Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and it is Crab Season on Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: That's not really a season corresponding to anything on the calendar,
Speaker 1: but every now and then we just kind of get
Speaker 1: crab fever. We have to let the decapods take over
Speaker 1: the show, and that's what we are doing today. We're
Speaker 1: kicking off the first in a series of crab Bag episodes,
Speaker 1: the sort of a grab bag of various topics that
Speaker 1: caught our fancy related to crabs. And this was in
Speaker 1: part a listeners suggestion, so encouragement to all you listeners
Speaker 1: out there to send in topics you would like to
Speaker 1: hear more about. Obviously we can't always promise to cover them,
Speaker 1: but we do sometimes take inspiration on our show calendar
Speaker 1: from listener requests. So in our.
Speaker 2: Specially if you asked, he has to do something we
Speaker 2: were going to do anyway, like more crab content. I
Speaker 2: think when that question came, we ran that listener mail
Speaker 2: episode and I was like, oh yeah, actually tomorrow's episode
Speaker 2: is Crabs. The Crabs will always return.
Speaker 1: But a shout out to listener Hannah who asked very
Speaker 1: politely for new Crab content, and here we are too oblige.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you are new to the show, we're
Speaker 2: stuffed to blow your mind. We've been around as an
Speaker 2: audio podcast forever and we've done video in the past.
Speaker 2: You can find we have a YouTube channel with some
Speaker 2: old content on it, but for the most part here
Speaker 2: on Netflix. If you're watching us on Netflix, it's a
Speaker 2: new effort. We're figuring things out, trying new things every day.
Speaker 2: We probably look a little everything looks a little bit
Speaker 2: different compared to the way it looked in the last episode.
Speaker 2: So we're constantly trying to improve. But if you'll hear
Speaker 2: us reference episodes that are only in the audio archives,
Speaker 2: and you can find those wherever you get your audio podcasts.
Speaker 1: And just to clarify so nobody's confused out there, the
Speaker 1: video version of the show now available on Netflix. If
Speaker 1: you are watching on Netflix, or if you would like
Speaker 1: to check it out on Netflix, the video version is
Speaker 1: the same content. It's the same show we're running in
Speaker 1: our audio feed. It's just with the cameras turned on
Speaker 1: so you can see us while we're talking. But it's
Speaker 1: the same show, same kind of thing we've been doing
Speaker 1: for many, many years. But now you can see our heads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, see our heads, and I think there are fewer ads.
Speaker 2: So yeah, if that your deal, this is just another
Speaker 2: way to consume the show. All right, Well, Joe, should
Speaker 2: we go ahead and dig into the crab grab bag
Speaker 2: or crab bag or crab grab bag? What do we have?
Speaker 2: What have you got for us?
Speaker 1: So the first thing I wanted to talk about today
Speaker 1: is a miracle crab, a holy crab. I'm going to
Speaker 1: begin by reading a passage from a book called The
Speaker 1: Life and Letters of Saint Francis Xavier. This book is
Speaker 1: by Henry James Coleridge from eighteen seventy two. The author
Speaker 1: of this book, Henry James Coleridge, was a nineteenth century
Speaker 1: English Jesuit priest and writer and a bit of trivia.
Speaker 1: The grand nephew or I don't know if it's called
Speaker 1: great nephew. His grandfather's brother was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the
Speaker 1: English Roman Romantic era poet and the author of Rhyme
Speaker 1: and the ancient mariner Kubla Khan, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So this is a decidedly less psychedelic and monstrous work
Speaker 1: than Rhyme and the Ancient Mariner. This is a biography
Speaker 1: of a Catholic saint of the sixteenth century Navarrees, Catholic
Speaker 1: priest and missionary, Saint Francis Xavier, who was one of
Speaker 1: the founders of the Society of jesus Aka the Jesuits.
Speaker 1: You've probably heard of them, major Catholic order. He was
Speaker 1: one of its founders, and a big part of Saint
Speaker 1: Francis Xavier's legacy in the Church is missionary work, efforts
Speaker 1: to spread Christianity in parts of what is now India, Japan,
Speaker 1: and Indonesia. So the context of this biographical section in
Speaker 1: the book is that Francis Xavior is in the middle
Speaker 1: of his mission in the Molucca Islands. So he's traveling
Speaker 1: between small ports on a kind of outrigor vessel and
Speaker 1: stopping to preach in different places, and I think also
Speaker 1: to visit communities of Christians, like in the Philippines and
Speaker 1: in Indonesia. And Coleridge says that we get the following
Speaker 1: story from a source called the Relatio, which is based
Speaker 1: on the alleged eyewitness testimony of a man named Fausto Rodriguez,
Speaker 1: a Portuguese soldier who had been traveling along with Saint
Speaker 1: Francis Xavior on his journeys. So here I'm going to
Speaker 1: begin to read from Coleridge. They were sailing to Baranura
Speaker 1: when a sudden storm came on, and to appease it,
Speaker 1: Francis Xavier took from his neck a crucifix one finger long.
Speaker 1: Rodriguez says, so it was the small crucifix that he
Speaker 1: wore on his heart and dipped it into the sea,
Speaker 1: leaning over the boat's side. And I've read about this
Speaker 1: encounter in other sources. There are different tellings of this
Speaker 1: story where the details vary somewhat, but the idea is
Speaker 1: it's a terrible storm, the ship is being tossed by
Speaker 1: the waves. In some of these other tellings it's even
Speaker 1: more dramatic, like people are being washed out of the
Speaker 1: boat into the sea. Somehow they get rescued. And in
Speaker 1: the midst of this madness, the priest decides to invoke
Speaker 1: the power of the Cross to beg for safe passage,
Speaker 1: and he sort of uses the principle of blessing by touch,
Speaker 1: so he reaches out and he dips the crucifix into
Speaker 1: the water, and while he is dunking the cross in
Speaker 1: the waves. In the version of the story told by Coleridge, quote,
Speaker 1: it chanced that it slipped from his hand into the sea,
Speaker 1: which accidents so greatly afflicted Xavier that he gave great
Speaker 1: signs of grief. But fortunately for the travelers, they survive
Speaker 1: the storm, and they make it to the shore of
Speaker 1: their destination, an island called Baranura in the Source, and
Speaker 1: they're unharmed. So they pull the boat up onto the
Speaker 1: beach and they start walking along the coast toward a
Speaker 1: town called Tamlow. And here's where the miracle part had
Speaker 1: Coleridge writes, quote when they had walked half a mile
Speaker 1: and were now many miles away from where the crucifix
Speaker 1: had been lost. And then here I think it begins
Speaker 1: to quote from a direct translation of Fausto Rodriguez's account, quote, Behold,
Speaker 1: a sea crab runs out of the sea onto the
Speaker 1: shore with the aforesaid crucifix, holding it in his claws
Speaker 1: on either side, upright, and lifted up, and so ran
Speaker 1: to Xavier and stopped in his sight. And Xavier flung
Speaker 1: himself on his knees, and the crab waited until he
Speaker 1: had taken the crucifix from its claws, and then ran
Speaker 1: back again into the sea whence it had come, and
Speaker 1: Xavier kissed and embraced the crucifix, and, crossing his arms
Speaker 1: on his breast, lay prostrate on the ground on for
Speaker 1: half an hour, and his companion, who was by his side,
Speaker 1: did the same, thanking the Lord Jesus Christ for so
Speaker 1: strange a miracle. And so I love this story, and
Speaker 1: I'm glad that the original alleged witness of the event
Speaker 1: acknowledges that as far as miracles go, this has a
Speaker 1: weird flavor like especially I think because it involves the
Speaker 1: symbol of Christian salvation gripped in the claw of a crab,
Speaker 1: or in both claws, I think it.
Speaker 2: Says, yeah, yeah, I'm imagining it lifted over its head. Yeahs.
Speaker 1: I don't know why this is. Crabs to me, are
Speaker 1: not an image that naturally calls up thoughts of holiness
Speaker 1: and Heaven and God. We see a lot of Christian
Speaker 1: iconography that has especially mammals and birds and fishes, you know,
Speaker 1: being you know fish, you know, Jesus' disciples being fishermen,
Speaker 1: so they're fish, and Christian imagery we think of sheep,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, being the flocks of Christ. Sometimes
Speaker 1: there are deer, sometimes there are lions, things like that,
Speaker 1: and then also you can think of birds like doves
Speaker 1: getting into the arthropod realm just feels more removed from
Speaker 1: the light of God than the other types of animals do.
Speaker 1: I don't know why.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, within the context of the Christian faith
Speaker 2: that God made all of these animals, so you should
Speaker 2: be able to see some reflection of God and everything.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, the crabs are hardly the most
Speaker 2: problematic creature in which to look for some portion of God,
Speaker 2: like you know, makes more sense than looking in some
Speaker 2: sort of terrifying parasite.
Speaker 1: Parasitoid wasp is the image of God. Yeah, and apparently
Speaker 1: the crab is too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, crabs do important work, absolutely the Lord's work.
Speaker 2: They are the children of God. But yeah, you don't
Speaker 2: see them, or at least you don't think of them
Speaker 2: as being a standout and religions psychography.
Speaker 1: I do think, Yeah, maybe this should help us think
Speaker 1: more about the crabs role and say, the decomposition of
Speaker 1: dead matter in the natural environment and helping to break
Speaker 1: all that down and how that is quite a holy job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have discussed in the past, how given how
Speaker 2: into crabs we are and how into crabs I think
Speaker 2: humans in general are, and crabs must be observed. I
Speaker 2: was thinking about this earlier, like, if you were near crabs,
Speaker 2: you must watch them like they are just amusing and
Speaker 2: you want to see more of them. So it is
Speaker 2: kind of surprising at times that you don't see more
Speaker 2: crabs and crab like creatures in various mythologies. I mean,
Speaker 2: they're there, but oh yeah, they at least to my eye,
Speaker 2: they they often don't seem to play as large a
Speaker 2: role as I would like. You know, there are fewer
Speaker 2: crab gods than I would like.
Speaker 1: I feel like maybe there are more crab gods outside
Speaker 1: of Christianity. Maybe Christianity is particularly crab deficient religion. But
Speaker 1: here's counter example. So despite the crabby weirdness of this story,
Speaker 1: it is not like a totally obscure thing tucked away
Speaker 1: that nobody's ever heard about. This is a widely discussed
Speaker 1: and well known legend of Francis Xavior, and it was
Speaker 1: one of the miracles discussed during his canonization in Rome.
Speaker 1: It's even depicted in Renaissance art, and here I stumbled
Speaker 1: across something that I thought was amazing. Rob, I have
Speaker 1: a picture of a painting for you to look at
Speaker 1: in our outline. This is an oil on canvas painting
Speaker 1: from sixteen nineteen called Saint Francis Xavior and the Crab
Speaker 1: Miracle at Sarum Island. This is by the Portuguese painter
Speaker 1: Andre Reynoso and it is currently housed in the Church
Speaker 1: of Saint Rock in Lisbon. This painting includes multiple parts
Speaker 1: of the story all shown at once. So in the
Speaker 1: upper right hand corner, in a kind of hazy cpia tone,
Speaker 1: almost like it's a dream, we see a ship rolling
Speaker 1: in the waves with thunderclouds above, so this shows the
Speaker 1: earlier peril in the story. And the upper left we
Speaker 1: see rays of light breaking through the clouds, almost like
Speaker 1: the power of God coming down to intervene. And then
Speaker 1: in the center of the frame you have Francis Xavier
Speaker 1: and his companions gathered on the beach looking down in astonishment.
Speaker 1: And then at the bottom right there is a crab
Speaker 1: clutching the crucifix straight up above its body with both claws.
Speaker 1: And I was looking at the image of this crab
Speaker 1: and thinking, why does this pose look so familiar? It's
Speaker 1: pinging something that's like that I have seen and thought
Speaker 1: about many times, and it took me a minute to
Speaker 1: figure out what it was, and then I realized, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, this crab is Luke Skywalker in the original
Speaker 1: handpainted poster for Star Wars from nineteen seventy seven. If
Speaker 1: you look up both paintings, I think you will see it.
Speaker 1: The resemblance is uncanny, especially because the crabs ribbed underside
Speaker 1: kind of resembles the like absurd and non representative muscles
Speaker 1: they give Mark Hamill's chest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're talking about the original theatrical poster by
Speaker 2: Tom Young. Yeah, iconic, And you're absolutely right, it's the
Speaker 2: same pose like this. This either Luke Skywalker is channeling
Speaker 2: the Holy Crab or the Holy Crab is giving us
Speaker 2: a taste of what's wants it to come. I mean,
Speaker 2: it would sci fi cinema.
Speaker 1: The Holy Crab is obviously hundreds of years earlier, so
Speaker 1: it would have to be inspired by I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's just a coincidence. It would be bizarre to
Speaker 1: me if this truly were inspired by the crab painting,
Speaker 1: but it is the resemblance is unbelievable to me. Also
Speaker 1: because the lightsaber in the original Star Wars poster for
Speaker 1: some reason takes the shape of a cross. I don't
Speaker 1: know why it does that, that it's never cross shaped
Speaker 1: in the movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it's supposed to be just like the
Speaker 2: gleam the glare of the of the lightsaber here. But
Speaker 2: you're right, it even also forms a crucifix shape. Yeah. Wow,
Speaker 2: I mean he is unable. So it is true some direct,
Speaker 2: kind of direct comparison to be made between Luke Skywalker
Speaker 2: and Jesus Christ as well.
Speaker 1: That's true, though I don't know if that comparison goes
Speaker 1: to the crab, excepted just sort of by general association,
Speaker 1: because I don't get any idea that the crab in
Speaker 1: the story is a metaphor for Jesus.
Speaker 2: I don't know the crab ties it all together, I think. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So the nature of the miracle is thought provoking, right,
Speaker 2: because I would be tempted to think, well, maybe the
Speaker 2: real miracle was that they were saved from dangerous seas,
Speaker 2: and that's kind of a mine. This is a minor
Speaker 2: miracle on top of that, because in and of itself,
Speaker 2: like a crab saved your crucifix, like I would I
Speaker 2: don't know. I would think maybe we should have saved
Speaker 2: that miracle juice for for something a little more substantial.
Speaker 2: But you know, I'm not going to question in the
Speaker 2: ways of the divine here.
Speaker 1: Well, if something like this actually happened, I think it
Speaker 1: would be astonishing, Like, given the magnitude of the sea,
Speaker 1: if it truly happened that you dropped a crucifix into
Speaker 1: the ocean and then you know, days later, many miles later,
Speaker 1: you come ashore and you find a crab clutching the
Speaker 1: exact same crucifix, I don't know, that would be pretty
Speaker 1: remarkable to me, Like, what are the odds?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, And it raises significant questions about about whether
Speaker 2: any variety of crab would be potentially carrying around something
Speaker 2: like this, a non organic morsel that's main value would
Speaker 2: be that it's shiny.
Speaker 1: I mean, crabs do sometimes just like clutch things and
Speaker 1: carry them around non a food thing. We've talked about
Speaker 1: examples of this before, and in fact, maybe we can
Speaker 1: even come back to this question later in the series.
Speaker 1: Just the idea of crabs carrying things around that are
Speaker 1: not food didn't prepare notes on that for today, but
Speaker 1: that is something we could return to. So are you
Speaker 1: okay if I talked a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: crab in religious art?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it, okay.
Speaker 1: So I was looking for more detail on this painting
Speaker 1: on the Xavier crab in art, and I found some
Speaker 1: discussion in a book called Jesuit Art Brill's Research Perspectives
Speaker 1: in Jesuit Studies. This is by an art scholar named
Speaker 1: Mia Mochizuki, put out by the academic publisher Brill. And
Speaker 1: in this book, in this section of the book, Mochizuki
Speaker 1: gives a retelling of the story, emphasizing the most fantastical
Speaker 1: and embellished version of the miracle legend, in which Xavier
Speaker 1: not just gets the crucifix back later, but in this
Speaker 1: version he intentionally throws his crucifix into the sea and
Speaker 1: this successfully calms the storm and saves the ship. So
Speaker 1: this is this version of the story has direct, intentional
Speaker 1: and successful command of the weather.
Speaker 2: Do you think that the crucifix in this case does
Speaker 2: not have a little vial of oil in it? Right?
Speaker 2: To call back to a previous episode that we.
Speaker 1: Did, Yeah, dropping oil in the water to calm the.
Speaker 2: Waves also sometimes practiced by members of the clergy.
Speaker 1: So the yeah, I've forgotten some of the details on that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we go back and check that out in
Speaker 1: our archives if you want. But anyway, so in this
Speaker 1: version of the story, he intentionally does calm the storm,
Speaker 1: and then also you get the same detail we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, the crucifix is returned by the crab on
Speaker 1: the beach. I'll have a bit more to say about
Speaker 1: the different versions of the story in a minute, But
Speaker 1: regarding the art and the legend here, Motchizuki adds a
Speaker 1: few notes. One is that a Xavier scholar named Gaeorg Schurhammer,
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen eighty two to nineteen seventy one, argued
Speaker 1: that this story may have introduced devotion to the image
Speaker 1: of the crucifix within Japan, and also that it may
Speaker 1: have been based on actually a local Buddhist legend that
Speaker 1: Xavier or his traveling companions encountered during their time in Asia.
Speaker 1: Here I'm going to read from Mochizuki's footnote quote the
Speaker 1: miracle of the Crab bears a number of similarities with
Speaker 1: the legend of the ninth century Buddhist priest Jikaku who
Speaker 1: used an image of a god of wisdom, Yakushi Yorai
Speaker 1: to calm the sea, one that was returned to him
Speaker 1: three years later by an octopus.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. So, first of all, I love the idea
Speaker 2: of the octopus bringing the holy emblem back as well.
Speaker 2: But then also so we're looking at the possibility that
Speaker 2: this whole story was just appropriated, It was just co
Speaker 2: opted from existing traditions.
Speaker 1: Potentially totally possible. Yeah, that the companions of Xavier to
Speaker 1: whom this story is traced back and again I'll talk
Speaker 1: about the versions of the story in a minute, may
Speaker 1: have been half remembering or somehow just co opting a
Speaker 1: folk tale that they heard from the lands that they
Speaker 1: were traveling to. And in fact, there are some other
Speaker 1: cases where this could be what's happening as well. Mochizuki
Speaker 1: points out quote other legends of Xavier could also have
Speaker 1: been appropriations of local folklore encountered on their travels, like
Speaker 1: the miracle of Xavier turning salt water into freshwater from
Speaker 1: a Malaysian legend. So there are other cases where it's
Speaker 1: like places he traveled to had folk tales that are
Speaker 1: remarkably similar to miracles that are later attributed to him
Speaker 1: after his death. Okay, so regardless of where the story
Speaker 1: came from, Mochizuki notes that images of crabs became a
Speaker 1: standard part of the iconography of Xavier. And another example
Speaker 1: I've got for you to look at in the outline here, Rob,
Speaker 1: is this seventeenth century silver cross held by a crab.
Speaker 1: This is now in the Portuguese city of Coimbra. But
Speaker 1: it's like a silver crab. I don't know if it
Speaker 1: has the right number of legs. This looks like a
Speaker 1: crab with four legs and two claws, or maybe I'm
Speaker 1: missing something here, but anyway, it's a silver crab holding
Speaker 1: up across The cross is bigger than the crab itself,
Speaker 1: so it's a mighty feet of strength.
Speaker 2: This is amazing. I had never seen this before.
Speaker 1: There's another thing I've got for you to look at
Speaker 1: in the outline, Rob. This is a painting that Mochizuki
Speaker 1: is talking about. It is a seventeenth century Japanese portrait
Speaker 1: of Saint Francis Xavier from Kobe, which depicts Xavier with
Speaker 1: a flaming red heart gripped against his breast, so he's
Speaker 1: got his hands up in his chest like this and
Speaker 1: he's holding this red heart with almost kind of i
Speaker 1: don't know, kind of beams of little red tails coming
Speaker 1: out of it. That looks sort of like the way
Speaker 1: you might represent the sun with rays coming out, except
Speaker 1: it's all pink and red, and like, oh, that's a
Speaker 1: kind of strange and interesting image. But then speaking about
Speaker 1: this heart in the image, Mochizuki writes, quote, it's stylized
Speaker 1: flames formed double duty as both fiery organ and miraculous crab.
Speaker 1: And I realized, oh my god, yes it's a heart,
Speaker 1: but it really looks like a crab. It's a crab
Speaker 1: and a heart.
Speaker 2: Crab heart. And I'll add that the saint here looks
Speaker 2: a little bit like coffin Joe. So there are a number
Speaker 2: of things coming for it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, But the story of the Miraculous Crab does not
Speaker 1: end there, because it turns out the legend of Saint
Speaker 1: Francis Xavier has some connection, it seems, at least a
Speaker 1: llegened and a few sources, some connection to not just
Speaker 1: one individual miracle crab in the story, but to a
Speaker 1: fully extant species of decapod crustacean, known sometimes as the
Speaker 1: Holy crab or the crucifix Crab and Rob, I've got
Speaker 1: a picture of the Crucifix crab for you to look
Speaker 1: at here in the outline. It's a kind of flat,
Speaker 1: wide crab like. It's large, it has big swimming legs
Speaker 1: in the back. It's kind of flat, and then you
Speaker 1: can see the the imagery on the top of it.
Speaker 1: I'll describe that for the listeners in just a second,
Speaker 1: but I should flag I found this photo along with
Speaker 1: a blog post for the Western Australian Museum by Andrew
Speaker 1: Josey called Holy Crab, the Crucifix crab caaribdis feriata and
Speaker 1: a bit of detail Yeah now, yeah, that's the genus name.
Speaker 1: So a bit of detail from this postcaribdis feriata is
Speaker 1: found in the Indian and West Pacific Oceans and it
Speaker 1: ranges pretty far from as far west as the eastern
Speaker 1: coast of Africa to as far east as Japan and Australia.
Speaker 1: Generally living in shallow waters with a rocky or sandy bottom.
Speaker 1: It is eaten. Sometimes it is fished commercially and recreationally
Speaker 1: in some parts of I think India and Indonesia. But
Speaker 1: I was reading other sources saying that some people I
Speaker 1: think probably especially some Christians do not eat it for
Speaker 1: reasons you might imagine because it has a crucifix on it,
Speaker 1: So the name crucifix crab comes from a cross shaped
Speaker 1: pattern on the crab's carapace. On top of the crab,
Speaker 1: just behind its face, you will typically see a sort
Speaker 1: of cone or bullhorn shaped band of a darker orange
Speaker 1: or red set against a lighter background, and then within
Speaker 1: that red cone there is a pale hollow that is
Speaker 1: often in the shape of a cross or crucifix, though
Speaker 1: I think you could also easily read it as Zelda's
Speaker 1: master sword, as a kind of winged what do you
Speaker 1: call it hilt and cross hilt like that crossguard. I
Speaker 1: don't know my sword terms, but from what I've read,
Speaker 1: different populations of this crab have somewhat different marking, so
Speaker 1: I think they are not all as clearly cruciform as
Speaker 1: the pictures I've got for you to look at, Rob.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the crab I'm seeing in this image. I
Speaker 2: don't know about you, Joe, but I would not feel
Speaker 2: confident trying to repel a vampire with this crab.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a little weird. Like the crucifix, the
Speaker 1: beams of the fix do not feel like wooden planks.
Speaker 1: They're not of a consistent thickness. It's kind of thicker
Speaker 1: further away from the eyes, and then as it goes
Speaker 1: toward the face of the crab it narrows. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think I can see the cross
Speaker 1: or the sword.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I'm more likely to see presence of
Speaker 2: the divine by looking into the crab's eyes here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is we've already established. I think by this point
Speaker 2: that crabs are clearly God's chosen and if one actually
Speaker 2: ascends to Paradise, there will mostly be crabs there.
Speaker 1: I think that's quite possible. But also, if you rotate
Speaker 1: this around, do you kind of see an ant face
Speaker 1: if you look at it upside down the eyes and
Speaker 1: the mouth parts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see it.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Hosey says that some Catholics regard this crab
Speaker 1: as holy or lucky, and its shells are sometimes used
Speaker 1: for religious reasons or possibly as good luck charms. I
Speaker 1: was also reading a bit more about the species in
Speaker 1: a twenty eleven unsigned article in Asian Scientist magazine called
Speaker 1: Crucifix Crab caaribdis feriatas spotted in the Straits of Malacca.
Speaker 1: So the thing that spurred this article is that in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, about a dozen crucifix crabs were caught by
Speaker 1: a fisherman in the Malaysian state of Malacca, after having
Speaker 1: not been found there since the nineteen sixties, and news
Speaker 1: of this catch spread and the fishermen was, according to
Speaker 1: this reporting, flooded by offers to buy the crabs. I
Speaker 1: think it's implied that local Catholics wanted them, but I'm
Speaker 1: not sure exactly who the buyers were. That's just kind
Speaker 1: of an inference. The article says, quote, only minimal quantities
Speaker 1: of the crabs were caught. Many locals don't buy them
Speaker 1: to eat, but preserve the shell as it is considered sacred,
Speaker 1: he told the Malaysian newspaper The Star. And this article
Speaker 1: goes on to explain the fact that crucifix crabs have
Speaker 1: mostly disappeared from the area around Malacca in recent decades,
Speaker 1: and it interviews They interview a local marine biologist who
Speaker 1: I think doesn't know for sure, but speculates that coastal
Speaker 1: development has destroyed or degraded the mangrove swamps where these
Speaker 1: crabs usually live, and so their numbers have been diminished
Speaker 1: in the area. But the article also reports on how
Speaker 1: some Catholics in Goa, India believe that the Crucifix crab
Speaker 1: is a descendant of the crab from Francis Xavier's miracle story.
Speaker 1: And then the article cites a scientist at the National
Speaker 1: Institute of Oceanography in India named Anil Chatterjee who disregards
Speaker 1: this legend and says that the pigmentation on the shell
Speaker 1: has a natural cause. It helps the crab survive in
Speaker 1: its environment. So I actually wanted to find I was
Speaker 1: looking is there a scientific paper that gets into studying
Speaker 1: the adaptive value of the cross shape on the Crucifix crab.
Speaker 1: Has anybody looked into what it actually does? I did
Speaker 1: not find any such research, so I don't think there
Speaker 1: is a specific scientific paper that digs into the cross
Speaker 1: markings on this crab in particular. But I was reading
Speaker 1: in general about patterns of coloration on a crab's carapace
Speaker 1: and general body coloration patterns. So I'm no expert on this,
Speaker 1: but after my reading, my best guess is that the
Speaker 1: cross shape on this crab is part of a general
Speaker 1: design of spotting and modeling and striping that serves a
Speaker 1: function known as disruptive coloration. So color patterns on a
Speaker 1: crab's shell can help the crab hide from predators in
Speaker 1: its environment. And there are a couple of main strategies
Speaker 1: that researchers talk about here. One is called color matching
Speaker 1: and the other is called disruption. Color matching is when
Speaker 1: you try to make the top of your shell nearly
Speaker 1: a solid color that matches the solid color of the background.
Speaker 1: A big example would here be crabs that live on
Speaker 1: mud flats. They often have a fairly solid, muddy color
Speaker 1: on their carapas to camouflage themselves from predators looking down
Speaker 1: from above. And then other crabs like the crucifix crab,
Speaker 1: have these highly varied, sometimes high contrast patterns or patterns
Speaker 1: that sort of interrupt the edges of the top of
Speaker 1: the carapace, and these patterns are thought in many cases
Speaker 1: to protect the crab by disrupting the image of the
Speaker 1: crab's outline. So, in nature, a lot of predators and
Speaker 1: hunters hunt by a visual recognition pattern called edge detection,
Speaker 1: where what they're looking for is a certain kind of
Speaker 1: outline that looks like food to them. And so these
Speaker 1: spotted or striped color patterns kind of break up the
Speaker 1: predator's ability to notice the outline of the animals, so
Speaker 1: they don't see an outline that recognize as crab. Instead,
Speaker 1: they see just a bunch of high contrasts, stripes and
Speaker 1: spots that probably blend in pretty easily with a heterogeneous
Speaker 1: substrate below, like maybe rocky tidal pools or gravel pebbles,
Speaker 1: things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we've discussed on the show before, one of
Speaker 2: the challenges with understanding how the camouflage of an organism
Speaker 2: like this actually works is that very often the images
Speaker 2: that you have of the organism are set against an
Speaker 2: unnatural background, or at least they's they're out of context,
Speaker 2: and so therefore it can be a little more challenging
Speaker 2: to imagine how well they're blending in, because certainly to
Speaker 2: our eye, when we get in the water with organisms
Speaker 2: like this or in their environment, their camouflage often just
Speaker 2: makes them completely invisible to us. Yeah, and of course
Speaker 2: we're you know, we're looking for them in a slightly
Speaker 2: different way and with different gear compared to their natural predators.
Speaker 1: But you put them in a just a glass aquarium
Speaker 1: tank or on top of a table in like a
Speaker 1: research lab. Instead, the pattern really makes them stand out.
Speaker 1: It has the opposite effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And you can imagine then if you
Speaker 2: have this this shell with this cross like form on it,
Speaker 2: and that is, say, on an altar somewhere or on
Speaker 2: a mantle piece, you're even further removed from the natural
Speaker 2: context in which that camouflage would be utilized, and therefore
Speaker 2: you might be more inclined to lean into these ideas
Speaker 2: that this is a divine marking, This is the Divine
Speaker 2: communicating to me through the shell of this organ.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a crab blessed by the Lord. But I just
Speaker 1: want to reiterate what I said at the beginning that
Speaker 1: was speculative about disruptive coloration being the reason, because again
Speaker 1: I could not find an authoritative scientific source that gives
Speaker 1: an answer on this. So really, I don't know. That's
Speaker 1: just my best guess, but.
Speaker 2: It would seem to work, or at least not work
Speaker 2: from an evolutionary perspective.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I've got one more thing I want to
Speaker 1: get into about the legend of the Holy Crab. So
Speaker 1: I was curious about development in the history of this
Speaker 1: legend because I was reading about it and kept coming
Speaker 1: across these different versions of it, I'm like, so, okay,
Speaker 1: how did these versions emerge? And I went looking to
Speaker 1: see if any authors had gone into that subject in depth,
Speaker 1: and I found it discussed briefly in a famous book
Speaker 1: from eighteen ninety six called A History of the Warfare
Speaker 1: of Science with Theology in Christendom by the American historian
Speaker 1: Andrew Dixon White. So White is an interesting and controversial
Speaker 1: figure in the history of science and religion. He was
Speaker 1: one of the founders of Cornell University, and in this
Speaker 1: book he advances a very robust to defense of what
Speaker 1: would come to be known as the conflict thesis. You've
Speaker 1: probably heard versions of this idea before. In short, it
Speaker 1: is the claim that there is an unavoidable conflict between
Speaker 1: science and religion, and that across human history, scientific discovery
Speaker 1: has always been stifled by religious dogmatism. The conflict thesis,
Speaker 1: while clearly true in many particular instances, is not very
Speaker 1: popular among philosophers and historians of science today as a
Speaker 1: generalization about history. People who have looked into this subject
Speaker 1: tend to see it as overly simplistic and usually based
Speaker 1: on a cherry picked survey of history. So what I
Speaker 1: think a lot of these scholars would say White does
Speaker 1: is he goes through history and focuses on historical cases
Speaker 1: of conflict between science and religion, especially where religion has
Speaker 1: stifled or suppressed science, and then just ignores all the
Speaker 1: cases of neutral interactions or complementarity. Though in partial defense
Speaker 1: of the conflict thesis, I think it is wrong. But
Speaker 1: I think also the opposite view that like science and
Speaker 1: religion actually exist in perfect harmony, and you know, religion
Speaker 1: points towards scientific discoveries. Sometimes you hear this from certain
Speaker 1: religious apologists. I think that would be equally incorrect.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and then this, of course, this is a
Speaker 2: much larger topic, but you can certainly get into the
Speaker 2: nooks and Cranny's obit and talk about like, at the
Speaker 2: very basis, religion and science are attempting are often attempting
Speaker 2: to do totally different things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're attempting to do the same thing, but sometimes
Speaker 1: different things. Yeah. So it's just a complex relationship. And
Speaker 1: that seems to be the historical consensus now among most
Speaker 1: people who study this, that it's just a complex relationship
Speaker 1: with different dynamics depending on time, place, and situation. However,
Speaker 1: despite not going for White's overall thesis, his section on
Speaker 1: the history of the miracle craft legend couched within a
Speaker 1: general discussion of the miracles of Francis Xavior. I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting. So the major theme of this section of
Speaker 1: his book is the tendency for the legends of miracles
Speaker 1: to evolve and to become more numerous and more miraculous
Speaker 1: over time. And I think this part is pretty much
Speaker 1: undeniably true, though it's certainly not unique to the miracles
Speaker 1: of Francis Xavior and not unique to the miracles of
Speaker 1: Catholic saints. I would say in pretty much all contexts,
Speaker 1: amazing unverifiable stories tend to become more amazing as the
Speaker 1: years and the tellings go by.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that matches up even with recent episodes
Speaker 2: that we've done about different saints and the supposed miracles
Speaker 2: that they were involved in.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But in the specific case of Francis Xavier, White
Speaker 1: documents numerous specific miracle stories where the earliest accounts are
Speaker 1: much more modest, Sometimes the earliest acount are not even
Speaker 1: miraculous at all, and then later accounts of the same
Speaker 1: events become more and more supernatural and more embellished. So
Speaker 1: White sets this scene by talking about Xavier's canonization proceedings
Speaker 1: in Rome in sixteen twenty two. I think that's the year.
Speaker 1: This would have been roughly seventy years after Xavier's death
Speaker 1: and leading up to this. Part of the canonization process
Speaker 1: is that you have advocates for a person's sainthood, which
Speaker 1: can only you can only get saintthood after you're dead.
Speaker 1: So a dead person's sainthood advocates get up and make
Speaker 1: a case for that, in part by giving testimony about
Speaker 1: miracles the person is alleged to have performed. So at
Speaker 1: Saint Francis Xavier's proceedings, there's a guy named Cardinal Monte
Speaker 1: who gets up and gives a speech claiming that Francis
Speaker 1: turned seawater into fresh water so that people could drink it.
Speaker 1: That came up earlier. That was one of the legends
Speaker 1: that Mochizuki said may have actually been taken from a
Speaker 1: local Malaysian legend.
Speaker 2: Okay, miraculous desalination.
Speaker 1: I like, yeah, then you get some very standard ones.
Speaker 1: Healing the sick, raising the dead. White talks about how
Speaker 1: the number of instances of these miracles keep multiplying over time.
Speaker 1: There's a claim that he was levitated while praying, and
Speaker 1: then was transformed before a crowd of witnesses, and then
Speaker 1: finally Quote and that to punish a blaspheming town, he
Speaker 1: caused an earthquake and buried the offenders in cinders from
Speaker 1: a volcano. Oh, is that a miracle?
Speaker 2: I don't know. That doesn't feel like a miracle to me.
Speaker 2: Then that I don't know if that should qualify one.
Speaker 1: However, White says that the most curious of the miracle
Speaker 1: stories here is the one we've been talking about, the
Speaker 1: crucifix in the crab. And this story does show the
Speaker 1: same pattern of development over time that illustrates with other
Speaker 1: miracle stories about Xavier. Quote. In its first form, Xavier
Speaker 1: lost the crucifix in the sea, and the earlier biographers
Speaker 1: dwell on the sorrow which he showed in consequence. But
Speaker 1: the later historians declared that the saint threw the crucifix
Speaker 1: into the sea in order to steal a tempest, and
Speaker 1: that after his safe getting to land, a crab brought
Speaker 1: it to him on the shore. So I was looking
Speaker 1: at this, and then I went digging in other sources
Speaker 1: to try to piece together the evolution of this story.
Speaker 1: I think it's complicated, so I can't get every detail right,
Speaker 1: but I think there are basically three layers of development
Speaker 1: to the legend. You've got first Xavier's contemporary account preserved
Speaker 1: in his letters, which does not mention any supernatural events
Speaker 1: at all. There's no stilling of a storm with a crucifix,
Speaker 1: there's no miracle crab. This early account, directly from the
Speaker 1: letter is just says there's a storm while he's at sea,
Speaker 1: and Xavier clutches his crucifix and he prays fervently. And
Speaker 1: then later you get testimony from the eyewitness that the
Speaker 1: Portuguese soldier Fausto Rodriguez, and this is several years later,
Speaker 1: and it adds new details. This is where we get
Speaker 1: that Xavier accidentally loses the crucifix while trying to still
Speaker 1: the storm, and the crucifix is returned by a crab.
Speaker 1: And then later still you have biographers playing up the
Speaker 1: weather control aspects and making that more stupendous. The later
Speaker 1: biographers say that Xavier successfully calms the storm by intentionally
Speaker 1: throwing the crucifix into the sea, and then same detail,
Speaker 1: it is later returned by the crab. So the crab
Speaker 1: element seems to come out in a middle stage of development,
Speaker 1: you know, in this early eyewitness account by Fausto Rodriguez,
Speaker 1: but it's not in the earliest account from the letters.
Speaker 1: And then later on we get the really playing up
Speaker 1: of the intentional effective weather control by way of crucifix bomb.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean then the mere fact that he doesn't
Speaker 2: mention it himself. I mean a granted, you know, busy guy,
Speaker 2: maybe he didn't have time to write everything down. But
Speaker 2: if a crab ever brought you a crucifix, I feel
Speaker 2: like that would be one of the most noteworthy things
Speaker 2: that ever happened in your life. Like, if it happened
Speaker 2: to me, I would never stop talking about.
Speaker 1: It your diary. Yeah, going straight to the journals for
Speaker 1: this one, telling everybody I know.
Speaker 2: Like, even if you were a complete atheist and this happened,
Speaker 2: you would still talk about it all the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it wouldn't be you wouldn't think it was supernatural.
Speaker 1: You'd just be like, that's really amazing. Yeah, yeah, what.
Speaker 2: Were the chances, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so this story got me thinking about why
Speaker 1: there is such a strong tendency for hagiographic details, you know,
Speaker 1: details about the miracles of saints to develop like this.
Speaker 1: And I was wondering if it's sort of two different
Speaker 1: tendencies coming together. One is an omnipresent natural tendency to
Speaker 1: make amazing stories more and more amazing over time when
Speaker 1: you retell them. You know, would we started with that
Speaker 1: like I went fishing. The fish gets bigger, bigger every
Speaker 1: time you tell the story. But then I wonder whether
Speaker 1: the other half of this is that there's a normal
Speaker 1: limiting principle on this tendency to keep exaggerating stories over time,
Speaker 1: and that limiting principle is a type of conscience, a
Speaker 1: kind of sense of honesty or moral obligation to be accurate.
Speaker 1: You feel bad, you know, you might feel bad if
Speaker 1: you realize you're exaggerating at all. You might do so,
Speaker 1: you might exaggerate unconsciously, but you might feel bad if
Speaker 1: you're doing it at all, Or you might feel bad
Speaker 1: if you exaggerate too much. And I wonder if this
Speaker 1: moral limiting principle is largely removed when we feel like
Speaker 1: we're doing something morally good by telling an amazing story.
Speaker 1: So if you're, say a Christian recounting the good deeds
Speaker 1: or miracles of a saint, these stories provide evidence of
Speaker 1: the power of God from your point of view, or
Speaker 1: they help spread the Gospel and convert the unconverted. So
Speaker 1: from your point of view, the amazing of the miracle
Speaker 1: story contributes directly to a good cause. So I wonder
Speaker 1: if the sense of goodness that you feel is accomplished
Speaker 1: by allowing the story to grow in amazingness can kind
Speaker 1: of overwhelm the moral limits we normally feel on exaggeration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see that being part of it. Certainly,
Speaker 2: you can also tie in various other things we've discussed before,
Speaker 2: like how memory retrieval can lead to the change of
Speaker 2: the memory and alteration of the memory. And then like
Speaker 2: even just the telling of the thing. You know, certainly
Speaker 2: you can embellish it each time on purpose, but also
Speaker 2: as we tell and retell stories, those stories do change,
Speaker 2: and maybe they do become a little we punch it
Speaker 2: up a little bit as we go.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I think it's undeniable that there are some
Speaker 1: types and degrees of embellishment and exaggeration that occur unconsciously.
Speaker 1: But I do wonder about some big leaps, like when
Speaker 1: new concrete details of a story emerge, like when an
Speaker 1: earlier version of the story doesn't have a crab bringing
Speaker 1: across out of the ocean, and a later version does.
Speaker 1: At that point, I start to wonder where does that
Speaker 1: detail come from, because that it seems hard for me
Speaker 1: to imagine that that is just an unintentional exaggeration or embellishment,
Speaker 1: because the concrete image of the crab has to come
Speaker 1: from somewhere. I wonder if it could be unintentional if
Speaker 1: years later you are mixing up different stories in your head,
Speaker 1: maybe something like that, Like this comes back to the
Speaker 1: idea of the uh you know, the legend of the
Speaker 1: Buddhist the Buddhist figure who gets the the icon back
Speaker 1: from the ocean from an octopus. Like maybe having heard
Speaker 1: a version of that story and then having had this experience,
Speaker 1: you kind of accidentally combine them in your brain. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I can imagine a scenario where Xavior finds
Speaker 2: the cross that he lost washed up on the shore,
Speaker 2: which in of itself would be miraculous luck, but then
Speaker 2: recollection of this gets combined with a local folk tale
Speaker 2: about another sea creature, you know, restoring ownership of a
Speaker 2: particular holy icon. Yeah, you can see how these things
Speaker 2: could come together and merge. I feel like the crab
Speaker 2: is is a slightly more believable choice though, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: because we do see crabs coming out of the ocean
Speaker 2: with more regularity as compared to the octopus.
Speaker 1: That okay, So I have different thoughts, and this set
Speaker 1: of thoughts may bring us back to a topic I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. I feel like, just based on what I
Speaker 1: know about crabs versus octopuses, you'd be more likely to
Speaker 1: have an octopus carrying around a strange human artifact because
Speaker 1: octopuses are very curious, they like to play.
Speaker 2: You know, some do do some form of possible tool
Speaker 2: use as well. I don't know that they would be
Speaker 2: using a silvery crucifix for anything, but it's not impossible.
Speaker 2: They're very tactile.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whether or not the octopus is using it for
Speaker 1: any that would be amazing. If they saw the octopus
Speaker 1: crying open clamshells with the crucifix, I mean, that's wonderful.
Speaker 1: But no, like if it just brought up and I
Speaker 1: guess in the octopus version of the story, it wasn't
Speaker 1: a crucifix. It was it was an image of this god,
Speaker 1: this the Buddhist figure. But yeah, you know, a human
Speaker 1: made artifact is unusual in the octopus's environment, and the
Speaker 1: curiosity might just lead it to kind of want to
Speaker 1: play with it and manipulate it. We see that in
Speaker 1: octopuses in captivity certainly, So yeah, I wonder about that.
Speaker 1: But then again, we do sometimes see crabs just grip
Speaker 1: something in the claw and carry it around. We've all
Speaker 1: seen the picture of the crab holding a knife.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 1: But maybe this should cause us to come back to
Speaker 1: crabs carrying objects in a subsequent part of the series
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of what's going on there.
Speaker 2: All right, sounds good? All right? Before we close up
Speaker 2: the episode, I think I'm going to move on to
Speaker 2: a single topic here we're going to deal with. This
Speaker 2: is going to be a much shorter exploration, but I
Speaker 2: want to talk briefly about something that is sometimes referred
Speaker 2: to as crab theory. I don't know about you, Joe,
Speaker 2: This is some I somehow missed out on this concept
Speaker 2: entirely until I was looking around for crab related topics
Speaker 2: to discuss in these episodes. So we might have to
Speaker 2: come back to this one in greater detail much later on,
Speaker 2: because the psychology of it gets a bit complicated. The
Speaker 2: cultural aspects of it getting a bit complicated, and it
Speaker 2: spreads out in a number of directions. I'm also a
Speaker 2: little uncertain about the origin of the idea of crab theory.
Speaker 2: I've seen it suggested that the term has origins in
Speaker 2: the Philippines. I've seen a Filipino feminist author, Notchka Rosca
Speaker 2: singled out as a possible originator. But I've also seen
Speaker 2: it sort of claimed culturally in other directions. Like I
Speaker 2: saw I believe it's a BBC article that briefly mentioned
Speaker 2: it as being a Scottish thing, you know, whether it originated.
Speaker 2: They didn't make the claim that the Scottish originated it,
Speaker 2: but it was like, like, hey, Scott's talk about this
Speaker 2: from time to time. I believe the term was also
Speaker 2: popularized by a twenty ten episode of The Boondocks, the
Speaker 2: animated series, but I couldn't find much in the way
Speaker 2: of clarity on any of this. But assuming an origin
Speaker 2: in the Philippines, it would seem that the metaphor travels
Speaker 2: easily because first of all, the behavior and attitudes it
Speaker 2: attempts to describe are universal, and number two, you just
Speaker 2: need some understanding of crabs for it to make sense.
Speaker 2: And again, crabs must be watched. We crabs are just fascinating.
Speaker 2: We can't help but watch what they're doing. You feel
Speaker 2: like you've got to decode the scuttling. Yeah, So what
Speaker 2: is this crab theory? Basically it boils down to this.
Speaker 2: If you have a bucket of crabs, any crab that
Speaker 2: attempts to climb too high and escape from that bucket
Speaker 2: will be pulled down by the other crabs. So the
Speaker 2: human situation here can be You can roll it out
Speaker 2: in a few different ways. So, first of all, there's
Speaker 2: the broad idea that humans are engaging in various forms
Speaker 2: of jealousy, gatekeeping, social boundary maintenance, and competition of different varieties,
Speaker 2: and therefore may act in a way like this, this
Speaker 2: kind of this kind of attitude. Well, if I can't win,
Speaker 2: nobody can win. If I can't climb, no one will climb.
Speaker 2: If I can't escape, no one will escape. So that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. But then you also have this bucket
Speaker 2: element to it. The bucket is an imposed environment. So
Speaker 2: the crabs were put in this bucket, and so the
Speaker 2: bucket can represent all manner of groups, communities, industries, cultures,
Speaker 2: social constructs, and especially any of these influenced by colonialism.
Speaker 1: So especially this would apply in an artificialvironment that was
Speaker 1: not made for people to thrive in, but which into
Speaker 1: which they've been put.
Speaker 2: Right, Like, you could take the crab theory scenario and
Speaker 2: you could, you could you could roll it out for
Speaker 2: a workplace and say like, hey, our workplace has this
Speaker 2: like toxic environment. It is like a crab bucket where
Speaker 2: everybody that is in this crab bucket, we just won't
Speaker 2: let anybody rise up. We keep pulling them down. And
Speaker 2: it says it says as much about the environment that
Speaker 2: we've been placed in as as it does about human.
Speaker 1: Nature, right, because crabs don't naturally live in a bucket,
Speaker 1: and so the bucket environment maybe bringing out behaviors that
Speaker 1: are shown in the bucket, but wouldn't necessarily be shown
Speaker 1: if the crabs were just crawling around in their natural environment.
Speaker 2: Right right. So so yeah, this seems to have this metaphorse,
Speaker 2: seems to have traveled rather well and again has been
Speaker 2: kind of like picked up in different areas by different people.
Speaker 2: And again it ties in crabs, which everyone likes to watch.
Speaker 2: But it does raise the question our crabs really like this?
Speaker 2: And I think broadly you can say yes and no.
Speaker 2: So many crabs absolutely are solitary and competitive competitive. You know,
Speaker 2: individual humans can exhibit these qualities as well, but as
Speaker 2: a whole we are a highly social species and crabs
Speaker 2: are not. Still, some crabs species engage in various forms
Speaker 2: of at least limited cooperation, and we've talked about at
Speaker 2: least one of these before in the show, and that's
Speaker 2: the hermit crab vacancy chains. Hardly altruistic, but the process
Speaker 2: benefits other crabs. So, just to remind everyone, sometimes called
Speaker 2: the congo line cooperation, where you have hermit crabs who
Speaker 2: have these shells that are not created, not grown by
Speaker 2: their own bodies. These are pilfered from various mollusks and
Speaker 2: they eventually outgrow them. They have to molt and then
Speaker 2: they have to get a new shell. But all the
Speaker 2: other crab are doing this at the same time, and
Speaker 2: so it creates these situations where a crab leaves one
Speaker 2: shell and then that creates a vacancy for another crab
Speaker 2: to level up. And there's kind of a musical chair
Speaker 2: as that takes place, and you can you can certainly
Speaker 2: view this as a form of social cooperation, but you know,
Speaker 2: you have to strip away a lot of the human
Speaker 2: definitions of cooperation to get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think some people claim that this is similar
Speaker 1: to what they think are the beneficial aspects of market economies,
Speaker 1: right where you can have like a you know, a
Speaker 1: vacancy created in some sense, either like housing vacancy or
Speaker 1: job vacancy or things like that. When a sort of
Speaker 1: spot opens up within an economic zone, somebody can move
Speaker 1: into that spot, and they create a vacancy when they
Speaker 1: leave their spot, so somebody else can move into that.
Speaker 1: And so even though the individual actors are just acting
Speaker 1: in their own best interest, it sort of creates a
Speaker 1: broad benefit for many different parties.
Speaker 2: Right right now. In addition to this example, studies have
Speaker 2: also found that male fiddler crabs will appear to help
Speaker 2: neighboring crabs defend against their territory against intruders, so not
Speaker 2: out of the goodness of their tiny crab hearts, but
Speaker 2: because it suits their interests as well. So it's kind
Speaker 2: of selective coalitions that are formed among these crabs. So,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's interesting to think about that. There's
Speaker 2: certainly the case there's a very pessimistic view that you
Speaker 2: can take, and you can say, well, anytime humans engage
Speaker 2: in cooperation, they're still doing it for selfish interest and
Speaker 2: humans are essentially crabs. You can make that argument, but
Speaker 2: I think at at the end of the day, you
Speaker 2: still have to acknowledge that humans are a highly social creature.
Speaker 2: Crabs are not. But some forms of cooperation do emerge
Speaker 2: among crabs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the case of humans, I would not argue
Speaker 1: that everything is ultimately selfish, but it's also impossible to
Speaker 1: disprove that is, how can you ever proved that there's
Speaker 1: not secretly an underlying selfish motivation for some rout you know,
Speaker 1: So that's just kind of a yeah, a matter of interpretation,
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, But similarly with crabs, Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: see these situations in which some type of mutual benefit
Speaker 1: occurs from cooperation. So in the crab world, it is
Speaker 1: in fact not always just just universal punishing chaos and
Speaker 1: destruction of your neighbors. There is some mutual benefit that
Speaker 1: occurs exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it does make you wonder if there were
Speaker 2: to be a situation where a crab rescued a silver
Speaker 2: crucifix from the bottom of the ocean and returned it
Speaker 2: to its human owner on a on a far flung shore.
Speaker 2: I mean that would what is in't it for the crab?
Speaker 2: There nothing in the story about the crab being rewarded with,
Speaker 2: you know, a fresh piece of rotting fish or anything
Speaker 2: of that nature. In this story, I guess the crab
Speaker 2: just did it out of the goodness of its heart
Speaker 2: and out of its devotion to the divine. So I'm
Speaker 2: not sure how we would beyond that. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: how we would really compare these two examples.
Speaker 1: The original story, I believe, does not say what kind
Speaker 1: of crab it is, so the later association with the
Speaker 1: crucifix crab species the charybdis feriatis, is a subsequent connection
Speaker 1: people have made. But if it were the crucifix crab
Speaker 1: that returned to the crucifix, people do say that the
Speaker 1: crucifix crab is an especially aggressive crab species, So maybe
Speaker 1: the returning of the crucifix is some kind of veiled threat.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, or you know, in some of these tellings
Speaker 2: it did cause Xavier and his friend to lay upon
Speaker 2: the beach. Maybe that's when the crabs swarm and they're like,
Speaker 2: let's get them.
Speaker 1: It works. Oh that's right, Yes, you do a miracle,
Speaker 1: so you get them praying, and that's your opportunity to strike.
Speaker 2: The crabs are like you see a jess to it.
Speaker 2: You give them a crucifix, they'll lay down and then
Speaker 2: you can have whatever you want.
Speaker 1: So does that do it for part one of the
Speaker 1: Crab Bag?
Speaker 2: I think so. I think we've we've hit our time
Speaker 2: for today. But we have some other lovely crab related
Speaker 2: nuggets to pull out for tomorrow, some other specimens, some
Speaker 2: other scientific and cultural examples. Well, not for tomorrow, for
Speaker 2: the day after tomorrow.
Speaker 3: You get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So join us next time as we return to
Speaker 2: the Crab grab Bag. Just a reminder to everyone out
Speaker 2: there again, especially if you're new to the show. Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture
Speaker 2: podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on
Speaker 2: Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on Fridays
Speaker 2: rather we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
Speaker 1: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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