Speaker 1: crabs human food. You know, I don't really think I've
Speaker 1: seen any of these. What kind of foods are they
Speaker 1: eating them in these videos? Oh? Everything I've seen. I
Speaker 1: think I've seen crabs eating pizza. I've seen crabs eating
Speaker 1: you know, fruits and vegetables and chips and all the
Speaker 1: giving crab derrito is probably I don't remember all the specifics,
Speaker 1: but you know, I've seen a good bit of this
Speaker 1: in my day. Clearly, it's funny to look at, you know,
Speaker 1: it's crabs. It's kind of it thinks it's people sort
Speaker 1: of thing, right, exactly. A crab eating a derrito is
Speaker 1: inherently comedic. I don't know if it's good for the
Speaker 1: crab though. Then again, lots of crabs are scavengers. You know,
Speaker 1: they'll eat what they can get. Um, So, so I
Speaker 1: guess I'm not too worried about the crabs. But but
Speaker 1: but I just wondered, is there anything interesting to cover
Speaker 1: about the phenomenon of crabs eating human food? All right,
Speaker 1: so we cannot speak for all crabs. We will not
Speaker 1: speak for all crabs. But one fun place, uh to
Speaker 1: look for some answers that I thought would be to
Speaker 1: look to the realm of hermit crabs as pets. Joe,
Speaker 1: did you ever have a hermit crab as a pet?
Speaker 1: I did not, did you. I've always wanted one, but um,
Speaker 1: it's never been permitted. I'm always like that looks that
Speaker 1: could be a great pet. And and and whoever is
Speaker 1: in my life is always like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you need that, and they're they're probably correct. So you
Speaker 1: mean your family now is preventing you from getting hermit crabs? Right?
Speaker 1: I think it's the end. I think the argument is
Speaker 1: a hermit crab is either too much pet or not
Speaker 1: enough pet. So it's either a situation where like, uh,
Speaker 1: you really, you know, ask yourself, do we have space
Speaker 1: and time for this creature to live in our life
Speaker 1: as well? Or it's a question of is there something
Speaker 1: more exciting we could have, like a lizard, And that's like,
Speaker 1: that's where we are now we have a we have
Speaker 1: a leopard gecko. We skipped over hermit crab and went
Speaker 1: straight to leopard gecko. This is a vertebrate household, so
Speaker 1: to be clear, there are more than one thousand hermit
Speaker 1: crab species, and you can roughly divide them all up
Speaker 1: into marine hermit crabs and terrestrial hermit crabs. Uh. So
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're your sea dwellers and then you're
Speaker 1: land dwellers. And there are a few different species that
Speaker 1: are popular pets from either category, but the ones most
Speaker 1: likely to encounter human food are of course those terrestrial crabs.
Speaker 1: So I thought I might look at some terrestrial hermit
Speaker 1: crab feeding guides for some ideas. Okay, so I went
Speaker 1: to the spruce pets. This is I think it's from
Speaker 1: the same people do like the sprucey heats uh. And
Speaker 1: they point out that commercial hermit crab diets are probably
Speaker 1: the best way to go if you're feeding a hermit crab,
Speaker 1: because these are balanced and they contain everything that they
Speaker 1: might need because in general, you know, matching up with
Speaker 1: pretty much everything we've been talking about here, they're going
Speaker 1: to have a very diet. Their opportunistic land roving omnivore.
Speaker 1: So they're gonna eat a little bit of this, a
Speaker 1: little bit of that in the natural world, and you
Speaker 1: need a food source that reflects that they're on the
Speaker 1: seafood diet. I seafood. I eats it pretty much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they recommend I'm going to roll through a lot
Speaker 1: of foods here. They recommend such fresh foods as mango, papaya, coconut,
Speaker 1: fresh or dry it. And I have to add that
Speaker 1: I can certainly back up the coconut suggestion because um,
Speaker 1: I got to watch a whole bunch of hermit crabs
Speaker 1: go absolutely crazy over a busted open coconut once and
Speaker 1: it was it was amazing. It was a feeding frenzy
Speaker 1: where you seeing the wild hermit crabs. I believe this
Speaker 1: was in Belize, if memory serves. Oh okay, alright, But
Speaker 1: in addition to this, apples, apple sauce, bananas, grapes, pineapple, strawberries, melons, carrots, spinach, watercress,
Speaker 1: leafy green lettuces, but not iceberg lettuce because you know
Speaker 1: the the nutrient issue there, uh, broccoli, grass leaves, strips
Speaker 1: of deciduous tree bark, unsalted nuts, occasional peanut butter, raisins,
Speaker 1: dried seaweed crackers, unsweetened cereals, plain rice cakes, plain popcorn
Speaker 1: on occasion, freeze dried shrimp, freeze dried plankton, Brian shrimp, fish,
Speaker 1: food flakes, and much more. Okay, so it looks to
Speaker 1: me like this, Uh, this list of suggestions from this
Speaker 1: website is suggesting a wide range of different kinds of foods,
Speaker 1: but seems to be avoiding things that have added sugar
Speaker 1: or salt. Yeah. They point out that the crabs may
Speaker 1: seem very interested in salty and sweet snacks like chips
Speaker 1: and sweet breakfast cereals, but these are to be avoided.
Speaker 1: They say also stay away from dairy products, which makes
Speaker 1: sense when would when would a crab get a dairy
Speaker 1: product in the natural world? Um? And they say that
Speaker 1: the hermes are generally gonna be game for fresh or
Speaker 1: dried fruits of any kind, but some experts advise against
Speaker 1: highly acidic or citrus foods, so like, maybe don't give
Speaker 1: them a limon or a tomato. Also, starch veggies like
Speaker 1: potatoes are to be avoided. Um as well as again
Speaker 1: low nutrient iceberg lettuce. What I all this hating on
Speaker 1: iceberg lettuce? I? Love iceberg lettuce. I'm gonna go out
Speaker 1: on a limb right here. I'm gonna say iceberg lettuce
Speaker 1: is awesome. I mean it, iceberg lettuce can be awesome.
Speaker 1: But the question is what are you getting out of it? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're getting out of it nutrient wise,
Speaker 1: but it's delicious, crunchy, crunchy goodness. All right, fair, fair enough,
Speaker 1: Just keep it away from the hermit crabs. Um. Now, Also,
Speaker 1: hermit crabs require calcium, So remember that bone nawing we
Speaker 1: mentioned from the last episode involving other crabs kind of
Speaker 1: plays into into this scenario. Uh, calcium addition probably not
Speaker 1: gonna come as a surprise too many pet owners out there.
Speaker 1: I know with our leopard gecko, we have to we
Speaker 1: have to shake its crickets up in a bag with
Speaker 1: a calcium powder to ensure there's getting enough calcium, and
Speaker 1: then also leave some calcium out for it in a
Speaker 1: little tiny dish. Um. But with crabs you can end
Speaker 1: up using reptile ready calcium supplements like this. But also
Speaker 1: you might end up using something like crushed oyster shells
Speaker 1: or cuttle bone as something that they can use to
Speaker 1: get their their calcium. Oh yeah, okay, So tying it
Speaker 1: back to the last episode, I was just remembering the
Speaker 1: suggestion this was not proven, but it was. It was
Speaker 1: hypothesized that maybe one reason duck built dinosaurs had been
Speaker 1: eating a bunch of crustaceans that might have been crabs
Speaker 1: or some of their you know, related crustaceans that have
Speaker 1: these these hard shells, was that they were looking for
Speaker 1: certain nutrients types of protein or specifically calcium as part
Speaker 1: of their breeding and reproduction cycle. Yeah. Now one more,
Speaker 1: one more note from this spruce article because it's just
Speaker 1: it's so crab. I love it. They say, quote hermit
Speaker 1: crabs are able to find their food in two ways,
Speaker 1: by smelling the food and by seeing other hermit crabs
Speaker 1: eating hermit crab dietary peer pressure. Yeah, so they might
Speaker 1: be like I detect food over there, or it's like
Speaker 1: that hermit crab is eating something I'm in, I'm gonna go,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go try and steal some of that. All
Speaker 1: the hermit crabs, like Billy gets to eat iceberg, lettuce,
Speaker 1: Billy gets to eat pizza. Yeah. But obviously, I, like
Speaker 1: I said, I do not have a hermit of a
Speaker 1: pet hermit crab. I've never had one. I've just gotten
Speaker 1: to observe some in the wild and you know, look
Speaker 1: at them in pet stores. So if there are any
Speaker 1: hermit crab enthusiasts out air and you have particular thoughts
Speaker 1: on this, if you can tell us, uh, you know
Speaker 1: what foods your hermit crab prefers the most, which ones
Speaker 1: you you like to give them? Definitely right in and
Speaker 1: let us know. I'd I'd love to hear from that. Really,
Speaker 1: anybody out there with with crab expertise or crabs pertise, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, right in, have you ever had part of
Speaker 1: your body eaten by hermit crabs? What was that like?
Speaker 1: Hermit crabs do? They just have a lot of character?
Speaker 1: I love I love watching them. Yeah. Actually I recall
Speaker 1: one Nature documentary segment. I honestly don't remember what it
Speaker 1: was from, but I think it was something narrated by
Speaker 1: by Attenborough. Um. But it was a segment that was
Speaker 1: showing hermit crabs forming a chain of shell trading, so
Speaker 1: like they were all trying to trade shells to get
Speaker 1: a bigger shell, and they formed up in a line
Speaker 1: essentially to each switch into the next one's shell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there have been essentially like biology economics article that have
Speaker 1: looked at this, like how do they go about, um,
Speaker 1: you know, trading up on their their shell size and
Speaker 1: then you know, because if one leaves its shell for
Speaker 1: a bigger shell, then that opens up a shell for
Speaker 1: another growing hermit crab to take advantage of it. It's
Speaker 1: it's really fun. So the adaptation there, I guess would
Speaker 1: have to involve the hermit crab observing when a bigger
Speaker 1: hermit crab is likely to be leaving its shell for
Speaker 1: for a bigger one. So yeah, that would take some
Speaker 1: kind of social observance kind of like what you're talking
Speaker 1: about with the hermit crabs watching other hermit crabs eat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think also they're they're all about stealing
Speaker 1: as well, So it's it's a it's a crab kind
Speaker 1: of a crabby crab world. But who comes up with
Speaker 1: these rules? You can steal somebody else's shell, but you
Speaker 1: can't eat iceberg. Let us. Now, they will eat the iceberg.
Speaker 1: It's not that they don't want it. I think I
Speaker 1: think the idea is like they will eat it, but
Speaker 1: it's just they deserve better. Okay, coming up soon, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do a whole episode on iceberg let us. It
Speaker 1: will be about how iceberg let us is the king
Speaker 1: of foods. It's amazing. I know that what iceberg let
Speaker 1: us must not occur in nature. Whoever created the strain
Speaker 1: of vegetable is really deserves great credit. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and close it out there, but
Speaker 1: yeah again, right in, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Let us know if there are other examples of curious
Speaker 1: crab cuisines that that we were not familiar with. It
Speaker 1: didn't have time to cover here. We will mention it
Speaker 1: in an upcoming listener mail episode. Also, yes, hermit crab owners,
Speaker 1: right in and tell us all about your babies. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you would like to listen to other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can find
Speaker 1: us in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed
Speaker 1: that it gets found anywhere you get your podcasts. Just
Speaker 1: you know, make sure you subscribe and you can get everything,
Speaker 1: including our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, our listener
Speaker 1: mail episodes on Mondays are artifact short form episodes on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and then on Friday you get Weird how Cinema that's
Speaker 1: our time to just talk about a strange film of
Speaker 1: one sort or another. Huge thanks, as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
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Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
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