Speaker 1: Towards the Island of Christmas, and all across the land
Speaker 1: the red crabs were flowing across root Street and sand
Speaker 1: like a red tide of scuttling, claw snapping doom. They
Speaker 1: streamed through my front door and into my rooms. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: in the forests the giants, they're crawled coconut crabs, hulking
Speaker 1: monsters with claws. They hunted for carrion crab bird and
Speaker 1: ratted and gobbled it up, rancid, sinew and fat. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: getting in that holiday spirit. We're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: crab Horror. Yes, this is this pair of episodes. I've
Speaker 1: been looking forward to all year. This has been my
Speaker 1: my goal. I forget when, but earlier in the year
Speaker 1: I was reading about Christmas Island and and the various
Speaker 1: creatures that that call it home, and I realized, we
Speaker 1: have to do this episode for Christmas, even though this
Speaker 1: really has nothing to do with Christmas, no, virtually nothing
Speaker 1: to do with Christmas, though I do enjoy um like
Speaker 1: forcing decapods upon Christmas and uh and and and at
Speaker 1: least in my mind, allowing them to take over the
Speaker 1: holiday decapods with bows of all? Is it bows? I
Speaker 1: should have said clause of glory? Either way, I appreciate
Speaker 1: the holiday zeal. Now, so we're going to be going
Speaker 1: to crab Horror Island, and there are many wonderful movies
Speaker 1: and maybe we'll save it for next time to talk
Speaker 1: about our favorite Crab Island movies. But the giant crab
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite kind of movie monsters, and
Speaker 1: they've always got to have their own island of terror,
Speaker 1: right right, and and so in discussing Christmas Island and
Speaker 1: these two episodes, we're going to talk about crabs or
Speaker 1: you know, decapods anyway that are either enormous, uh, singularly
Speaker 1: and enormous or collectively enormous. I think the first episode
Speaker 1: we're going to focus on the collectively enormous, and the
Speaker 1: second episode will focus on the decapods who are individually enormous. Now,
Speaker 1: this first episode is going to focus on the Christmas
Speaker 1: Island Red crab. Robert, will you take me on a
Speaker 1: mystical adventure to crab Horror Island? Yes, we're talking about
Speaker 1: Christmas Island, so named. It's in the Indian Ocean, about
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty kilometers or two hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: miles south of Java and Sumatra and around uh, let's
Speaker 1: see one thou fifty kilometers or nine hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: miles northwest of the closest point on the Australian mainland.
Speaker 1: Technically part of Australia though right it is an Australian
Speaker 1: external territory. It has an area of a hundred five
Speaker 1: square kilometers or fifty two square miles, so not huge, No,
Speaker 1: not a big place at all. It's a very old,
Speaker 1: though very old volcanic seamount island. It was first visited
Speaker 1: by Europeans in sixty three Captain William Minors of the
Speaker 1: Royal Mary and English East India Company vessel. He just
Speaker 1: named the island when he sailed past it on Christmas
Speaker 1: Day of that year. That's that's the only Christmas high
Speaker 1: end there he didn't find, you know, and naturally occurring
Speaker 1: Christmas tree there. Uh, there's no wasn't where the elf
Speaker 1: workshop was exactly. There's there's nothing else about it except
Speaker 1: it was Christmas Day when he found it. It could
Speaker 1: have easily it could have easily turned out to be
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve Island or Boxing Day Island or Halloween Island.
Speaker 1: That would perhaps be a little more appropriate. Yeah. Uh So.
Speaker 1: One of the cool things about this place is that
Speaker 1: when when they were able to take a closer look
Speaker 1: at it, they realized that it was uninhabited, at least
Speaker 1: by humans. So it's obvious that what makes this island
Speaker 1: unique is not anything about the indigenous culture or anything,
Speaker 1: since it was apparently uninhabited originally, but it was not
Speaker 1: uninhabited by wildlife. Fest we've made clear the wildlife there
Speaker 1: was of a terrific scuttling variety, oh correct. And one
Speaker 1: of the really cool things about the scuttling life on
Speaker 1: Christmas Island it is that so much of it is
Speaker 1: on Christmas Island. We're talking about land crabs, crabs that
Speaker 1: need only returned to the water to mate, but mostly
Speaker 1: live on land. And you'll find these elsewhere. To be sure,
Speaker 1: this is not the only place land crabs can be found.
Speaker 1: Uh And we're we're talking about both true crabs as
Speaker 1: well as hermit crabs here. Hermit crabs are decapods, but
Speaker 1: not true crabs. But forgive us as we as we
Speaker 1: talk about them in these episodes, I will probably end
Speaker 1: up calling them both crabs in the unofficial sense. The
Speaker 1: Christmas Island is home to more land crabs than anywhere
Speaker 1: else on Earth. We're talking more than twenty terrestrial and
Speaker 1: semi terrestrial crabs species, plus a hundred and sixties species
Speaker 1: or thereabouts in the reefs and shallows around the island. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Robert tell me a little bit about crabs. Well,
Speaker 1: just to refresh everybody, crabs are crustaceans. But we should
Speaker 1: be clear that again, there are true crabs of the
Speaker 1: decapoda soap order bracci ura, which means small tail um,
Speaker 1: which references their smaller abdomen. And then there are the
Speaker 1: ano mora or mixed tail crabs, which included hermits and
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss later in the second episode, robber crabs.
Speaker 1: But still again we're often going to refer to them
Speaker 1: both as crabs in the unofficial sense. And these were
Speaker 1: these are ancient creatures. These were the first animals to
Speaker 1: develop true legs, none of those false legs. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: we we've talked about crabs on the show before. I
Speaker 1: think back to our episode about Carl Sagan and the
Speaker 1: Samurai Crabs. So so hopefully everyone is is on board
Speaker 1: for two more episodes of of crab based content. But
Speaker 1: so it's not just the varieties of crab and crab
Speaker 1: like creatures that live on Christmas Island that make it
Speaker 1: crab Island Earth, Uh, it is is the number of
Speaker 1: a particular species of crab there, the Christmas Silelan red crab,
Speaker 1: where there are supposedly tens of millions of these crabs
Speaker 1: on the island. And this is not a big island. Remember,
Speaker 1: it's a hundred thirty five square kilometers, right, a small island.
Speaker 1: And yet yeah, I've seen the figures of like fifty
Speaker 1: million of these creatures living, living in the forest, living,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty much all over the island. And that's
Speaker 1: a reduced number. I remember we watched a documentary about
Speaker 1: the island from the nineteen eighties that suggested, at the
Speaker 1: time it was believed that there were over a hundred
Speaker 1: million of the crabs. They're right. That was a night
Speaker 1: David Attenborough narrated special titled Kingdom of the Crab, great title,
Speaker 1: and that's a great one to watch if you get
Speaker 1: a chance, because it really shows off what makes this
Speaker 1: island visually astounding, but it's the sheer numbers of the
Speaker 1: crabs and the Christmas Island red crab is pretty much
Speaker 1: found only on Christmas Island. Yeah, I think maybe on
Speaker 1: another nearby island or island group, but they're not found
Speaker 1: like all over the place. So I do want to
Speaker 1: come back to the human history for a little bit
Speaker 1: where we we explore the red uh crab in depth.
Speaker 1: So the most you know, essential thing about human history
Speaker 1: of Christmas Island is that for the longest there seems
Speaker 1: to have been none. It is a geographically isolated place
Speaker 1: now from everything I've read so far, and it's always
Speaker 1: possible on missing something, but there's no evidence that humans
Speaker 1: ever visited the place before the seventeenth century. See this.
Speaker 1: Despite Java being again only two miles away, it's a
Speaker 1: short enough distance for modern humans anyway that boats of
Speaker 1: asylum seekers frequently make it their point of destination in
Speaker 1: reaching Australia, because again it's an Australian external territory, So
Speaker 1: if you reach Christmas Island, you are, you know, in
Speaker 1: a legal sense, in Australia. However, it's also worth pointing
Speaker 1: out that the seas can be deadly uh, surrounding Christmas Island,
Speaker 1: and there are stories out there boats of asylum seekers
Speaker 1: breaking on the rocky coast with lethal results. I think
Speaker 1: I've read about this in cases of the early visitors
Speaker 1: to the island. Also that you know, it was kind
Speaker 1: of dangerous to land there. And for example, there was
Speaker 1: one case where I read that a crew was driven
Speaker 1: to land there because there was scurvy on the ship
Speaker 1: and it was only because the disease had gotten so
Speaker 1: bad that they risked trying to land. Yeah, that's sort
Speaker 1: of the typical story book reasons for landing on an
Speaker 1: uninhabited island with a strange crab population. Yeah, but out
Speaker 1: of the scurvy pan into the crabs. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: know it, but but it is. It is weird to
Speaker 1: think about places like this, places where where humans just
Speaker 1: didn't take up residents. And of course you have to,
Speaker 1: of course realize that moving to an isolated island is
Speaker 1: a difficult proposition, like you've really got to have a
Speaker 1: reason to go there and a reason to stay there,
Speaker 1: and a way to um to to safely arrived there
Speaker 1: as well. But still, you know, it's enough to make
Speaker 1: one wonder. For instance, Homo Erectus or a Java Man
Speaker 1: lived on the island of Java, relatively close by one
Speaker 1: point seven million years ago. Humans practiced agriculture there on
Speaker 1: Java as early as b C. Java was known to
Speaker 1: traders and other powers. The Kingdom of Mataram ruled there
Speaker 1: until they lost power to the Dutch East India Company
Speaker 1: in seventy nine and became a vassal state of the
Speaker 1: company UM, a statement that I think really drives home
Speaker 1: the power of the East India Company UM, the idea
Speaker 1: that you would have a vassal state to a corporation.
Speaker 1: But that's a job. My point is that I just
Speaker 1: find it so enthralling that this island remained either free
Speaker 1: of human contact for so long or only encountered minimal influence.
Speaker 1: You know. It's I guess it's possible that it's at
Speaker 1: some point somebody wound up there by purpose or accident
Speaker 1: and didn't didn't stay long enough to leave a footprint,
Speaker 1: you know. Galapagos Islands or another example of this, though
Speaker 1: there there have been at least disputed claims of Inca
Speaker 1: artifacts found on the Galapacos Islands, perhaps due to Inca
Speaker 1: sailors being blown off course. The statials in the Indian
Speaker 1: Ocean and are another example of islands that were uninhabited
Speaker 1: through most of recorded history, though they may have been
Speaker 1: visited by early seafares as well, depending on who you
Speaker 1: talked to. But with Christmas Island, I found no such thing,
Speaker 1: and not even a crackpot theory. So it really does
Speaker 1: seem as if humans, not even the Vikings, went their
Speaker 1: theory by no Vikings or anything. So it really does
Speaker 1: seem that nobody visited it until the seventeenth century, with
Speaker 1: the earliest sighting I think having occurred in sixteen fifteen.
Speaker 1: Now after that, of course, it actually did become an
Speaker 1: economically significant island because of mineral deposits discovered there. That's right.
Speaker 1: It was explored by British naturalist John Murray, and this
Speaker 1: was eighteen seventy two. He discovered that there were phosphate
Speaker 1: deposits on the island, which would play a key role
Speaker 1: in the island's future. Exportation of phosphate begin in eighteen
Speaker 1: by the Christmas Island Phosphate Company, and this activity led
Speaker 1: to the loss of twenty of the island's rainforest area. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: phosphate was important in the late eight hundreds because it
Speaker 1: had been discovered by that time that phosphate, when treated
Speaker 1: with sulfuric acid, could be used as an ingredient in
Speaker 1: plant food, and of course synthetic fertilizers became very important
Speaker 1: in the development of commercial agriculture at scale, and so
Speaker 1: now there was a reason and economic reason for people
Speaker 1: to not only go to Christmas Island but to work there,
Speaker 1: and so settlement began in the eighteen eighties. Uh later on,
Speaker 1: during the Second World War there was a Japanese occupation
Speaker 1: of the island from ninety five, and in the post
Speaker 1: war period it was administered by Singapore, which was then
Speaker 1: a British colony, and then Australia purchased the island for
Speaker 1: two point nine million pounds on January one, nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: eight day that's known as Territory Day on Christmas Island.
Speaker 1: Today it has around I've read two thousand full time
Speaker 1: human residents and the ethnic makeup is mostly Chinese in
Speaker 1: meleay Um originally brought in for labor. Now a big
Speaker 1: poor scan of the land of the island today is
Speaker 1: basically a national park. It's like a big wildlife preservation area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two thirds of its land mass are national park. Now,
Speaker 1: and a big part of the wildlife significance here is
Speaker 1: the Christmas Island red crabs. So I guess we should
Speaker 1: dive headfirst into a puddle of crabs after we come
Speaker 1: back from a break. Alright, we're back, so it is
Speaker 1: time to dive into a pit of crabs. The Christmas
Speaker 1: Island red crab or get Karcodia natalis. And these are
Speaker 1: crabs that live, as we mentioned earlier, primarily not in
Speaker 1: the ocean, not even on the shoreline, but in inland forests.
Speaker 1: So if you picture Christmas Island, it's sort of a
Speaker 1: terraced rainforest. It's a you know, volcanic island. It's got
Speaker 1: some steep slopes that go up onto rainforest covered terraces,
Speaker 1: and the crabs go all the way up into the
Speaker 1: forests and make their burrows inland. Yeah, we're talking against
Speaker 1: something like fifty million of these a little land well
Speaker 1: ers uh in the forest chewing up leaf litter. And
Speaker 1: here on Christmas Island they are the chief decay agents
Speaker 1: for that leaf litter. I've seen estimates of something like
Speaker 1: four thousand crabs per acre to keep the leaf litter down. Yes,
Speaker 1: and they primarily feed on plant matter like you say,
Speaker 1: so that is going to be leaf litter. It's also
Speaker 1: things like fallen fruits and seeds, flowers, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: they're also crabs after all, so you might not be
Speaker 1: surprised to learn that they are opportunistic omnivores. My favorite
Speaker 1: pairs of words. So if you get a little bit
Speaker 1: of meat from say another dead red crab or something
Speaker 1: like that presenting itself, this is a legitimate score, and
Speaker 1: they will say, gentlemen, get that in my mouth parts.
Speaker 1: It's time to masticate. But the crabs are important for
Speaker 1: the maintenance of the ecosystem in multiple ways. So they
Speaker 1: clear the forest floor of like leaf litter, but also
Speaker 1: saplings and flowers other plants that would create dense underbrush,
Speaker 1: and so they keep the forest floors lean, and this
Speaker 1: actually helps contribute to forest biodiversity. They also prevent the
Speaker 1: soil from being packed too densely because of the burrows
Speaker 1: they dig. They're like natural soil tillers. They turn the soil,
Speaker 1: and this also helps contribute to forest biodiversity. But so
Speaker 1: we might have a pretty good sense of what the
Speaker 1: life of an ocean dwelling crab is like. What is
Speaker 1: the life of a land crab like crabs, as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, in between chewing up things in their environment
Speaker 1: and eating it, they have to stay moist and this means,
Speaker 1: for one thing, staying out of the direct sun. So
Speaker 1: the red crabs on Christmas Island like to stay in
Speaker 1: the shady forests and they live in these dugout burrows
Speaker 1: that they can hide from the sun in and they
Speaker 1: have guilt chambers that have adapted for terrestrial life. They
Speaker 1: have to keep them moist, and they also I love this,
Speaker 1: they have to manually wet their eye stalks. Yes, I
Speaker 1: love this. It's pretty cool to watch if you can
Speaker 1: find video of this. So their eyes talks emerge from
Speaker 1: little cups in their carapace, and they don't have eyelids
Speaker 1: of course, and by the way, just try to imagine
Speaker 1: life without eyelids. Kind of a terror. So they wet
Speaker 1: and wash their eyes by filling their eye cups up
Speaker 1: with drops of water and then dipping their eyestalks down
Speaker 1: into the cups to rinse them off. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: this is This is one of the great things about
Speaker 1: watching any crab close up, but especially with the Christmas
Speaker 1: crabs is those tiny little sort of methodical movements that
Speaker 1: you see take place with their mouth parts and their
Speaker 1: their eyes stalks totally. Now, despite their life in the woods,
Speaker 1: they still have to return to the sea to spawn,
Speaker 1: and this results in a vast scuttling migration that is
Speaker 1: truly unlike anything else on earth. This is why you
Speaker 1: will you will see. You know, there's so many different
Speaker 1: documentaries about Christmas Island. That's why there's so much great
Speaker 1: footage because they they go on these enormous migrations and
Speaker 1: we're talking a several kilometer journey each year. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is crab Apocalypse. This is where the real show is
Speaker 1: on Christmas Eye. And so around the beginning of the
Speaker 1: rainy season, which is sometime October through December, the red
Speaker 1: crabs begin this migration for their breeding cycle. And the
Speaker 1: migration begins with the males, usually the biggest males, who
Speaker 1: will crawl out over land from their forest burrows to
Speaker 1: the shore where they're going to eventually get there and
Speaker 1: dig new burrows for mating. And as the males make
Speaker 1: this journey, the females eventually joined them in the journey
Speaker 1: and they march towards the sea. Now, once the crabs
Speaker 1: reached the shore, but before they dig their burrows to mate, uh,
Speaker 1: they typically wash themselves off in seawater, though strangely enough,
Speaker 1: they have to be careful not to get fully sucked
Speaker 1: out into the sea because these are land dwelling crabs.
Speaker 1: This is how they've evolved, and they can neither breathe underwater,
Speaker 1: nor can they swim very well. These are crabs who
Speaker 1: are not very good at being crabs. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: truly aquatic crabs in the neighborhood are just probably watching
Speaker 1: this in halfing at them. But there's so many of them.
Speaker 1: How could you laugh at them? Because they could really
Speaker 1: gang up on you if they got a hold of
Speaker 1: your right But so they would rinse themselves off in
Speaker 1: the sea water. And then the males dig the burrows. Now,
Speaker 1: sometimes when they dig the burrows, usually they'll go up
Speaker 1: a little bit from the beach and one of the
Speaker 1: forested areas just right by the beach, and they'll dig
Speaker 1: these burrows. And sometimes the males have to defend their
Speaker 1: burrows from other males, who of course think, hey, why
Speaker 1: dig one when you can just claim somebody else's. So
Speaker 1: there are sometimes these fights and dominance displays, a lot
Speaker 1: of claw waving to keep the burrows secure, and then
Speaker 1: of course the females come in and they will find
Speaker 1: a male with a burrow and initiate the mating. And
Speaker 1: by the way, if you've never watched crabs mating before,
Speaker 1: it's one of the funnier looking types of animal sex.
Speaker 1: I think it's just crabs look funny no matter what
Speaker 1: they're doing. But also if you can just watch their
Speaker 1: eyes while they're mating, it's really something special. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's like two googly eyed robots trying to be sexy
Speaker 1: at each other and then throwing some claws and swiveling
Speaker 1: mouth parts. It's just awesome. Now you mentioned the waving
Speaker 1: of the clause, I want to I was reading a
Speaker 1: little bit about crab clause in Douglas j Imland's book
Speaker 1: Animal Weapons. Uh and he goes. He spends a little
Speaker 1: bit of time talking about, you know, how these are
Speaker 1: high energy adaptations packed with powerful muscles. They need to
Speaker 1: be able to break through the exo skeletons of of
Speaker 1: rival males in many cases. Uh And he mostly looks
Speaker 1: at fiddler crabs in this book. But but, but it's
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. The economics of not only having growing, evolving
Speaker 1: gigantic class, but waving them around, because that's that's part
Speaker 1: of having the cleaving clause or a claw, is to
Speaker 1: wave that sucker around, yeah, or like flexing your muscles,
Speaker 1: like showing off the guns. Yeah, you have to show
Speaker 1: off the guns. That's that's part of having them, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the female will generally find a male and a
Speaker 1: male with the borrow and they will mate, and then
Speaker 1: after mating, what the males do is they just pack
Speaker 1: up and headback inland. Their work is done, and they
Speaker 1: leave the females by themselves in the seaside burrows. And
Speaker 1: there's another interesting thing about this. Okay, so the red
Speaker 1: crabs are sort of moon worshiping druids. The breeding migration
Speaker 1: has to be timed exactly according to the cycle of
Speaker 1: the moon because the cycle of the moon affects the tides.
Speaker 1: So the adult crabs arrive at the shore and then
Speaker 1: they mate, and after mating, the females produce eggs within
Speaker 1: about three days, and then they remain in their burrows
Speaker 1: for another twelve or thirteen days. And after this they
Speaker 1: emerge from the hole in the ground and they release
Speaker 1: their eggs into the sea water. And it has to
Speaker 1: be timed exactly at the turn of high tide as
Speaker 1: the moon goes from its last quarter to a new moon.
Speaker 1: And this is because it's when the tide conditions are
Speaker 1: just right to be releasing uh the young. But if
Speaker 1: the migration is delayed by weather so that breeding can't
Speaker 1: be timed exactly right with the phases of the moon,
Speaker 1: the crabs will just wait. They'll just wait until the
Speaker 1: next month to breed because it's not it's not going
Speaker 1: the moon isn't right. So when the time is right,
Speaker 1: the females release their eggs acts, which looks kind of
Speaker 1: like a weird foamy sponge that they carry on the
Speaker 1: underside of their bodies. They release these eggs acts into
Speaker 1: the water. Yet again, I can't help but notice that
Speaker 1: my wonder at these animals is combined with hilarity on
Speaker 1: seeing this, because in some cases, the female crabs have
Speaker 1: to release their eggs into like rough surf while clinging
Speaker 1: to rocks above the water, and they're trying to be
Speaker 1: careful not to fall in. And when you see footage
Speaker 1: of this, the way they're just frantically shaking their bodies
Speaker 1: to knock the eggs acts off, dumping thousands of eggs
Speaker 1: off a cliff. I can't help but laugh. It's funny.
Speaker 1: And then also sometimes they'll they'll go into the surf
Speaker 1: on a beach and you'll see them like raising their
Speaker 1: claws and shaking their bodies, like get off, just dumping
Speaker 1: all these eggs off into the water. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it's funny to me. Well, by human comparisons, they're
Speaker 1: maybe not great moms, but by but by Christmas Island
Speaker 1: Red Crab standards, moms of the Year. Yeah, exactly, and
Speaker 1: that this does make me think about the ways that
Speaker 1: we anthropomorphize good parenting. I want to come back to
Speaker 1: that in just a minute. So the eggs are released
Speaker 1: into the surf and they hatch pretty much immediately, and
Speaker 1: then you've got these hatchling crab larvae that live in
Speaker 1: the water for about a month, transforming through large larval stages,
Speaker 1: and then they returned the shore in this seething foam
Speaker 1: of what looks like pink ants. This is also just
Speaker 1: astonishing to see, like the original migration from the forest
Speaker 1: to the shore with the beaches and rocks covered in
Speaker 1: this surging pink shag carpet of tiny millimeter sized baby crabs.
Speaker 1: And then they molt, and immediately after molting, they they
Speaker 1: are committed to an air breathing life on land, and
Speaker 1: they travel inland to do as their ancestors did before them.
Speaker 1: And this growth from about a five millimeter baby crab
Speaker 1: stage to adulthood usually takes about four years, during which
Speaker 1: time they mostly tend to hide out undercover until they
Speaker 1: get big enough to fend for themselves. But yeah, back
Speaker 1: to this idea about the way we look at non
Speaker 1: human animals and tend to to judge their parenting. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's inherently what I was doing when I think it's
Speaker 1: funny just watching the mother crabs chuck their eggs off
Speaker 1: a cliff. But it's like it's hilarious watching a crab
Speaker 1: vigorously shake its body to knock all the eggs off
Speaker 1: and stuff. But it's because we've so deeply internalized the
Speaker 1: brood protection tendencies of mammals. Mammals tend to keep their
Speaker 1: offspring close and take care of them for for like
Speaker 1: extended periods of time while they mature, and that would
Speaker 1: make no sense for crabs to do. First of all,
Speaker 1: of course, it is just mechanically the case, because the
Speaker 1: eggs need to hatch in the water. That's what chemically
Speaker 1: and mechanically they do, but also mathematically, the parents have
Speaker 1: a totally different relationship with their offspring. Mammals tend to produce,
Speaker 1: you know, relatively small numbers of offspring and invest a
Speaker 1: lot of energy into caring for and protecting them. But
Speaker 1: I was trying to do a little bit of rough
Speaker 1: math about the red crabs. So let's assume there are
Speaker 1: fifty million adult red crabs on the island, and then
Speaker 1: you've got mated pairs, and each mated pair of adult
Speaker 1: crabs produces tens of thousands of eggs. I've seen a
Speaker 1: common figure of a hundred thousand eggs per female crab sited.
Speaker 1: So if fifty million crabs made it and produced twenty
Speaker 1: five million eggs sponges, and each of those had a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand eggs in it, and all those eggs survived
Speaker 1: to adulthood, that would be two trillion, five hundred billion crabs. Now,
Speaker 1: Christmas Island is about a hundred and thirty five square kilometers.
Speaker 1: If my math is right, this means that just after
Speaker 1: one year there would be a Christmas Island would have
Speaker 1: eighteen point five billion crabs per square kilometer. So you're saying,
Speaker 1: as a red crab mom, you have to be willing
Speaker 1: to let some of those crabs go because you have
Speaker 1: you have the numbers on your side, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just a totally different way of of have a
Speaker 1: relationship between generations, right. They're going for for numbers. You know,
Speaker 1: it's quantity rather than quality. And it's just impossible for
Speaker 1: all those young to sustainably survive. Even if a decent
Speaker 1: fraction of them survived, it would be ridiculous. Only a
Speaker 1: tiny fraction of them can possibly make it to adulthood
Speaker 1: in any ecologically sustainable way. And so most that get
Speaker 1: dumped out into the water to hatch never make it
Speaker 1: back to shore alive. They get washed out to sea,
Speaker 1: never to return. Apparently, whale sharks migrate to the Christmas
Speaker 1: Island area to eat red crab larvae when they hatch,
Speaker 1: and among those that do make it back to the
Speaker 1: beach in that in that you know foamy pink shag
Speaker 1: carpet I mentioned, they're obviously going to be pretty easy
Speaker 1: prey at that stage too. You can even sometimes see
Speaker 1: I've seen footage of this of adult red crabs just
Speaker 1: kind of shoveling clawfulls of young red crabs into their mouths,
Speaker 1: because hey, what are the chances that these are mine?
Speaker 1: It's pretty slim. Again, it's a numbers game. Well. Plus,
Speaker 1: it's like they're just against so many of them. It's
Speaker 1: like if you make way too much a pancake batter, Uh,
Speaker 1: you may treat yourself to a few spoonfuls of unclid
Speaker 1: pancake batter. I mean, why not, it's there. You can
Speaker 1: only make so many pancakes. You can make similar argument.
Speaker 1: You'd be like, look, if I made all of this
Speaker 1: into pancakes, our house would be packed with pancakes six
Speaker 1: ft high exactly. But anyway, given this kind of life cycle,
Speaker 1: in these kind of odds, the way to be a
Speaker 1: good parent is to do exactly what the female crabs do.
Speaker 1: They shake them off into the water where they've got
Speaker 1: a chance, and then they call it a day. There's
Speaker 1: nothing more you can do at that point. And if
Speaker 1: somehow you were still around when they hatched and molted,
Speaker 1: who knows, you might just gobble them up. So, despite
Speaker 1: how funny it looks, I rebuke my instincts. I do
Speaker 1: not think that the red crabs are bad parents. I
Speaker 1: think they're awesome crab parents. All right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break, and when we come back, we're going
Speaker 1: to get into the human element. What happens when we
Speaker 1: have the human element to the red crab element. Thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back now. We discussed earlier how crazy these migrations are.
Speaker 1: You when the island can, sometimes in areas, become just
Speaker 1: thick with crabs that are moving from forest to shore
Speaker 1: or returning from shore to forest. And this doesn't even
Speaker 1: take into consideration the fact that sometimes there are multiple
Speaker 1: waves of migration during the same year. So you've got
Speaker 1: crabs going both ways. Like one set of crabs they
Speaker 1: moved down to the shore, and then there's another, uh
Speaker 1: you know, trigger of the rainy season, another set of
Speaker 1: crabs they start moving to the shore, and then the
Speaker 1: other ones are going home. So you can have crabs
Speaker 1: going this way, crabs going that way. There on the
Speaker 1: golf course, there on the streets, there in the grocery store.
Speaker 1: I mean, it can become quite thick with crabs on
Speaker 1: Christmas Island. And yet there are people here, that's right,
Speaker 1: and those people have vehicles that they also have pets. Uh,
Speaker 1: we'll get into some of those complications in a bit,
Speaker 1: but just the roads. You're talking about something like a
Speaker 1: million crabs a year crushed by road traffic on Christmas Island,
Speaker 1: but that's still only gonna shake out to something like
Speaker 1: one percent of the population. And the dead, by the way,
Speaker 1: are apparently swiftly cannibalized. Again, crabs. Crabs are gonna do
Speaker 1: what crabs are gonna do. No. I mentioned earlier that
Speaker 1: there's this great old British TV documentary called Kingdom of
Speaker 1: the Crabs and narrated by David Attenborough from nineteen I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the same year that we got John Carpenters
Speaker 1: They Live, Killer Clowns from Outer Space, The Blob the remake,
Speaker 1: the really cool eighties remake, as well as of course
Speaker 1: Mac and Me. Well, this is right up there with those.
Speaker 1: But it's got so many great moments. And one of
Speaker 1: the best moments from it is when you're watching hundreds
Speaker 1: of crabs scuttling across a pair of railroad tracks and
Speaker 1: then a train emerges in the background and it's barreling
Speaker 1: towards the crab crossing, and then the crabs show no
Speaker 1: sign of getting out of the way, and then the
Speaker 1: train conductor starts blowing his horn at the crabs as
Speaker 1: if that's going to deter them. I guess it's like
Speaker 1: when people like they stop in the road because the
Speaker 1: turtle is crossing and they honked their horn at it.
Speaker 1: I never actually haunt my hornets, they squirrels, chipmunks, but
Speaker 1: I will almost wreck my vehicle to avoid them. But
Speaker 1: I I guess that's human nature. Like you don't want
Speaker 1: to squish crabs unnecessarily. I mean maybe some people do.
Speaker 1: There are probably a few people on the island who
Speaker 1: kind of get off on it. Well, I've read that
Speaker 1: it can. It can also hurt your tires. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: have people with flat tires due to the crabs. Probably
Speaker 1: hurts trains less, probably, Uh. But the humans have had
Speaker 1: to put in place many steps to help the crabs
Speaker 1: cope with roads and tracks and the other ways that
Speaker 1: we have unfortunately disrupted their migration zones. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not the crabs fault, right, They didn't ask us to
Speaker 1: put a road there, but railroad tracks there to do
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. So these adaptations are are
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. They include barriers of course around the edges
Speaker 1: of roads and put walls around the roads to keep
Speaker 1: the crabs from walking onto the roads, and these lead
Speaker 1: to sort of crab funnels that route the crabs to
Speaker 1: specially designs safe crossings, so you might have an underpass
Speaker 1: with a great on top of it, or even there's
Speaker 1: even a five meter high crab bridge climbable by crab
Speaker 1: to help them over one stretch of road. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and you included a picture of these in our notes.
Speaker 1: It's pretty incredible because it looks like one of the
Speaker 1: recognizers those enemy ships in the Tron movies. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks like like that the big clamp that comes down
Speaker 1: on top of you, right, except instead of being made
Speaker 1: out of brightly colored light, it's covered in brightly colored
Speaker 1: red crabs right now. Interestingly enough, early accounts of Christmas
Speaker 1: Island make no real mention of the crab hoardz. So
Speaker 1: you could you can look at that one of two ways, right, Well,
Speaker 1: either it didn't occur in this at least with the
Speaker 1: same at the same level, or they just forgot to
Speaker 1: mention it, which seems unlikely, but maybe they didn't witness it. Well,
Speaker 1: it's true too, but there is this suspected link between
Speaker 1: the current levels and the decent levels of of of
Speaker 1: the red crab population with the extinction of two species
Speaker 1: of rat that were on the island when Europeans first arrived.
Speaker 1: And uh, and it's possible that these two species of
Speaker 1: rat may have kept the populations more in check. What
Speaker 1: are these rats alright? One is called mcclear's rat or
Speaker 1: memor Rattis McCleary and the other is the bulldog rat
Speaker 1: or Rattus nativitatis. And those are just two of only
Speaker 1: five native mammal species on Christmas Island to have been
Speaker 1: officially listed as extinct since human showed up. That being
Speaker 1: both of these rats, and the reason that they went extinct,
Speaker 1: it's it's probably because exotic rodents were brought in by
Speaker 1: early human colonizers or brought in. I would say they
Speaker 1: just came along with let rats do. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: ideas that humans brought different kinds of rodents, those rodents
Speaker 1: out competed the native rodents, but those rodents weren't as
Speaker 1: much of a competition with the red crabs. Well, it's
Speaker 1: more than just outcompete as apparently like straight up killed
Speaker 1: them off with illness. It was looking at a two
Speaker 1: thousand eight study published in PLS one, and they pointed
Speaker 1: out that there seems to be a direct cause here
Speaker 1: and it seems to be disease. They collected DNA samples
Speaker 1: from the islands now extinct native rats via late nineteenth
Speaker 1: and early twentieth century museum specimens, and they attributed the
Speaker 1: extinction event here to ship jumping black rats infected with
Speaker 1: the protozoan Tripenasoma louizy, an organism that is related to
Speaker 1: an organism that causes sleeping sickness in humans. And indeed,
Speaker 1: native Island rats were seen to stagger around following the
Speaker 1: arrival of the s S Hindustan in eight and this
Speaker 1: protozoan is light is likely spread by fleas, so we
Speaker 1: have you know, it's a similar situation that we've seen
Speaker 1: with certainly with with human populations and UH and other organisms,
Speaker 1: where an exotic variant brought in a parasite that the
Speaker 1: UH that the native inhabitants were just simply unable to
Speaker 1: deal with. Now, in terms of other native Christmas Island mammals,
Speaker 1: others have had a tough time as well. The Christmas
Speaker 1: Island shrew is critically endangered. There's also a particular bat
Speaker 1: the Christmas Island PIPISTRELLI, Yes, thank you for helping that one. Now,
Speaker 1: it's it's name. It is a cute name, a cute
Speaker 1: name for a bat. It's critically endangered, if not outright extinct,
Speaker 1: and apparently the reasoning behind that is is not completely understood.
Speaker 1: There's also the Christmas Island flying fox, which is another
Speaker 1: type of bat. It is also in decline for unknown reasons.
Speaker 1: And then you have the exotic mammals. We've already mentioned
Speaker 1: black rats, but you also have a house mice, you
Speaker 1: have feral cats and wild dogs. Now do we know
Speaker 1: what the explicit relationship between that change in the mammal
Speaker 1: populations and the surge and crabs is. The belief is
Speaker 1: that those populated the original populations of rodents were helping
Speaker 1: to keep the population of crabs in check, and apparently
Speaker 1: the the the exotic mammals have not been able to
Speaker 1: keep their numbers in check the same in the same rate.
Speaker 1: I see, So they're not adapted to to crab Island, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those situations where again you just
Speaker 1: see humans show up in the unbalanced things. Now, in
Speaker 1: the case of the red crabs, it would almost seem
Speaker 1: like the unbalancing made more spectacle right, Like the reason
Speaker 1: we're talking about Christmas Island is because we have this
Speaker 1: enormous surge that arguably might not be the same level
Speaker 1: if we had also not managed to kill off two
Speaker 1: whole species of rodents on the island. True, and there's
Speaker 1: going to be even more stuff along those lines coming up.
Speaker 1: So there are actually multiple ongoing threats to the life
Speaker 1: cycle of these amazing animals. If if you care about
Speaker 1: out the beauty of the crab army scuttling through the forests,
Speaker 1: you should care about these issues. One is climate related.
Speaker 1: So there is a paper from in Global Change Biology
Speaker 1: called Linking l Neino Local rainfall and migration timing in
Speaker 1: a tropical migratory species by Alison K. Shaw and Catherine A.
Speaker 1: Kelly and the authors here find that species whose mating
Speaker 1: and migratory behaviors are determined by weather, like the Christmas
Speaker 1: Island red crab, remember it's the it's certain things about
Speaker 1: the beginning of the rainy season that tell them time
Speaker 1: to go to the beach and mate. Uh, they will
Speaker 1: probably be adversely affected by the way climate change is
Speaker 1: upsetting normal weather patterns that were used to so the
Speaker 1: author's write quote. We find that the timing of the
Speaker 1: annual crab breeding migration is closely related to the amount
Speaker 1: of rain that falls during a migration window period prior
Speaker 1: to potential egg release dates, which is in turn really
Speaker 1: added to the Southern oscillation index and atmospheric l ne
Speaker 1: NEO Southern oscillation index. As reproduction in this species is
Speaker 1: conditional on successful migration, they don't reproduce if they don't migrate,
Speaker 1: major changes in migration patterns could have detrimental consequences for
Speaker 1: the survival of the species. So, in other words, climate
Speaker 1: change messes around with the amount of timing of the
Speaker 1: rainfall on Christmas Island, and then the crabs get the
Speaker 1: short end of the stick and could find themselves unable
Speaker 1: to use their normal migration and breeding instincts in order
Speaker 1: to produce the next generation. And this could also have
Speaker 1: follow on effects with the animals that depend on these
Speaker 1: migratory animals for food, like the Christmas Island red crab
Speaker 1: is sort of a keystone species on the island in
Speaker 1: many ways. One of the things we already mentioned is
Speaker 1: that those whale sharks come to eat the Christmas Island
Speaker 1: red crab larvae in the water. But another thing is,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned, they maintain the state of the forest
Speaker 1: by clearing leaf litter and clearing out other plants in
Speaker 1: the undergrowth of the forest, and you know, and by
Speaker 1: turning the soil right. Yeah, they're they're aerators. Now, there
Speaker 1: is another culprit that is putting the Christmas Island red
Speaker 1: crabs at risk, and that is yellow crazy ants crazy ants. Again,
Speaker 1: it's different crazy ants somewhat. So we did an episode
Speaker 1: about crazy ants before, but that was focused on a
Speaker 1: completely different animal. We were mainly talking about the raspberry
Speaker 1: crazy ant of the genus Nylandria. The yellow ant is
Speaker 1: a totally different genus. It's an apolo lepus gracillips and
Speaker 1: these are ants with a slender body, long legs, and
Speaker 1: like the crazy ants in genus Nylanderia, they're also easily
Speaker 1: recognized by these movement patterns that give them their name.
Speaker 1: Their motion is sometimes described as frantic or erratic or crazy,
Speaker 1: and like raspberry crazy ants, these ants can also form
Speaker 1: what are known as super colonies, which means they build
Speaker 1: separate but friendly nests which do not attack one another
Speaker 1: and form a kind of web of allied ant armies
Speaker 1: that can easily overwhelm the habitats that they spread to,
Speaker 1: and so they're considered a very problematic invasive species like
Speaker 1: other crazy ants. Also, they spray formic acid as a
Speaker 1: defensive and offensive biological weapon, and formic acid is a
Speaker 1: powerful chemical. Uh, it's apparently a potent poison against land crabs.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine a bunch of ants come up
Speaker 1: against one of these Christmas Island red crabs and the
Speaker 1: ants spray formic acid in its eyes, in the segment
Speaker 1: joints of the crabs, so you know, like getting in
Speaker 1: the leg joints, and this can leave the crabs unable
Speaker 1: to move or to survive. And then after the crabs die,
Speaker 1: of course, the ants get a feast of crab meat
Speaker 1: and this has had a huge impact on crab populations.
Speaker 1: It's been estimated that in the last fifteen years the
Speaker 1: ants have reduced the crab populations on the island by
Speaker 1: as much as so local land crabs have been put
Speaker 1: severely at risk by the yellow crazy ants. Interestingly, the
Speaker 1: yellow crazy ants exist it on the island for many decades.
Speaker 1: I think they were introduced sometime in the first half
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. I've seen estimates in the nineteen
Speaker 1: teens or twenties around then. Uh, And they were on
Speaker 1: the island a long time before they became so destructive
Speaker 1: to the land crabs beginning around the nineteen nineties. So
Speaker 1: what changed around the nineteen nineties. I was reading a
Speaker 1: report that was put together by Parks Australia together with
Speaker 1: Latrobe University, and it appears that it was only in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties or so that these massive super colonies
Speaker 1: of yellow crazy ants began forming. So what caused that change?
Speaker 1: What happened then? H the author's point to the emergence
Speaker 1: of a mutualism actually a symbiotic relationship, and this is
Speaker 1: a mutualism between the yellow crazy ants and another group
Speaker 1: of insects called scale insects. So it's like the like
Speaker 1: the two enemies, they they forged a truce and and
Speaker 1: then we're united against the forces of the crab. Yes,
Speaker 1: so another non native species, the scale insects. What they
Speaker 1: do is they cling to plant stems and they suck
Speaker 1: the sap from the plants for energy, and they produce
Speaker 1: a sugary waste product from their anal pores in the process.
Speaker 1: And the ants love this sugary poop, they go straight
Speaker 1: to the anal pores and they eat it up. So
Speaker 1: they have formed this mutualistic protective relationship with the tree
Speaker 1: sucking candy poopers. The scale insects suck from the trees,
Speaker 1: they produce sugary poop. The yellow the yellow crazy ants
Speaker 1: eat the sugary poop and they protect the scale insects.
Speaker 1: And it appears that this emerging symbiosis between the yellow
Speaker 1: crazy ants and the scale insects is related to the
Speaker 1: ant's ability to form these ecologically devastating super colonies. But
Speaker 1: here's so, then you take the question one step back, Well,
Speaker 1: what caused this mutualism to begin in the first place. Uh,
Speaker 1: the authors of this report don't know. They speculate that
Speaker 1: changing rainfall patterns on Christmas Island, we're putting stress on
Speaker 1: freeze and this made the sap more concentrated, which means
Speaker 1: it's even more sugary goodness for the scale insects. And
Speaker 1: this increases the population of the scale insects, which produces
Speaker 1: more delicious sugary poop for their yellow ant friends, which
Speaker 1: means more ants to protect the scale insects, which means
Speaker 1: even more scale insects and then you get this dangerous
Speaker 1: feedback loop. It's this is all Christmas Island is in
Speaker 1: so many ways. This uh, this wonderful look at the
Speaker 1: horrible cascading effects of colonialism, of human intervention in general,
Speaker 1: I mean at the macroscopic climate level and at the
Speaker 1: local invasive level. Yet like at every level, we have
Speaker 1: messed with this island. And we messed it with it
Speaker 1: in one way, and now we're messing with it in
Speaker 1: a different way, and and now in fact we're gonna
Speaker 1: keep messing with it in order to try to fix
Speaker 1: part of what we did. Because the question is can
Speaker 1: anything be done to save these amazing red crabs. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are it is a wonderful thing to see these
Speaker 1: animals doing what they do. And so I was reading
Speaker 1: an interesting article about this on the Conversation in UH
Speaker 1: posted in by two Latrobe University professors Susan Lawler and
Speaker 1: Peter Green, and apparently Parks Australia has been trying to
Speaker 1: do all kinds of things to help the crabs survive
Speaker 1: the crazy ants, or to knock the crazy ant super
Speaker 1: colonies back, like they tried poison bading the ants by hand,
Speaker 1: but apparently this is just not an efficient solution. In
Speaker 1: sen they launched a new project, and this was killer wasps.
Speaker 1: Like it tell me more so the killer wasps. They're
Speaker 1: only about two millimeters long and they're naturally found in
Speaker 1: India and Southeast Asia. They're called tach Cardiaphagus summer Villy
Speaker 1: and the author selected this tiny wasp because it attacks
Speaker 1: this specific species of scale insect that has formed the
Speaker 1: mutualistic relationship with the crazy ants. Uh So, the wasp
Speaker 1: is a parasitoid that lays its eggs in the body
Speaker 1: of the female of this one species of scale insect,
Speaker 1: which hatch into more wasps that lay more eggs in
Speaker 1: these species of scale insects, and hopefully this will severely
Speaker 1: control the population of this one particular species of scale insect,
Speaker 1: which is also invasive on the island. Uh And the
Speaker 1: authors note that they've had to be very cautious because
Speaker 1: they cite examples that, you know, in the past, we've
Speaker 1: tried to introduce animals to places in the hope that
Speaker 1: they would control a pest problem, but then they became
Speaker 1: a problem in their own right. They said, the example
Speaker 1: of the cane toad in Australia, which was brought into
Speaker 1: control cane beetles, but then it became its own kind
Speaker 1: of problem. And I'm reminded, of course, of the old
Speaker 1: nursery rhyme. There was an old lady who swallowed a fly, right,
Speaker 1: and she's forced to keep swallowing progressively larger and parasitic
Speaker 1: wasps and larger and more destructive organisms to try and
Speaker 1: uh savor until if she dies at the end of
Speaker 1: the song. Yeah, well, the authors, so we hope that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. The authors claim they performed rigorous research before
Speaker 1: and uh they tested really hard to make sure this
Speaker 1: wasp would not harm other local species, and they said,
Speaker 1: you know, according to their tests, everything seemed to check out.
Speaker 1: So they introduced the wasps in sixteen. And I checked
Speaker 1: with a more recent news article on the wasp control
Speaker 1: project from it looks like the effort is having early
Speaker 1: markers for success. The wasps have become established, their range
Speaker 1: is spreading, But we'll have to wait a few more
Speaker 1: years before we see the full effect on the crab populations.
Speaker 1: But I hope it works, and I hope it doesn't
Speaker 1: have any unexpected effects. Less to become island of the
Speaker 1: Wasps Kingdom of the Wasps. You don't want to have
Speaker 1: to think about Crab Island needing to be protected. You
Speaker 1: want to think that Crab Island is an armored, claw
Speaker 1: wielding force to be reckoned with, and that it you know,
Speaker 1: it can withstand anything on its own. But I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: natural populations or even unnatural populations are vulnerable. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at Skull Island right King Kong's homeland. Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know anything about population dynam There a monster island
Speaker 1: where all the giant Japanese monsters with That's clearly these
Speaker 1: are places that need to be protected. We don't need
Speaker 1: to go in there and try and defeat them with
Speaker 1: our robots. Is there is there a crab kaiju? Yes?
Speaker 1: There are. There are crab kaiju up the wazoo. Yes. Nice,
Speaker 1: They have their own movies sometimes. Yeah, Godzillafat want to
Speaker 1: forget its name? I cannot. I can never remember the
Speaker 1: names of the adversary except that maybe it But yeah,
Speaker 1: he fought a giant crab in one episode. It was
Speaker 1: I finally remember it from my childhood. But we'll get
Speaker 1: into We'll get into monster crabs a bit more in
Speaker 1: the next episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, because
Speaker 1: we will talk about another resident of Christmas Island that
Speaker 1: is an enormous deco pod. In fact, that the largest
Speaker 1: land crab that you will find on Earth. Now, naturally
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from everybody out there. We
Speaker 1: have listeners all over the world. I wonder if we
Speaker 1: have just a single listener that lives on Christmas Island
Speaker 1: if we do email us yes, Likewise, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of Australian listeners uh and just listeners who have
Speaker 1: traveled around the world. In general, if you have ever
Speaker 1: been to Christmas Island and witnessed any of the species
Speaker 1: we discussed here, or just I mean even if you've
Speaker 1: just been there and you saw nothing at all, we
Speaker 1: want to hear from you. Whatever you have to share
Speaker 1: about Christmas Island would be gratefully appreciated. And in the meantime,
Speaker 1: you can check out all the episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind. It's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's where you'll find all the episodes, links out to
Speaker 1: our various social media accounts, including uh the discussion module,
Speaker 1: which is our group on Facebook. Look up Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind Discussion Module and you can easily join
Speaker 1: that and interact with other listeners as as as well
Speaker 1: as Joe and myself. The website stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com also has a link to our store
Speaker 1: where you can buy some cool merchandise stickers, shirts, etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: it's probably probably a bit late now for for Christmas gifts,
Speaker 1: at least for this Christmas. At hey, you can go
Speaker 1: ahead and start start banking ahead for next year. It's
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Speaker 1: you can simply rate and review us wherever you have
Speaker 1: the power to do so. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Torry Harrison. If
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Speaker 1: to let us know feedback on this episode or any other,
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