Speaker 1: Dressed in a dove gray robe, his hair now done
Speaker 1: in boyish loops, one either side of his head. The child,
Speaker 1: his face bathed in tears, pressed his small hands together,
Speaker 1: knelt down and bowed first towards the east, taking his
Speaker 1: leave of the deity of the shrine. Then he turned
Speaker 1: towards the west began chanting the Nimbootsu, the invocation of
Speaker 1: Amida's name. The nun then took him in her arms.
Speaker 1: Confronting him, she said, there's another capital down there beneath
Speaker 1: the waves. So they plunged to the bottom of the
Speaker 1: thousand fathomed sea. Welcome to Stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 1: from housework dot Com. Hey, you wasn't a stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick and Robert what was that? A reading from?
Speaker 1: That was a reading from a work that is sometimes
Speaker 1: referred to as the Japanese Iliad, The Tale of the
Speaker 1: Haka fourteenth century epic Japanese poem that recounts the struggles
Speaker 1: between the Haka and the Genji families for control of
Speaker 1: medieval Japan. It's a tale of Samurai heroes, war and
Speaker 1: the tragic fall of the hak family with every everything
Speaker 1: coming to a bloody climax in the sea Battle of
Speaker 1: Dana Lura in five Okay, so that's the sea battle
Speaker 1: that was said to take place in the twelfth century
Speaker 1: a d r. A long time ago, at the end
Speaker 1: of the courtier era. And this would be, I guess,
Speaker 1: sending us into another era of Japanese history, right, the
Speaker 1: heir of the shogunate, the rule of the military class.
Speaker 1: Now we should say there are multiple translations of this
Speaker 1: of this classic epic. This is from the translation by
Speaker 1: Burton Watson. That's right, yeah, and you know, different translate.
Speaker 1: I looked at a few different ones and they all
Speaker 1: add a little something different to it. For instance, sometimes
Speaker 1: the words are there's another kingdom beneath the waves, and
Speaker 1: I kind of like that one a little more. But
Speaker 1: this seems to be one of the more popular translations
Speaker 1: out there. So we're stuck with it. So why did
Speaker 1: these why did this child leader and the people around
Speaker 1: him have to plunge into the ocean? Well because they
Speaker 1: were on the losing side. They were on the what
Speaker 1: turned out to be the wrong side of of of
Speaker 1: history at the time. So this again comes at the
Speaker 1: end of the Hayan period seven through eleven eighty five,
Speaker 1: and it was largely a peaceful period. Uh the Genj
Speaker 1: were weakened in the eleven fifties following two key power
Speaker 1: struggles in the court, and the Genji leaders involved were executed,
Speaker 1: but two young boys were spared. You're a Tomo and
Speaker 1: yoshiot Suni, and they and these guys they've ended up
Speaker 1: plotting vene it's twenty years of Genj dominance followed. But
Speaker 1: you had all these factions that were plotting against the
Speaker 1: hey K rule, leading to revolt in eleven eighty five
Speaker 1: years later they would finish the Hayk, bringing an end
Speaker 1: to the court aristocracy and again beginning this age of
Speaker 1: the shogun to hate the rule of the warrior class.
Speaker 1: And this particular heartbreaking read here, which seriously every time
Speaker 1: i've I've read it in preparation for this podcast, it
Speaker 1: gives me chill bumps, um. It takes us to the
Speaker 1: very end. So the Haka battle fleet has been annihilated,
Speaker 1: So the Genji have completely defeated them. Right, the few survivors,
Speaker 1: the warriors and sailors have thrown themselves into the sea
Speaker 1: to drown instead of being captured and in this reading,
Speaker 1: the lady knee grandmother of the emperor, which in this
Speaker 1: in this translation she's just she's described as a nun,
Speaker 1: but that is the grandmother. She takes the seven year
Speaker 1: old emperor a Toku out on a boat and sees
Speaker 1: that he is not captured by the victor, so they
Speaker 1: drowned themselves in their defeat, and she consoles him with
Speaker 1: this line, there is another capital beneath the waves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's haunting and tragic and heartbreaking. Well, but but
Speaker 1: it seeds this idea that at least in the boy
Speaker 1: emperor's mind, that he wasn't killing himself, but he was
Speaker 1: like transitioning to another like stage of rule. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a heartbreaking passage for a number of reasons,
Speaker 1: because on one hand they're describing the boy is very
Speaker 1: regal and king like, you know, almost kind of a
Speaker 1: holy child emperor, which on one hand makes his decision
Speaker 1: to h or or at least acceptance of his fate
Speaker 1: like a little more beautiful and noble. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, you can't help it. Read that, and and
Speaker 1: and and imagine the alternate view where it's just as
Speaker 1: noble as the child's birth. Maybe it's just a child.
Speaker 1: He's just a child, and he is about to to
Speaker 1: die beneath the waves instead of being captured by the enemy.
Speaker 1: And then there is also this idea that the world,
Speaker 1: that the actual kingdom is just so rife with violence
Speaker 1: and horror at this point that the kingdom beneath the waves,
Speaker 1: the kingdom of death, is ultimately the better choice, just
Speaker 1: complete annihilation over trying to live in this sort of
Speaker 1: world anymore. Yeah, that sadness does come through, But also
Speaker 1: there is this interesting suggestion of a hierarchy even after
Speaker 1: they have drowned, because what like his servants, that the
Speaker 1: samurai who have survived come with him, right, and they
Speaker 1: all they drowned themselves as well. You can imagine them
Speaker 1: and maybe heavy armor drowning in the waves with their master,
Speaker 1: and the boy drowns with them. And the suggestion of
Speaker 1: you mentioned that there are a couple of different translations
Speaker 1: of that line. There's another kingdom beneath the waves, or
Speaker 1: another capital beneath the waves. The idea of a capital
Speaker 1: suggests there's a whole society in a hierarchy within the society,
Speaker 1: and that you will be in this capital here like
Speaker 1: we're going to the We're going to the big boss,
Speaker 1: and maybe you will be the big boss. Who knows? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially after our recent episodes about myths of
Speaker 1: my people and beings that live beneath the sea, Like
Speaker 1: the magical uh ramifications of this are pretty obvious. The
Speaker 1: idea that the fallen ruler and his followers will continue
Speaker 1: to to to live and thrive in another magical place. Now,
Speaker 1: this is going to be the bridge to our actual
Speaker 1: topic today. How are we going to get from this
Speaker 1: beautiful and sad medieval Japanese epic to some crab biology.
Speaker 1: So members of the hey K family did survive, mostly
Speaker 1: they were women, and they descended still remember the Battle
Speaker 1: of Donna Lura. According to legend, however, the waters near
Speaker 1: the battle or home to the ghosts of the drowned
Speaker 1: hey K warriors, and those ghosts take the form of crabs.
Speaker 1: And indeed there is a variety of crabs to be
Speaker 1: found in these waters with a curious arrangement of ridges
Speaker 1: on its back, ridges that seem to form the drastic
Speaker 1: lines of a grimacing samurai warface is depicted in medieval
Speaker 1: Japanese art. Yes, and I would say not just the
Speaker 1: faces depicted in medieval art. But it also somewhat depicts
Speaker 1: the Samurai masks you will sometimes see, like uh, where
Speaker 1: a Samurai armor suit might have a helmet that would
Speaker 1: have a mask that partially covers the face and the
Speaker 1: backs of these crabs. The carapace of the crab looks
Speaker 1: an awful lot like some of these masks. You have
Speaker 1: these kind of highly stylized oh a faces, these sort
Speaker 1: of demonic war grimaces that you see on the face
Speaker 1: plates of the armor. Yeah. So the idea here would
Speaker 1: be the samurais transformed into crabs, or their spirits transformed
Speaker 1: into crabs, and that if you if you see one
Speaker 1: of these scuttling along, then you are seeing this. Uh.
Speaker 1: This this this remnant a fall in Samurai Warrior, a
Speaker 1: pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floor of silent
Speaker 1: seas exactly. Now, of course, before we go too much further,
Speaker 1: we should let you know this is not the case.
Speaker 1: This is the magical, mythic, legendary connotation of the story
Speaker 1: because certainly, as marine biologist Joe W. Martin points out
Speaker 1: in his three article The Samurai Crab published in Tara, Uh,
Speaker 1: the myth of crab people off the coast of Japan
Speaker 1: likely predates the Battle of Donna, or going back at
Speaker 1: least as far as the thirteenth century, maybe even before,
Speaker 1: and is as as is often the case with myths
Speaker 1: and legends, it was merely adapted to the hey k
Speaker 1: after the battle. Okay, so you've got these crabs that
Speaker 1: you can pull up off the floor of the Silent
Speaker 1: Sea in this area, and they look like faces. And
Speaker 1: so he's saying that probably before this battle, people were
Speaker 1: pulling up these crabs and saying, I see a face,
Speaker 1: But after the battle people started to say not just
Speaker 1: I see a face, but look, it's the face of
Speaker 1: those Samurai warriors who drowned in these waters. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it makes makes perfect sense. Right. You can apply additional
Speaker 1: narrative to the to the myth, to the legend here
Speaker 1: and it it brings it to new life. But of course,
Speaker 1: the reality is you can find these crabs. These crabs
Speaker 1: are an actual species. They exist. They have nothing to
Speaker 1: do with ghosts, but they exist, and they really really
Speaker 1: do look like faces like a lot. Yeah, we'll try
Speaker 1: to include some photos of these crabs on the landing
Speaker 1: page for this episode. Stuff toblew your mind dot com.
Speaker 1: There is an awesome painting that has included along with
Speaker 1: Joel Martin's article from nineteen nine. It's a painting by
Speaker 1: Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and it depicts these these drowned rulers down
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the ocean, and they've got this
Speaker 1: this phalanx of crabs coming towards them with those samurai
Speaker 1: warrior faces on the backs of them. But they're lining
Speaker 1: up almost as if to serve their new leaders. And
Speaker 1: this painting is awesome. We've got to include this if
Speaker 1: we can on the landing page because it has this
Speaker 1: this manic, hyperactive, hallucinatory, hieronymous bosh kind of energy blasting
Speaker 1: out of it. This is such a good painting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's dramatic with its human elements within the crabs.
Speaker 1: Add this additional scuttling horror to the whole piece. I
Speaker 1: love it. And it captures the inherent irony of the
Speaker 1: legend of ghosts of samurai warriors becoming becoming crabs, because
Speaker 1: such a legend is both haunting and scary and also funny.
Speaker 1: Crabs are funny, right, I mean, it's not just me
Speaker 1: right like other people probably look at crabs and think
Speaker 1: that's a kind of funny animal. The way they move,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're walking styles, the way they wave their
Speaker 1: their claws around like it is funny, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: crabs are inherently funny. I mean, the word crab is
Speaker 1: inherently funny because of the kr sound in English. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, the crabs are fun to look at and
Speaker 1: and chase and to catch if you if you can
Speaker 1: catch them, crabs are tremendous fun and they're delicious or
Speaker 1: them are delicious. Yeah, but like you you can't take
Speaker 1: a crab ghost or a crab monster too seriously, I think,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe maybe in Japanese culture it's different,
Speaker 1: but at least for me, it's impossible. Like I think
Speaker 1: of one of my favorite old horror movies from the
Speaker 1: fifties is Attack of the Crab Monsters, the Roger Corman movie, Uh,
Speaker 1: which just proves you know, if you're talking about killer crabs,
Speaker 1: it's inherently funny, even if they don't look funny. Well,
Speaker 1: they have to be gigantic to be perceived as a threat,
Speaker 1: and so maybe that's part of the horror of the
Speaker 1: legend here, is that the ghosts of the samurais are
Speaker 1: trapped in this lesser form. They're they're all bluster. You know.
Speaker 1: A crab will will wave its claws at you, but
Speaker 1: all that can really do is run away or maybe
Speaker 1: pinch you a little bit. It's not an actual mortal threat.
Speaker 1: But let's take a look at what this crab species
Speaker 1: actually is, the one with the supposed samurai face on
Speaker 1: its carapacet. The scientific name of this crab would be
Speaker 1: Hakia japonica a formerly known as the Dora pay crab
Speaker 1: until it was officially granted. It's older and more traditional
Speaker 1: name of Hakia in. And so it's got these ridges
Speaker 1: on its back. That's the thing that captures everybody's it's attention.
Speaker 1: You look on its back. It's got this carapace shell
Speaker 1: on the top of it, and it looks a lot
Speaker 1: like a face. What are these ridges that form the face?
Speaker 1: Are they purely decorative wells Joe W. Martin points out
Speaker 1: in that article sent the Samurai crab, they do serve
Speaker 1: a purpose. Their external indicators of supportive ridges or epodems
Speaker 1: inside the creatures carapacet, these are the places where muscles attached.
Speaker 1: He points out that these features are subject to natural selection,
Speaker 1: but they occur in nearly all members of the crab
Speaker 1: family uh doripiday all over the world. At least seventeen
Speaker 1: crab species in two families in the Indo West Pacific
Speaker 1: are similar enough to be called Haika ghani by locals.
Speaker 1: This also includes a variety of Chinese crab is known
Speaker 1: as the ghost or demon face crab. Right, and Hayka
Speaker 1: ghani that that would be the more common name for
Speaker 1: this crab haka from the story we told, and ghani
Speaker 1: the Japanese word for crab ghani or khani. Al Right,
Speaker 1: so we've established the legend, We've established the biological reality
Speaker 1: of the crab species. But the lingering question is is
Speaker 1: there any connection between the two? And remarkably, uh, there's one,
Speaker 1: or at least a couple of very famous arguments for
Speaker 1: a connection here in actual connection between the perceived faces
Speaker 1: on the crabs backs and the legend of the samurai crabs. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: So the question is we've established what the crab is
Speaker 1: and and what it looks like, but why does it
Speaker 1: look that way? How did it come to resemble a
Speaker 1: samurai mask so strongly? Or rather, maybe maybe we should
Speaker 1: ask instead why do. We so strongly believe we see
Speaker 1: a samurai mask when we see the crab. So to
Speaker 1: sort those quests, Jen's out, We're gonna have to go
Speaker 1: to our friend Carl Sagan. That's right. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break and when we come back we will
Speaker 1: introduce Sagan. Than alright, we're back, So, Robert, I think
Speaker 1: it's a shame that we're never going to get to
Speaker 1: have Carl Sagan on the podcast. It's such a loss
Speaker 1: that he's gone. Yeah, I mean, Carl Sagan was one
Speaker 1: of the most important science communicators of his time. For
Speaker 1: anyone who's not familiar, he lived or n American astronomer, becausmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist,
Speaker 1: and uh an, author of several books, host of the
Speaker 1: wonderful TV series Cosmos. Sagan was one of those those
Speaker 1: great rare people who was actually a great working scientist himself.
Speaker 1: You know, he was an astronomer, he worked with NASA,
Speaker 1: He did lots of interesting space research astrophysics, and at
Speaker 1: the same time was a great science communicator. And those
Speaker 1: are very different skills. One other name that comes to
Speaker 1: mind when I think of that pairing is Darwin, Right,
Speaker 1: Darwin was both a great scientist and a great science communicator.
Speaker 1: But you don't always have those same two skills in
Speaker 1: one person. Yeah, I mean he was. He was intelligent, charismatic,
Speaker 1: he had the scientific pedigree, but he also had this uh,
Speaker 1: this this this outward passion. He was able to to
Speaker 1: appear on these television shows and you were just instantly
Speaker 1: enraptured by what he had to say. Yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: turn to Cosmos. I want to set the scene. It's
Speaker 1: the fall of nineteen eighty. You are settling in to
Speaker 1: watch episode two of this magnificent new PBS science show Cosmos.
Speaker 1: It's hosted by Sagan. Whether or not you know Sagan
Speaker 1: by now, if you've seen the first episode, you're already enraptured. Uh,
Speaker 1: you want to hear what he has to say next.
Speaker 1: And so episode two of the cot in the original
Speaker 1: Cosmos series in nineteen eighty starts with Sagan telling the
Speaker 1: story we started with today. He starts to tell the
Speaker 1: story of the Battle of dano Ura and its legendary aftermath.
Speaker 1: And not only does he tell it, but there is
Speaker 1: a dramatic reenactment of anything. It's it's beautiful to watch.
Speaker 1: Will include a link to this episode of Cosmos on
Speaker 1: the landing page of this episode. Right, So we're going
Speaker 1: to quote from Carl Sagan's explanation of what's going on
Speaker 1: with the crab and the legends. So he says, quote,
Speaker 1: this legend raises a lovely problem. How does it come
Speaker 1: about that the face of a warrior is cut on
Speaker 1: the carapace of a Japanese crab? How could it be?
Speaker 1: The answer seems to be that humans made this face.
Speaker 1: But how like many other features, the patterns on the
Speaker 1: back or carapasts of this crab are inherited. But among crabs,
Speaker 1: as among humans, there are many different hereditary lines. Now suppose,
Speaker 1: purely by chance, among the distant ancestors of this crab,
Speaker 1: there came to be one that looked just a little
Speaker 1: bit like a human face. Long before the Battle of
Speaker 1: Danna or he's talking about, fishermen may have been reluctant
Speaker 1: to eat a crab with a human face and throwing
Speaker 1: it back into the sea. They were setting into motion
Speaker 1: a process of selection. If you're a crab and your
Speaker 1: carapist is just ordinary, the humans are going to eat you,
Speaker 1: But if it looked like a face, they'll throw you
Speaker 1: back and you'll be able to have lots of nice
Speaker 1: little baby crabs that all look just like you. As
Speaker 1: many generations passed of crabs and fisher folk alike, the
Speaker 1: crabs with patterns that looked most like a samurai face
Speaker 1: preferentially survived, until eventually there was produced not just a
Speaker 1: human face, not just a Japanese face, but the face
Speaker 1: of a Samurai warrior. Now that's that's an incredible idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's the idea of artificial selection. Sagan was saying
Speaker 1: that by accident, the fisher folk of Japan for many
Speaker 1: generations had been breeding crabs that looked like samurai in
Speaker 1: the same way that we breed agricultural crops or agricultural
Speaker 1: animals for desired traits. You might breed cows or pigs
Speaker 1: to produce more milk or to have more meat. You
Speaker 1: might breed dogs to look a certain way or to
Speaker 1: be more friendly or tow herd sheep. It would be
Speaker 1: like if we bread pugs because we didn't want to
Speaker 1: eat them, like, we just don't eat any of the
Speaker 1: dogs that look kind of like grotesque human babies. And
Speaker 1: then you just have pugs running all over the place
Speaker 1: because they they may be delicious, but they look too
Speaker 1: much like babies. Right. Well, there's a lot of thought
Speaker 1: about how we began to breed dogs, right How did
Speaker 1: domestic dogs become separated from their wolf like ancestors. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the thinking about that is
Speaker 1: that the process did not begin intentionally, That we started
Speaker 1: breeding dogs by accident, selecting for certain traits by accident,
Speaker 1: before we started breeding for certain traits on purpose. For example,
Speaker 1: we might have been breeding for the wolf like ancestor
Speaker 1: of a dog that had more approach behaviors toward humans
Speaker 1: because if this if it had more approach behaviors toward humans,
Speaker 1: it would come closer, would be more likely to get
Speaker 1: some scraps from our campsite or something like that. And
Speaker 1: the dogs that had less approach behaviors towards humans, who
Speaker 1: were more wary and wanted to stay farther away would
Speaker 1: not get that extra food, would be less likely to survive.
Speaker 1: And over time we were accidentally artificially selecting for dogs
Speaker 1: that like getting close to bipedal primates. And then when
Speaker 1: we actually begin involving ourselves and the decisions that when
Speaker 1: we that's when we start saying, well, let's Let's use
Speaker 1: these dogs at a little smaller so they can get
Speaker 1: through the wall and eat the rodents that are disturbing
Speaker 1: our grain crops. That sort of thing, Yeah, or just
Speaker 1: I mean, it can be purely aesthetic. You might say,
Speaker 1: this dog is very cute. I really like the way
Speaker 1: it looks. I I want to see more dogs like it.
Speaker 1: Let's breathe this dog and make it have lots of babies,
Speaker 1: and then things get out of control and you wind
Speaker 1: up with the pug anyway, Right, if only you could
Speaker 1: see the pug equivalent of of what our agricultural crops
Speaker 1: look like genetically, the crazy breeding process is that have
Speaker 1: gone into creating the bananas and the corn and all
Speaker 1: the stuff we eat. It's one of the funny things
Speaker 1: about people's complaints about genetically modified organisms and food crops
Speaker 1: is that the food crops we eat today are so
Speaker 1: amazingly genetically modified from their ancestral natural variants. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a little late in the game in any respects to
Speaker 1: start saying, oh, we don't want to we don't want
Speaker 1: to control or dictate what these organisms, uh manifest as
Speaker 1: like we've been doing that throughout recorded history and before
Speaker 1: recorded history. Yeah, but anyway, we need to get back
Speaker 1: to the crabs. So Sagan is talking about the fact
Speaker 1: that this is this is an idea, it's a hypothesis
Speaker 1: to explain why the carapace of this crab looks so
Speaker 1: much like a human face, and specifically so much like
Speaker 1: a samurai face, that it's not just a coincidence, but
Speaker 1: that it has been artificially selected for by human sorting
Speaker 1: practices in fishing. Now, Sagan was not the originator of
Speaker 1: this idea. No. Sagan's idea apparently comes a originally from
Speaker 1: the British zoologist Sir Julian Huxley, of the of the
Speaker 1: famous Huxley family. That's right, he was the grandson of T. H. Huxley,
Speaker 1: also known as Darwin's Bulldog. Right, And so Huxley wrote
Speaker 1: an article that was actually believed it or not published
Speaker 1: in Life magazine and on June nineteen fifty two. And
Speaker 1: reading the words of Julian Huxley in Life magazine in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two is really funny because I found a
Speaker 1: scan of the original magazine and it's got all these
Speaker 1: like carnation instant milk ads right across from him, and
Speaker 1: the like pard dog food ads and weird, weird recipes
Speaker 1: of the fifties that involved what cooking cooking tuna with
Speaker 1: with with carnation instant milk. It's like the only carnation
Speaker 1: instant milk will make this amazing tunic casserole. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: he's writing in life and he writes the same idea
Speaker 1: and an article that's more generally about imitation in nature.
Speaker 1: But he writes, quote the resemblance of Dora Pay and
Speaker 1: remember that was the original, that was the name Sam
Speaker 1: they were using for this crab back then. The resemblance
Speaker 1: of Dora Pay to an angry Japanese warrior is far
Speaker 1: too specific and far too detailed to be accidental. It
Speaker 1: came about because those crabs with a more perfect resemblance
Speaker 1: to a warrior's face were less frequently eaten than the others.
Speaker 1: So again, this is an elegant theory, you know, it
Speaker 1: makes a certain amount of logical sense. We can all
Speaker 1: envision the scenario taking place, even without a dramatic reinterpretation
Speaker 1: from Cosmos. We can we can see the fisher folk
Speaker 1: pulling up these crabs, looking at him and going, oh,
Speaker 1: that one's that's a little bit too much like a face.
Speaker 1: For me to eat it. I'm just gonna throw it
Speaker 1: back and we'll just see what the next one looks like. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can imagine that any food animal that
Speaker 1: looked unnaturally human probably would end up getting selected for
Speaker 1: in this way, Right, But is it really true? Does
Speaker 1: it stand the test of time, time, and the test
Speaker 1: of additional inquiry into the the origins of the crabs
Speaker 1: weird samurai face? Right? So for the rest of the episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to try to address this question. Is the
Speaker 1: Sagan Huxley hypothesis correct? Was it actually artificial selection by
Speaker 1: fisher folk being creeped out by faces that made the
Speaker 1: crabs look like this? Or is it just a coincidence?
Speaker 1: And if it's just a coincidence, what explains this striking resemblance. Well,
Speaker 1: I've already mentioned marine biologist Joe W. Martin's article, and
Speaker 1: he drops one fact that I think definitely uh is
Speaker 1: an argument against the idea that that humans were were
Speaker 1: artificially selecting for these these faces and the crabs, And
Speaker 1: that's that we have fossils of directed crabs or closely
Speaker 1: related crab species. They date back to times before the
Speaker 1: emergence of humans. Oh okay, So if these crabs were,
Speaker 1: or if some related crabs were looking like human faces
Speaker 1: before humans could have been selecting for them, that's definitely
Speaker 1: going to be a mark against the artificial selection hypothesis, right,
Speaker 1: unless you take you have to go through, you know,
Speaker 1: jump through elaborate hoops to say, well, what if an
Speaker 1: alien species came down saw the faces of existing prominides,
Speaker 1: or perhaps they had hominid uh facial features themselves, and
Speaker 1: then they engineered it into the backs of the crab, etcetera.
Speaker 1: You have to have some sort of elaborate explanation like
Speaker 1: that that that that breaks the multiple rules of the
Speaker 1: natural world. Then again, this doesn't necessarily kill the hypothesis,
Speaker 1: because you could say that those some related crabs in
Speaker 1: this family have some features on their backs that do
Speaker 1: look kind of like faces. The striking resemblance of the
Speaker 1: Hakia crabs, specifically to a samurai warrior face could have
Speaker 1: been honed by artificial selection over time, right, There might
Speaker 1: have been an initial resemblance that was sharpened by artificial
Speaker 1: selection exactly. Now. Another huge detail considering, though, according to Martin,
Speaker 1: is that this one's really hard to shake. Fisher Folk
Speaker 1: are not in the habit of catching these crabs at
Speaker 1: all because they only reach a size of about thirty
Speaker 1: one millimeters or one point two inches. I want to
Speaker 1: come back to that point when I get into another
Speaker 1: criticism in a bit. Yes, yeah, I have some I
Speaker 1: have some additional notes on that as well. But the
Speaker 1: idea here is that they're not really worth the trouble
Speaker 1: with retrieving from the nets, uh, let alone sorting through
Speaker 1: to see which ones resemble a face or not, because
Speaker 1: ultimately you don't care because you you have no culinary
Speaker 1: used for them. I mean, my very brief argument against
Speaker 1: this is how about popcorn shrimp? All right, we'll return
Speaker 1: to this in a minute, the idea of eating the
Speaker 1: samurai crabs? But well, what does what does Richard Dawkins
Speaker 1: have to say? What does Papa Dawkins have to share
Speaker 1: on this topic? Well, Dawkins has an interesting take on it.
Speaker 1: So Dawkins has a section on Hakia Jeponica in his
Speaker 1: two thousand nine book The Greatest Show on Earth, which
Speaker 1: I would recommend. That's a really good That's like after
Speaker 1: he got done talking about religion for a while and
Speaker 1: went back to writing awesome biology books. So when Dawkins
Speaker 1: brings up the theory. He mentions first that he says
Speaker 1: it's quote a lovely theory, too good to easily die.
Speaker 1: But then he goes on to undercut it. So he
Speaker 1: describes coming across an online poll which allows you to
Speaker 1: say which of the following you believe? Now, Robert, you
Speaker 1: think about the options here? First option, the Sagan Huxley
Speaker 1: theory is correct. Of respondents agreed with that. The next is,
Speaker 1: the photos of the crabs resembling Samurai are fakes said
Speaker 1: that that's obviously not true. There are tons of these high.
Speaker 1: I mean, the photos don't look particularly faked. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: thinking they're creations. I don't know. Maybe there maybe there
Speaker 1: was some particular photo that was faked or enhanced. I've
Speaker 1: never heard of this, But no, there are tons of
Speaker 1: these photos and they're they're obviously not fakes. Uh. Next answer,
Speaker 1: the shells have been carved to look that way. Six
Speaker 1: percent of respondents said this. I think that's obviously not true.
Speaker 1: The next one is it's just a coincidence. Thirty eight
Speaker 1: percent said this, So it does look like a face,
Speaker 1: but it's just a coincidence. There was no selection going
Speaker 1: on for that. And then finally, the crabs really are
Speaker 1: drowned Samurai warriors said this. I love how that that scored.
Speaker 1: There was a higher score for that than for carved
Speaker 1: crab shells, which, granted, I don't buy the car I
Speaker 1: don't see the the argument for this being a carving,
Speaker 1: But that makes far more logical sense than the idea
Speaker 1: that these are actual ghosts. I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know which is more likely. No, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I guess you're right. Maybe or maybe maybe people who
Speaker 1: took the pot were just angry at the end of
Speaker 1: it and they're like, I can't believe I wasted my
Speaker 1: time in this. I'll tell you what, I'm going to
Speaker 1: vote for the ghosts. Right, So, Dawkins writes, quote, I'm
Speaker 1: afraid I voted with the kill joys. I think, on
Speaker 1: balance that the resemblance is probably a coincidence. And Dawkins
Speaker 1: cites some reasons for saying this. First of all, he
Speaker 1: a couple that he cites as weaker minor reasons. First
Speaker 1: of all, as we said, Martin pointed out in the
Speaker 1: article we mentioned earlier, the face like ridges and grooves
Speaker 1: on the crabs carapists actually correspond directly to underlying muscle
Speaker 1: attachments Now, this wouldn't mean that they can't have been
Speaker 1: sharpened by artificial selection, but it does show that they're
Speaker 1: not merely meaningless decorations that serve no purpose of their
Speaker 1: own and could be you know, selected for in any direction.
Speaker 1: They're actually just a byproduct of a necessary part of
Speaker 1: the crabs muscle anatomy. Right, And and we also have
Speaker 1: to remember that there is nothing inherently holy or divine
Speaker 1: about the human face. It is just it is just
Speaker 1: This's just what our our frontal century array looks like.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of an overstatement of the obvious,
Speaker 1: but it's easy to miss that. I think that that
Speaker 1: this is not the face of a primordial god who
Speaker 1: then created people in his image. This is just what
Speaker 1: our particular species of primate happens to have on the
Speaker 1: front of its skull. Yeah, you need some light sensitive organs,
Speaker 1: you've got two of them for depth perception, and then
Speaker 1: you need something that can chew up stuff. It's achieving
Speaker 1: one set of goals the back of a crab. This
Speaker 1: crab is achieving another set of goals. And if those
Speaker 1: solutions should look vaguely familiar or remind or remind you
Speaker 1: of the other then Uh, then, yeah, that's that's coincidence. Well,
Speaker 1: I think one of the things you're pointing out here
Speaker 1: is that the things that q to us as faces
Speaker 1: can be incredibly simple and don't have to depart from
Speaker 1: randomness all that much. Like two dots in a line
Speaker 1: queues us as face. Right, Yeah, it's we We create
Speaker 1: faces all the time and we see them in everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this will be a big point we'll come back
Speaker 1: to in just a minute. The next point that Dawkins
Speaker 1: makes is that the Hackia crabs are too small to
Speaker 1: keep right. This is another thing that Martin was sort
Speaker 1: of alluding to. They're too small to keep in. Crab
Speaker 1: catch would simply throw them back, regardless of what designs
Speaker 1: they had on their backs, simply because they don't have
Speaker 1: enough meat. So, first of all, I was thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: is this true. We don't know how big they get.
Speaker 1: But there was a photo that Martin included with his
Speaker 1: article from nineteen three. It's of a male specimen caught
Speaker 1: in Ariaki Bay off Kyushu in Japan in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: and you can definitely see the samurai face. It looks
Speaker 1: like a samurai, But how big is it? The total
Speaker 1: width of the crabs back is at the widest point
Speaker 1: twenty point four millimeters or zero point eight inches. Now,
Speaker 1: that's less wide than you mentioned earlier. It sounds like
Speaker 1: it could get up to a little over an inch
Speaker 1: or about thirty millimeters. Uh, that's that's not a very
Speaker 1: big crab. I was like trying to imagine, like cracking
Speaker 1: the shell to get the meat out of a crab
Speaker 1: that's about an inch wide. Yeah, even a fair sized crab.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're, if you're, you're cracking open enough
Speaker 1: of them, it begins to feel like an awful lot
Speaker 1: of work for the meatia return that you're getting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So would they keep a crab like that? I'm not sure?
Speaker 1: It seems pretty small. Then again, I can't pretend to
Speaker 1: know the fishing practices of historical Japan. Well I I
Speaker 1: can't either, but I do have an illuminating fact on
Speaker 1: just how inedible a small crab can be. Uh. In
Speaker 1: this case, we need to consider the plight of the
Speaker 1: green crab. Take me to the green crab, all right.
Speaker 1: This is a native of the Northeast Atlantic Ocean in
Speaker 1: Baltic Sea, but it's an invasive species everywhere else. Including
Speaker 1: New England. So these guys are roughly ninety millimeters or
Speaker 1: three point five inches in size. And while it's tempting
Speaker 1: to say, well, let's just eat these things, they're the enemy,
Speaker 1: they're invasive, let's just eat them up in the same
Speaker 1: way that we've, for instance, promoted the consumption um of
Speaker 1: lion fish, which are also invasive in many areas. But
Speaker 1: they're simply too small to get any meat off of
Speaker 1: through traditional methods. But since there's a I'm just imagining
Speaker 1: it like a scene in a comedy movie where somebody
Speaker 1: brings you tiny crabs and the little cracker things and
Speaker 1: you're working the nutcracker on something you can barely keep
Speaker 1: in your fingers. Yeah, you you would like have to
Speaker 1: use tweezers or something, right, But of course, since there's
Speaker 1: a reason to wage hungry war on the green crabs,
Speaker 1: some chefs have started turning them into stock. So that's
Speaker 1: that's one potential approach there. And then there's also a
Speaker 1: Canadian startup called can Chine that has experimented with using
Speaker 1: a prototype machine to suck the meat out green crafts
Speaker 1: h now an industrial meat production that's always the best
Speaker 1: thing to learn the details of that industrial is key,
Speaker 1: like we're talking about modern advancements that would be necessary
Speaker 1: like that, this was this is all these details from
Speaker 1: a two thousand fifteen article Green crabs are multiplying? Should
Speaker 1: We Eat Them? By Roger Warner for the Boston Globe.
Speaker 1: But you know, and it's been a few years, but
Speaker 1: it still paints a picture of our ability to consume
Speaker 1: these small crabs still depends on technology that we haven't
Speaker 1: quite yet developed. He points out in another another solution
Speaker 1: here would be to catch the crabs molting, essentially have
Speaker 1: soft shell green crab that you could indeed fry up
Speaker 1: in the same way that you fry up a soft
Speaker 1: sheld crab. This, of course the molten face. You'd have
Speaker 1: to catch them in the multip You have to catch
Speaker 1: them at just the right moment and u as of
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, they were only experiencing a fifty six
Speaker 1: to sixty one percent success rate, and Warner says that
Speaker 1: we would definitely have to improve that success rate before
Speaker 1: this would be a like a feasible source of crab meat.
Speaker 1: You know, the point you made that's actually sticking with
Speaker 1: me the most is just the idea of using them
Speaker 1: for stock I don't know why I didn't even think that,
Speaker 1: like you, you don't necessarily have to be able to
Speaker 1: get the meat out of it for it to provide
Speaker 1: some kind of culinary usage. I mean, people could use
Speaker 1: a in the same way that people use a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of seafood products that are not really themselves edible
Speaker 1: to create stock, like bones and stuff like that. You
Speaker 1: make the stock, you strain them out. You could put
Speaker 1: a bunch of tiny crabs in a pot, make some stock,
Speaker 1: and then strain them out. I assume, like if they
Speaker 1: didn't have some kind of bad taste or or mess
Speaker 1: up the water somehow. Yeah, but still with the green crab,
Speaker 1: it seems that this is a case where certain chefs
Speaker 1: who are trying to solve the problem that are they're saying, hey,
Speaker 1: what can we do with this invasive creature? They have
Speaker 1: turned to making stock out of them, and it's supposedly delicious.
Speaker 1: But I suppose it is not a great reason in
Speaker 1: and of itself, certainly for Japanese fisher folk of yr
Speaker 1: to go out there and catch them. Then again, I've
Speaker 1: got to come back at you. I was wondering how
Speaker 1: small of a crab people would normally eat in Japan. First,
Speaker 1: I actually did try to look up fishing practices of
Speaker 1: medieval Japan, and I couldn't find any details about anything,
Speaker 1: or at least nothing about how small of a crab
Speaker 1: people would keep. But I did find a Japan Times
Speaker 1: Food and Drink article from two thousand two called in
Speaker 1: a pinch, these will do just fine by Rick la point.
Speaker 1: It's about the culinary uses of fresh water crab species
Speaker 1: called sawa ghani meaning marsh crab or river crab, and
Speaker 1: the mokuzu ghani or the mitten crab. Now Sawaghani in
Speaker 1: particular is tiny, barely three centimeters long as an adult,
Speaker 1: and the point rights quote sawaghani ranging color from deep
Speaker 1: purple to blue to bright crimson. They are a treat
Speaker 1: all summer long, usually available from late May. Not often
Speaker 1: seen in local supermarkets, sawa ghani are sold in larger
Speaker 1: retail food markets and at any good fish purveyor. As
Speaker 1: with makuzu ghani, sawaghani must be cooked thoroughly before being served.
Speaker 1: These little crab are eaten whole as a rule, and
Speaker 1: are usually fried briefly, so the crisp shell and all
Speaker 1: the legs may be eaten so so they fry, they
Speaker 1: fry them or braise them, eat them whole, eat the
Speaker 1: whole shell. Oh wow, so they're just they're small enough
Speaker 1: to wear their shell is just not that thick. Or
Speaker 1: it's kind of because normally only hear this with with
Speaker 1: soft shell crab where the shell the new shell has
Speaker 1: not yet developed. And so this article ends with a
Speaker 1: recipe actually for brays sweet, sweet and salty sabaghani with sake, soy, sauce, sugar,
Speaker 1: and chili powder. It sounds kind of good, it does.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm suddenly hungry for crab. Now. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's possible to eat hay ka ghani in the
Speaker 1: same way the samurai crab. Maybe the taste or the
Speaker 1: texture would be different in a way that would make
Speaker 1: this impossible. Maybe the shells too hard or something. I
Speaker 1: looked all over the place for recipes or similar stories
Speaker 1: featuring Hayka gani, and I couldn't find anything. There were
Speaker 1: no results I could find for hayka ghani recipes or
Speaker 1: ways of preparing them culinary traditions. So I guess it's
Speaker 1: possible that this could be for cultural reasons, rather than
Speaker 1: there being some problem with their bodies making them inedible.
Speaker 1: But I found nothing. All right, let's take another break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back we will continue to explore
Speaker 1: the the mystery of the samurai crab. Alright, we're back, Okay,
Speaker 1: so we finally are going to get to what dawkinsites
Speaker 1: as his main reason for rejecting the Huxley Sagan theory.
Speaker 1: Are you ready, Robert Dawkins writes, quote, My main reason
Speaker 1: for skepticism about the Huxley Sagan theory is that the
Speaker 1: human brain is demonstrably eager to see faces in random patterns,
Speaker 1: as we know from scientific evidence. On top of the
Speaker 1: numerous legends about the faces of Jesus or the Virgin
Speaker 1: Mary or Mother Teresa being seen on slices of toast,
Speaker 1: or pizzas, or patches of damp on a wall. This
Speaker 1: eagerness is enhanced if the pattern departs from randomness in
Speaker 1: the specific direction of being symmetrical. All crabs except hermit
Speaker 1: crabs are symmetrical anyway, I reluctantly suspect that the resemblance
Speaker 1: of Hakia to a Samurai warrior is no more than
Speaker 1: an accident, much as I would like to believe that
Speaker 1: it has been enhanced by natural selection. This phenomenon that
Speaker 1: Dawkins is talking about is called paradolia, and it is
Speaker 1: the tendency that humans have to see information in random noise.
Speaker 1: So when you see a face in the side of
Speaker 1: a tree, or you see the shape of an animal
Speaker 1: in the clouds or anything like that, things that are
Speaker 1: actually just random patterns in nature and have no top
Speaker 1: down control or no information encoded to them still read
Speaker 1: as information to us. Yeah. An example of this, too,
Speaker 1: of the animal realm goes back to our recent Animal
Speaker 1: Lives episode where we talked about the death the death
Speaker 1: head moth that said hawk moth, where we just can't
Speaker 1: get over this skull on its back but there's not
Speaker 1: really there's not really there aren't really a lot of
Speaker 1: great arguments as do why it is there. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: para idolia would be the theory that says, okay, there
Speaker 1: is no it's not actually a skull on its back
Speaker 1: hasn't been selected to look like a skull in in
Speaker 1: any way. We're just reading information that's not really there
Speaker 1: because we're primed to look for that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: and obsessed about it. And so dawkins argument here is
Speaker 1: essentially that para idolia is so wrong that the departure
Speaker 1: from randomness need not be especially unlikely before we start
Speaker 1: seeing faces in it. I want to phrase the argument
Speaker 1: another way to try to make it more more specific
Speaker 1: and measurable. Imagine two different scenarios. Scenario one, if these
Speaker 1: crabs were being born with a nearly one photo realistic
Speaker 1: image of Toshiro Mifune's character from yo Jimbo on their backs.
Speaker 1: Try to imagine that. Right, if you pull a crab
Speaker 1: out of the ocean and it has a photo real
Speaker 1: copy of a samurai face on it, that would be
Speaker 1: so unlikely to happen naturally or by coincidence. You would
Speaker 1: have to invoke some kind of special, narrow type of selection, right,
Speaker 1: Like you'd have to say, okay, somebody three D printed
Speaker 1: this crab carapist and put it back in the ocean,
Speaker 1: or there's some kind of crazy genetic engineering of crabs
Speaker 1: going on. It has to be artificial. And the reason
Speaker 1: it has to be artificial is that it is such
Speaker 1: a strong departure from randomness. Right, There's no way a
Speaker 1: photo realistic image like that had happen by chance. Right,
Speaker 1: it must be the work of the gods or the
Speaker 1: humans that they're both big samurai film buffs. So you know,
Speaker 1: another scenario, if a crab just had two dots positioned
Speaker 1: above a curved line, making a crude approximation of like
Speaker 1: a stick figure smiley face, you would not think that
Speaker 1: this needed to be selected for, right, it would be.
Speaker 1: So it's it's so close to random that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: need to invoke any special selection to explain it. Now,
Speaker 1: we're obviously with the Hey Kagani crab, we're somewhere between
Speaker 1: those two scenarios. It's not a photo realistic image of
Speaker 1: famous samurai character, but it's also not just two dots
Speaker 1: with a line or a smiley face. And so the
Speaker 1: question is which of the scenarios is it closer to.
Speaker 1: Is it closer to randomness than we're giving it credit for,
Speaker 1: or is it closer to a real departure from randomness
Speaker 1: than we're giving it credit for. Interesting this, right, of course,
Speaker 1: reminds me of a various conspiracy theories that are out there,
Speaker 1: you know, like it falls into this area where if
Speaker 1: you if you squint, or if you just you turn
Speaker 1: off certain logicum toggles in your brain, then it then
Speaker 1: it can begin to make a perfect kind of sense.
Speaker 1: You know, but there's something about the the ambiguity of
Speaker 1: it that gives it power. Yeah. Now, of course, in
Speaker 1: dawkins argument, we'd have to notice that in both of
Speaker 1: these scenarios I just mentioned, the crude smiley face or
Speaker 1: the photorealistic image, in both of them we see a face.
Speaker 1: So we're simply wired to see faces in random designs.
Speaker 1: And so Dawkins thinks that the crabs carapaces closer to
Speaker 1: scenario to the almost random smiley face than it is
Speaker 1: to Scenario one, the photorealistic face. It's not actually all
Speaker 1: that strong a departure from randomness, and yet we see
Speaker 1: the face anyway, because that's what we do, it's what
Speaker 1: we're wired for. But then again, remember Huxley's claim. Huxley said, specifically,
Speaker 1: the resemblance of Dora Pay to an angry Japanese warrior
Speaker 1: is far too specific and too detailed to be accidental.
Speaker 1: So we've got we've at Dawkins and Huxley at odds here.
Speaker 1: Huxley says it's too specific to be a coincidence. Dawkins
Speaker 1: says it's probably a coincidence, and we're just over interpreting it.
Speaker 1: How do we know who's right here. Well, certainly we can.
Speaker 1: We can go back to some of the other facts
Speaker 1: we've talked about, sort of the time frame, the brief
Speaker 1: period in which samurai art is a thing or even
Speaker 1: human faces or a thing versus the larger time scale
Speaker 1: of crab evolution. But then also we can look to
Speaker 1: this particular to our particular propensity to see faces and
Speaker 1: things like how strong is this effect exactly? So we
Speaker 1: can come at it from both angles. We can look
Speaker 1: at what's the chance of the crab would look like
Speaker 1: that anyway from biological perspective, and we can look at
Speaker 1: what's the chance that humans would see faces and things
Speaker 1: that really don't have hardly a face at all on them.
Speaker 1: And so let's look at the letter. Let's look at
Speaker 1: this idea of paraidolia. How strong and prevalent is the
Speaker 1: paraidolia effect. I want to consult a few studies. There
Speaker 1: are some that don't quite fee it because they've got
Speaker 1: odd methodology, But a lot of the paraidolia studies will
Speaker 1: work like this, like you've got a image on a
Speaker 1: screen that has a that has pure noise on it,
Speaker 1: just like random snow static or randomly generated static by
Speaker 1: some algorithm, and you ask people do you see a
Speaker 1: letter in the encoded in the static or do you
Speaker 1: see a face? And sometimes the people who are doing
Speaker 1: these experiments will prime you. In fact, in all the
Speaker 1: examples I could find, they were priming people saying, if
Speaker 1: you see a face in these pictures, tell us when
Speaker 1: you see a face, or tell us what kind of
Speaker 1: face you see. Like one of the studies had faces
Speaker 1: encoded in the in the static, but the faces didn't
Speaker 1: have any mouths, and they were asking people do you
Speaker 1: see a smiling face or a not smiling face. So
Speaker 1: one story, for example, was by Corey Reeth at All
Speaker 1: in Perception in two thousand eleven called Faces in the
Speaker 1: Mist Illusory Face and Letter Detection. This had hundreds of
Speaker 1: participants and the study looked at, among other things, what
Speaker 1: features of random noise images tended to suggest faces and letters.
Speaker 1: And in this study, after a training period with different
Speaker 1: types of images, participants were asked to look at whether
Speaker 1: images had letters or faces embedded in them. And there
Speaker 1: were three experiments with pure noise images and participants thought
Speaker 1: that there were letters embedded in thirty six percent of
Speaker 1: the images when they were suggested that was a possibility
Speaker 1: and participants thought there were faces embedded in between thirty
Speaker 1: two and thirty six percent of pure noise images, depending
Speaker 1: on whether or not there was an oval in the
Speaker 1: middle of the image bounding where the face was supposed
Speaker 1: to appear. So it looks like there you're showing people
Speaker 1: pure noise. There's nothing encoded in it, and at least
Speaker 1: thirty two percent of the time if there's a suggestion
Speaker 1: that there could be a face, people think they see
Speaker 1: a face. Another study from fourteen by jianng Liu at
Speaker 1: All called Seeing Jesus and Toast Neural and Behavioral Correlates
Speaker 1: of Face paara idolia. The purpose of the study is
Speaker 1: to quote explore face specific behavioral and neural responses during
Speaker 1: illusory face processing. In other words, they were trying to see, Okay,
Speaker 1: we know people sometimes see faces that aren't there. What's
Speaker 1: happening in their brains when they see faces that aren't there?
Speaker 1: And so the participants were twenty healthy Chinese adults and
Speaker 1: they were showing images composed of pure noise like random
Speaker 1: gray scale pattern ngs. The researchers led them to believe
Speaker 1: that fifty percent of the pure noise images they were
Speaker 1: seeing contained either images of letters or of faces, and
Speaker 1: under these conditions, looking at pure randomness but being told
Speaker 1: it might contain a face, participants said they saw letters
Speaker 1: in thirty eight percent of the images and faces in
Speaker 1: thirty four percent of the images. So that's really close
Speaker 1: to the figures in the last study, right, It's like
Speaker 1: thirty something percent of the time if you're told a
Speaker 1: face might be there and there's nothing there, you will
Speaker 1: see a face anyway. There's a lot of interesting stuff
Speaker 1: explored in the research apart from just whether we detect
Speaker 1: faces and randomness, and I think it might be worth
Speaker 1: coming back to do a whole episode on the neuroscience
Speaker 1: of paraidolia in the future. In the past, I've thought
Speaker 1: about this in terms of, say, staring into a dark wood,
Speaker 1: you know, where the one thing you don't want to
Speaker 1: see is a creepy witch face or troll face staring
Speaker 1: out at you from the dark. What if you do
Speaker 1: want to see that, well, then my advice is to
Speaker 1: keep staring, because I'll often have that effect where I'm
Speaker 1: staring into the into the woods. I mean not often.
Speaker 1: I don't go out every night and staring into the woods,
Speaker 1: but there are times when I've I've done that where
Speaker 1: I'm staring into the woods sort of checking it out,
Speaker 1: and I'll think, what if I see a witch face,
Speaker 1: and then I'll I'll know intrinsically, if I keep looking,
Speaker 1: I'm going to see something that I could interpret as
Speaker 1: a witch face, and it's going to spiral out of control.
Speaker 1: I need to stop staring into the into the darkness
Speaker 1: of the woods. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. There's an interesting theory
Speaker 1: that a lot of these Paraidolia studies are based on,
Speaker 1: and it's the idea of studying a black box through
Speaker 1: random noise, using noise to study what's inside a black box.
Speaker 1: So if there's some like a brain or a computer
Speaker 1: that we don't understand the programming of and you want
Speaker 1: to understand how it works, you can't like get inside
Speaker 1: it and cut it up and understand how it works.
Speaker 1: But what you could do is that you can stimulate
Speaker 1: it with nothing and see what it generates on its own,
Speaker 1: to sort of like understand what the base level algorithm generating,
Speaker 1: what the base level algorithms are, what they generate when
Speaker 1: there's no real input. So one example of using of
Speaker 1: studying the human mind like this would be the sensory
Speaker 1: deprivation tank you put a human in a sensory deprivation
Speaker 1: tank to see where the mind goes when there's no
Speaker 1: input to base output on. Because we have evolved to
Speaker 1: thrive in a world of of of stimuli, of changing stimuli,
Speaker 1: and if you take that out of the equation, then
Speaker 1: all of our sensory feelers are just pawing around it nothing,
Speaker 1: but they're going to they can still interpret a form
Speaker 1: in the nothing. Yeah, but that's an interesting way of
Speaker 1: learning about the nature of the mind. Right when you
Speaker 1: take away all stimuli, you start to learn, well, what's
Speaker 1: going on at the base level in my mind? What?
Speaker 1: What it? What will it churn up when there's nothing
Speaker 1: coming in? And so a similar thing would be showing
Speaker 1: somebody randomness. Now, these studies aren't exactly pure randomness. They're
Speaker 1: not totally black boxes because they're always priming the participants.
Speaker 1: They're always saying, like, you might see a face, tell
Speaker 1: me if you see a face in this image, And
Speaker 1: under those conditions, it looks like when you show people
Speaker 1: random noise that has no information in it and tell
Speaker 1: them there might be a face, thirty something percent of
Speaker 1: the time people tend to see a face that sounds
Speaker 1: like paradolia is naturally pretty strong under people even who
Speaker 1: are not like prone to hallucinations or anything. So I
Speaker 1: think that's probably a point in in the favor of
Speaker 1: dawkins explanation. Yeah, I mean, if you think about it
Speaker 1: in terms of human evolution and what and what is
Speaker 1: valuable environmental information, Uh, you know, a few things are
Speaker 1: more important than the presence of another organism, because it
Speaker 1: could be a prey organism, it could be a predator
Speaker 1: organ as that it could be a member of your
Speaker 1: own species, which brings with it a number of different
Speaker 1: possibilities that tie into your survival, right, especially if it's
Speaker 1: a member of your own species and you are a
Speaker 1: social animal like we are. Like, I'm very convinced by
Speaker 1: the idea that social behavior and managing social relationships is
Speaker 1: one of the primary factors that shaped the evolution of
Speaker 1: the anatomically modern human brain. Right, And I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: referred to the human face as a sensory array, and
Speaker 1: part of that goes beyond just because just beyond the
Speaker 1: fact that it is where our sense organs are our
Speaker 1: group together, we also use facial expressions and micro expressions
Speaker 1: to communicate with one another. It's and and we depend
Speaker 1: on it far more than than other primates that have, say,
Speaker 1: more uniform facial features. Our faces are have evolved to
Speaker 1: to help convey meaning to other members of our species, yes, totally.
Speaker 1: But also our brains have evolved to be on hyper
Speaker 1: for faces. So it's not I mean, para idolia appears
Speaker 1: to be strong for all kinds of things, but faces
Speaker 1: are one of these things that were especially looking for
Speaker 1: their dedicated pathways and structures within the brain that are
Speaker 1: on alert to see a face and to start interpreting
Speaker 1: what's up with the face when you see it? Yes,
Speaker 1: and then what kind of intent is behind it? So
Speaker 1: it's it's not that irrational really to imagine plucking a
Speaker 1: crab out of the sea, looking at it and saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: this crab has a face on its back, and I
Speaker 1: think it's angry at me. Yea. Now, one last point
Speaker 1: I want to talk about against the artificial selection hypothesis
Speaker 1: that I thought it was very interesting and very straightforward
Speaker 1: and simple. I came across this one in a short
Speaker 1: two thousand ten blog post by an invertebrate biologist named
Speaker 1: Michael Bach, and we've been talking about the Haika Gani
Speaker 1: crab specifically, but the Haika Ghani crab is a member
Speaker 1: of a whole family of crabs called Diripida. We might
Speaker 1: we might have mentioned Diripida earlier, but we need to
Speaker 1: remember they're all kinds of related crabs. And what Boch
Speaker 1: pointed out is variety of crabs from the diripid A
Speaker 1: family all have human looking faces on their backs, and
Speaker 1: lots of these crabs don't even exist in human fisheries,
Speaker 1: so there's no tradition of humans catching them and potentially
Speaker 1: keeping or releasing them based on the designs on their backs, right,
Speaker 1: there's no way they could have been shaped by artificial selection,
Speaker 1: and yet they look like faces anyway. So to test
Speaker 1: this out for myself, I wanted to look up other
Speaker 1: crabs in the diripid A family. It is. It does
Speaker 1: appear to be a pretty obscure crab family. It's not
Speaker 1: stuff that has you know, like really storied species lots
Speaker 1: of articles about them. But I did discover, to my delight,
Speaker 1: there is an Internet crab database. Thank the Gods for
Speaker 1: such a thing. Internet crab database, and some of the
Speaker 1: entries have images with them. So I wanted before we
Speaker 1: wrap up, to look at a little more para Idoli
Speaker 1: a bait from Family diripid A. So first I've included
Speaker 1: a picture for us to look at of do rip
Speaker 1: A Quadridon's what does this look like? This one looks
Speaker 1: kind of Darth Maul or like a giraffe. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks like Darth Maul. It also kind of looks like
Speaker 1: a spider face. Do you see that? Yeah? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's hard not to look at a crab and
Speaker 1: get a certain certain arachnid feel for them. Right, well,
Speaker 1: we're looking at a crab top down, but it looks
Speaker 1: sort of like she lab faced on. Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1: How about dripoides fashiono. What does this look like? All right, well,
Speaker 1: this one definitely has kind of a samurai mask will
Speaker 1: look to it. But also it reminded me a lot
Speaker 1: of the character Ponda Baba from Star Wars, walrus looking
Speaker 1: character in the Cantina. Oh yeah, the bug eyes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he doesn't like you, that guy, that one. That's what
Speaker 1: I see. I see like a stylised samurai version of
Speaker 1: that character. In this crab, I see straight up predator mask. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of this reminds me of that
Speaker 1: that that common scenario where you're looking up at the
Speaker 1: clouds with a friend, and one person sees this animal
Speaker 1: or this face or this object, and then you see
Speaker 1: another one. And when you when you present the data
Speaker 1: to someone, they're like, oh, yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 1: I can see a unicorn. I was seeing uh, I
Speaker 1: was seeing a whale, but now I can see the unicorn.
Speaker 1: And now I can't unsee the unicorn. So I've primed
Speaker 1: you for predators. Now yeah, okay, Now we got to
Speaker 1: look at a couple of pictures of Medora pe lenata.
Speaker 1: What do you see here, Robert? This one reminds me
Speaker 1: of some of the creatures in the movie The Diiver.
Speaker 1: Did you ever see that? No, I've never seen that.
Speaker 1: Which so we've got two pictures. One it's sort of
Speaker 1: standing up and it's it looks like a face to me,
Speaker 1: but it's got its swimming legs hanging off the back
Speaker 1: and they're sort of hairy looking, so it actually looks
Speaker 1: like a person with like a foo man chew mustache.
Speaker 1: Oh see, well, when I looked at this picture, I
Speaker 1: saw it looked like it's flipping. It's giving the bird
Speaker 1: like double birds. Oh, it's got the fingers coming up
Speaker 1: in the air. So yeah, it's somebody with a big,
Speaker 1: long food man chew mustache, but it's also flipping the
Speaker 1: birds up in the air. See. I mainly saw a
Speaker 1: stone called Steve Auston when I looked at it because
Speaker 1: of the fingers. But then the next one that you shared,
Speaker 1: this one, the one that reminds me of the guy
Speaker 1: every one, it's more of a picture of its face.
Speaker 1: Bringing it all back home to me. That looks like
Speaker 1: the villain the Giant Crab in Attack of the Crab
Speaker 1: Monsters because it has these kind of sad, droopy human eyes.
Speaker 1: It does look like that. Yeah, it reminds me a
Speaker 1: lot of of this movie that has come up before. Um,
Speaker 1: I think on the podcast, but definitely on the Trailer
Speaker 1: Talk video series that we did for a while. Well. Anyway,
Speaker 1: as as Box points out in his blog post, all
Speaker 1: these crabs to some extent look like human faces, not
Speaker 1: all of them could have been shaped by fisher folk.
Speaker 1: So while I would not rule out the possibility that
Speaker 1: certain species of crabs with you know, symmetry on their
Speaker 1: backs and things that look kind of like faces could
Speaker 1: have been honed by artificial selection, it's it's possible that
Speaker 1: fishing practices and throwing things back could have maybe sharpened
Speaker 1: the features. I wouldn't use that to explain the emergence
Speaker 1: of the features themselves, right, Yeah, that's that's pretty much
Speaker 1: my read on it too. Like the situa wation that
Speaker 1: that's Sagan especially is laying out here is not at
Speaker 1: all unbelievable or or or unscientific. It's just not necessary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the in the the evidence against it seems a
Speaker 1: little too strong. Yeah, And it's not necessary. And if
Speaker 1: it's not necessary in science, that means it doesn't pass
Speaker 1: the test of parsimony. Right. It's it's you don't need
Speaker 1: to invoke explanations that are not required. Right. It's like
Speaker 1: again involving an alien species visiting the earth and and
Speaker 1: doodling faces on the backs of the craft. Right, It's
Speaker 1: more plausible than that, but it's still just as unnecessary.
Speaker 1: I now, I also need to point out again though,
Speaker 1: that artificial selection is definitely a thing. We already discussed
Speaker 1: the selective breeding of various organisms for human purposes, everything
Speaker 1: from horses and cattle to crops to domestic dog breeds.
Speaker 1: There's also some evidence for the artificial selection of tustless
Speaker 1: elephants due to human poaching. Yeah, Oh, artificial selection is
Speaker 1: absolutely something that happens all the time. And so that
Speaker 1: feeds into another thing I want to say, which is
Speaker 1: that I feel really disappointed to lose this theory. It
Speaker 1: feels sad, it's such it's a wonderful, beautiful explanation of
Speaker 1: an actual scientific reality. Yeah, and I know we're not alone.
Speaker 1: Like Dawkins commented that the Huxley slash Sagan story was
Speaker 1: quote lovely, and he hated that he had to disagree
Speaker 1: with it. And I see other writers and scientists around
Speaker 1: the web expressing similar feelings. They're like, it's probably not correct,
Speaker 1: but I hate to say that. I really want it
Speaker 1: to be true. Why do we hate to lose this
Speaker 1: explanatory story about artificial selection? Like it's not necessary to
Speaker 1: provide an example of anything. We have a million examples
Speaker 1: of artificial selection without it, So why can't we bear
Speaker 1: to let it go? Because I think I think it's that,
Speaker 1: First of all, it's the accidental aspect of it, the
Speaker 1: idea that we're just we're doing it. We're not even
Speaker 1: realizing we're doing it, that we're we're behaving as mad gods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: without realizing it. It's artificial selection working without the knowledge
Speaker 1: of the breeders, Like all of the magic of intention
Speaker 1: is removed. And this actually does called call into question
Speaker 1: the very concept of artificial selection. Right, Why do we
Speaker 1: have a different category for changes that we make to
Speaker 1: organisms on purpose over time versus changes that happen to organisms,
Speaker 1: uh due to pressures from different organisms over time. Like
Speaker 1: so if a dog or if a if a dog
Speaker 1: ancestor and you know, some kind of ancestral wolf is
Speaker 1: shaped by the evolution of a different species. So one
Speaker 1: of its prey animals or some animal that could hurt
Speaker 1: it ends up shaping the evolution of this candid over time.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't call that artificial, you'd call it natural. But
Speaker 1: if another organism, that is a relatively smooth bipedal primate
Speaker 1: shapes the evolution of that dog for some reason, that's
Speaker 1: the one exception we make, and we call that artificial
Speaker 1: selection instead of natural. Maybe it's all natural selection. We
Speaker 1: are animals too, and then the selection ussures that we
Speaker 1: exert on the natural world are an outgrowth of our
Speaker 1: genotype and our phenotype. Well, you know, there's there's one
Speaker 1: example from the natural world especially that we should consider
Speaker 1: coming back to and that is, uh, that of leaf
Speaker 1: cutter ants. You have a creature here with essentially an
Speaker 1: agricultural product. Yeah, absolutely so is the agricultural product that
Speaker 1: is farmed by the ant an example of artificial selection?
Speaker 1: I don't think so, Right, You'd still say that that's natural.
Speaker 1: So if that's natural, why aren't all the things that
Speaker 1: we breed, whether intentionally or unintentionally, natural as well? Well?
Speaker 1: I think on one level it's there's the there's the
Speaker 1: fact that humans can do things to an extreme level
Speaker 1: that other species cannot do. You know, we can. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if i'd agree with you there, because
Speaker 1: the I mean, other species can shape the animals and
Speaker 1: the organisms they interact with in really extreme and strange ways. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean, certainly organism other organisms can cause other
Speaker 1: organisms to go extinct. They can, they can and do
Speaker 1: change their natural habitat. But can you think I mean,
Speaker 1: but but the sheer scope of human change, I mean,
Speaker 1: the sheer amount of change that we have brought about
Speaker 1: in the world during our brief time on this on
Speaker 1: this Earth, we probably shape the evolution of other organisms,
Speaker 1: maybe more than does any other organism on Earth outside
Speaker 1: of microbes. And then there's also the added level that
Speaker 1: we do so we we we achieve this change via
Speaker 1: our conscious understanding of the world. I guess consciousness is
Speaker 1: what's key here. And in that sense, then if the
Speaker 1: Sagan Huxley theory were correct, then then it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: artificial selection, would it, because they weren't doing it on purpose. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's a strong argument. I guess that probably
Speaker 1: does it for today. But I'm disappointed we don't get
Speaker 1: to spend another twenty minutes talking about attack of the
Speaker 1: crab monsters. Well, this is why we have to bring
Speaker 1: at trailer talk at least in an audio form, so
Speaker 1: that we will have space for our movie references to breathe.
Speaker 1: I can't wait, all right, So hey, in the meantime,
Speaker 1: you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to
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