Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: our crab Bag twenty twenty six series. This is a
Speaker 3: kind of chef salad of all things crab.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: We were just out for a week in between when
Speaker 3: we recorded the last couple of crab episodes, and this
Speaker 3: one's a rob Did anything krabby happen to you in
Speaker 3: the past week.
Speaker 2: Well, let's see. Put me on the spot here. I
Speaker 2: spent my time in Arizona, so I didn't really see
Speaker 2: any actual crabs. But I did go to the Musical
Speaker 2: Instrument Museum in Phoenix, and I did see some musical
Speaker 2: instruments that were shaped like crabs, which makes sense for
Speaker 2: a number of reasons. The big one that we're going
Speaker 2: to keep coming back to in this series. It's just
Speaker 2: that crabs are fascinating, just their basic body shape, their movements.
Speaker 2: We can't get enough of them, and we want to
Speaker 2: reproduce their bodies in our art and in our tools.
Speaker 3: This is interesting. I didn't know this would connect to
Speaker 3: a major theme of today's episode, which is ye crab
Speaker 3: inspired technology. So in the previous two episodes of this
Speaker 3: series we talked about, first the sixteenth century legend of
Speaker 3: the miracle crab, associated with the Catholic missionary figure Saint
Speaker 3: Francis Xavier. This was a crab said to have carried
Speaker 3: a lost crucifix out out of the ocean, aloft in
Speaker 3: its claws and back to its original owner, the Saint
Speaker 3: Francis Xavior I just mentioned. We talked a bit about
Speaker 3: the loose connection between that story and a real species
Speaker 3: known as the crucifix crab, getting a bit into the
Speaker 3: question of it's what this crab's cross shaped markings are
Speaker 3: probably four biologically speaking. This led in the second episode
Speaker 3: we did into a broader discussion of object carrying behavior
Speaker 3: in crabs, something that actually does happen quite a bit
Speaker 3: in nature. Different forms of object carrying in different crab lineages,
Speaker 3: none of them really matched what we find in the
Speaker 3: miracle story. The crabs that carry things usually do so
Speaker 3: on their backs or with their back legs, rather than
Speaker 3: in their primary clause. The main exception to this generalization
Speaker 3: is the boxer crab, which does carry things in its
Speaker 3: main clause, but those things tend to be living anemonies,
Speaker 3: which they use for feeding in defense, not inanimate objects.
Speaker 3: We also talked about a type of burrowing crab lineage
Speaker 3: known as the frog crabs. This includes the species Ranina ranina,
Speaker 3: and these crabs have gone through an unusual evolutionary pattern
Speaker 3: you might call decarsonization or uncrabification, becoming less like their
Speaker 3: crab cousins and a bit more like their lobster shaped ands,
Speaker 3: with a front to back elongated body. They don't regain
Speaker 3: the long, muscular lobster swimming tail, but they do have
Speaker 3: a longer body and a tendency to move forward and
Speaker 3: backward rather than side to side and rob correct me
Speaker 3: if I'm wrong. I think the idea was this is
Speaker 3: this elongation front to back of the body is probably
Speaker 3: related to the frog crabs tendency to be backwards burrowing species.
Speaker 2: That is the reason for it. Yeah. Yeah, It just
Speaker 2: goes to show once more, with evolution the card is
Speaker 2: always subject to change.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah. And there really is no forward or
Speaker 3: backward in evolution. There's just all different directions. It's like space,
Speaker 3: there's no upper down. We also talked briefly about some
Speaker 3: older reports of a very interesting crab shaped beast in
Speaker 3: the sorcery traditions of the London people of Zambia. This
Speaker 3: creature is known as the Nkala, which was described as
Speaker 3: being a four foot wide crab with two heads, one
Speaker 3: head front and one head back and some characteristics of
Speaker 3: a hippopotamus. I think at least one of the heads
Speaker 3: is said to be like that of a hippopotamus, and
Speaker 3: this creature was said to attack a person by eating
Speaker 3: their shadow. Very interesting. We also talked a bit about
Speaker 3: the phenomenon of seeing faces in crab bodies, and of
Speaker 3: course we talked about crab inspired wrestling acts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very briefly, very briefly.
Speaker 3: And so we're back today to talk crabs once again.
Speaker 3: So Rob, if you don't mind, I'm going to kick
Speaker 3: things off today by talking about a weird connection between
Speaker 3: a type of crab, not necessarily a true crab, not
Speaker 3: a bracky urine crab, but a crab by common convention
Speaker 3: as an idea for biomimicry, a sort of steampunk crab machine.
Speaker 2: Crab war machines. Right. I think this will be exciting
Speaker 2: for a lot of our listeners because in some areas
Speaker 2: areas of science fiction particularly sci fi warfare such as
Speaker 2: your Warhammer forty thousands. You end up you end up
Speaker 2: with a lot of crab based designs for big or
Speaker 2: small stalking machines or some sort of mechs that end
Speaker 2: up looking like crabs, because again, we just were so
Speaker 2: fascinated with a design, and when we start imagining fantastic
Speaker 2: machines of war, we think of the crab because it
Speaker 2: looks like a little machine of war to optize.
Speaker 3: It looks dangerous, it looks like it means business, and
Speaker 3: it's yeah, something that maybe one should be afraid of.
Speaker 3: Something about arthropods generally, and I would say especially crabs,
Speaker 3: especially you know, decapod crustaceans. It has more of a
Speaker 3: kind of mechanical joint and piston kind of feeling about
Speaker 3: it than say mammals or reptiles or birds do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the exoskeleton lends itself well to comparisons to
Speaker 2: our armor technology, to our tool technology, and then much
Speaker 2: later on to our automatons in our robots. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, so we're gonna let slip the crabs of war
Speaker 3: and go all the way back to the year eighteen
Speaker 3: sixty four and talk about an obscure crab inspired proposal
Speaker 3: for this great mechanism of belligerents called the King Crab Warship.
Speaker 3: So the text that I want to talk about is
Speaker 3: a letter appearing in the January thirtieth, eighteen sixty four
Speaker 3: edition of thus Scientific Americans back when it had the
Speaker 3: in the Scientific American. This is the ancestor to the
Speaker 3: publication still called Scientific American today, though in the nineteenth
Speaker 3: century it was a somewhat different publication. It was a
Speaker 3: weekly newspaper at the time that was focused less on
Speaker 3: pure science and more on technology, with a lot of
Speaker 3: news about recent patents and design improvements for machines.
Speaker 2: Some more industry centric.
Speaker 3: I guess yeah. And so this letter in Scientific American
Speaker 3: comes from a correspondent called c DK, known by initials
Speaker 3: CDKA in Frankfort, Pennsylvania. CDK begins this letter with a
Speaker 3: long wind up about how all of the best architectural
Speaker 3: and mechanical designs are actually prefigured by objects in the
Speaker 3: natural world, writing quote, perfection is only to be found
Speaker 3: amongst the numerous specimens of the handiwork of the Great Creator,
Speaker 3: which he has placed so lavishly around us for our
Speaker 3: use and instruction, and which we should make the proper
Speaker 3: application of the lessons which are continually placed before us.
Speaker 2: Oh so like a religious biomimicry.
Speaker 3: Okay, very much the tone of this letter, and also
Speaker 3: something that we'll get more into this in a few minutes,
Speaker 3: but kind of seem to be in the air at
Speaker 3: the time. Other examples given by the author include the
Speaker 3: architectural principle of the arch and how CDK claims this
Speaker 3: can be observed in the bones of the human skeleton.
Speaker 3: Also the roots of the oak tree, which CDK says
Speaker 3: show us the best way to lay the foundations of
Speaker 3: lighthouses and towers. And then also fossil shells, which show
Speaker 3: us how to build impenetrable fortifications. A CDK says, quote,
Speaker 3: and now, when the public mind and the minds of
Speaker 3: inventors are run wild over the changed system of warfare
Speaker 3: inaugurated with heavy guns and shot proof vessels, let us
Speaker 3: see what nature will do for us. She furnishes a
Speaker 3: model of an engine of war, which, if made of
Speaker 3: suitable size, could destroy any vessel now afloat, in spite
Speaker 3: of iron plates, big guns, and almost anything else. I
Speaker 3: allude to the species of crab l Cyclops, the king
Speaker 3: crab or horse hoof found on the coast of New Jersey.
Speaker 3: Now I look this up to make sure I was
Speaker 3: getting right what kind of animal he is talking about here.
Speaker 3: I think this has to be a reference to the
Speaker 3: Atlantic horseshoe crab, which is now known not as l
Speaker 3: cyclops but by the scientific name Lemulus polyphemus. It was
Speaker 3: previously known as Lemulus cyclops in some by some people
Speaker 3: in the past. Of course, Polyphemus is the name of
Speaker 3: the famous Cyclops from Greek mythology, appearing in the Odyssey.
Speaker 3: So this is the proposal make a king crab warship
Speaker 3: inspired by the flawless natural design of the Atlantic horseshoe crab.
Speaker 3: So before we go on with the letter and the proposal,
Speaker 3: I think maybe we should do a quick segment on
Speaker 3: the horseshoe crab, or as CDK calls it, the horse hoof.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the horseshoe crab. To be clear, it's certainly
Speaker 2: fair game for this podcast series that we're calling it
Speaker 2: a crab. But we do have to stress again the
Speaker 2: horseshoe crabs they're not true crabs. They're not even crustaceans.
Speaker 2: Their arthropod calliserates more closely related to iraqnts, but they're
Speaker 2: famously weird. If you've had the chance to see one
Speaker 2: in the wild, you know how bizarre they are, or
Speaker 2: even if you've just seen the shell, it's phenomenal.
Speaker 3: We've done whole episodes on them in the past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think we've talked about their biomedical applications before,
Speaker 2: which we'll allude to in passing here. But yeah, they're
Speaker 2: also pretty famous because they're notable living fossils, having existed
Speaker 2: in the world largely unchanged for at least two hundred
Speaker 2: million years and existed for something like four hundred and
Speaker 2: forty five million years. I've also seen three hundred million
Speaker 2: years thrown out there. Only four living species remain today
Speaker 2: any way you slice it. Yeah, they've been around for
Speaker 2: hundreds of millions of years, and they are like a
Speaker 2: snapshot of the past.
Speaker 3: My general understanding is that they're thought to go back
Speaker 3: to the Ordovisian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, horseshoe crabs have a pretty iconic appearance. They
Speaker 2: have this broad front shell, this cephalo thorax shell, so
Speaker 2: it's like the head thorax commind shell with wide spaced eyes.
Speaker 2: You see them on either side little dimples, and it
Speaker 2: ends up kind of giving you the look and feel
Speaker 2: of a helm. You know, we can't help but to
Speaker 2: compare it to our technology. This portion tapers back to
Speaker 2: the posterior portion of the shell and then to a
Speaker 2: spike like tail underneath the protection of their exoskeleton. The
Speaker 2: exoskeleton is going to be sand colored in juveniles and
Speaker 2: then this signature brownish green and most adults. Underneath this
Speaker 2: shell they boast five pairs of jointed legs. And then
Speaker 2: they spend most of their time rooting around through the
Speaker 2: sediment for worms and moths. And they can survive outside
Speaker 2: of the water for extended periods of time, even if
Speaker 2: their gills stay moist, and they can swim upside down
Speaker 2: in the water really cool. They do have to crawl
Speaker 2: up on the sandy beaches to mate and to lay eggs,
Speaker 2: and this is where most people are going to encounter.
Speaker 3: Them, and it makes sense, especially if we're talking about
Speaker 3: the Atlantic horseshoe crab that CDK says, you will have
Speaker 3: encountered these creatures on the shores of New Jersey.
Speaker 2: That's right. We'll get back to their range in just
Speaker 2: a second. But but yeah, that is, that is, that
Speaker 2: is where you will find them. My wife's grandmother had
Speaker 2: a story about encountering horseshoe crebs on the beaches of
Speaker 2: the Great Outer Banks where according to this tale, and
Speaker 2: I don't know to what extent this might have been
Speaker 2: embellished a little bit over the years, as family stories
Speaker 2: tend to, but she came across these horseshoe crabs on
Speaker 2: the beach and she thought that they were stuck, that
Speaker 2: they'd been like washed up, and so she tried to
Speaker 2: help them out by throwing them all back in the water,
Speaker 2: and then found out much later on that she'd unwittingly
Speaker 2: disturbed their mating loops. Yep, but that spike like tail
Speaker 2: I think is definitely part. Again, the front portion of
Speaker 2: the horseshoe crab looks like an armored helm, and then
Speaker 2: we have this what looks like a vicious looking spike
Speaker 2: in the back. Yeah, this is the the telson, and
Speaker 2: the telson takes different forms in different arthropods. If you've
Speaker 2: ever shelled shrimp before, you've encountered a much shorter telson
Speaker 2: spike amid the fantails. The stinger of a scorpion is
Speaker 2: technically a telson. Now, the horseshoe crab does have a
Speaker 2: fearsome looking telson, but this is not a weapon. It
Speaker 2: is not something it uses to stab self defensively at
Speaker 2: things messing with it and so forth. It is most
Speaker 2: The most observable function of this for humans is that
Speaker 2: it is a self riding tool. If they are flipped
Speaker 2: on their backs on the beach, you know, exposing their
Speaker 2: unprotected side, they can use it to flip back over
Speaker 2: the way they want to be. They will get flipped
Speaker 2: over in the surf as they're coming out or going
Speaker 2: back in. It is also useful as a rudder for
Speaker 2: swimming when in the water. And since the telson, like
Speaker 2: other parts of their bodies, have photoreceptors on them, it
Speaker 2: also wouldn't be out of line to think of this
Speaker 2: as a sensory appendage.
Speaker 3: Okay, but yeah, that is interesting because CDK, I think
Speaker 3: is going to allude to the idea that the telson
Speaker 3: is a weapon. I don't know we can It's kind
Speaker 3: of hard to tell exactly what he's saying in some
Speaker 3: parts of this, but I think he thinks it might
Speaker 3: be a weapon. But yeah, interesting to think that it is.
Speaker 3: Actually it is a lever primarily for riding the body,
Speaker 3: and I think also maybe used for steering when swimming
Speaker 3: in the water.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like a rudder for swimming
Speaker 2: in the water. Yeah. Now, one thing that it's coming
Speaker 2: back to the range. It is interesting to note that
Speaker 2: the four species of horseshoe crabs in the world today,
Speaker 2: they do enjoy a wide range, but that range does
Speaker 2: not include the Mediterranean. It's found along the North American
Speaker 2: Atlantic coast and in Asia. So if you look at
Speaker 2: ancient ridings, you won't find anything about them. And say,
Speaker 2: plenty of the elder or related European and Mediterranean sources
Speaker 2: out of antiquity Plenty, for instance, does discuss a horse
Speaker 2: crab that is said to be quite fast, as fast
Speaker 2: as a horse, But this is not a horseshoe crab.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes people assume that it's the horseshoe crab,
Speaker 2: but it's not. Obviously, horseshoe crabs were known to the
Speaker 2: peoples of ancient Asia and the Americas, and they certainly
Speaker 2: did observe them and had their own names for them.
Speaker 2: So the Algonquin people of North America knew them as sikinox.
Speaker 2: The Japanese referred to them as kabutagani or helmet crabs.
Speaker 2: Coming back to that, you know, and there seemed to
Speaker 2: be some Chinese traditions linking the horseshoe crabs or the
Speaker 2: I think they're called the whole to marital fidelity, apparently
Speaker 2: based on sightings of them mating, if I'm to understanding correctly,
Speaker 2: there's this idea that it's like you would always see
Speaker 2: them together. They're two together, and they're together always, which
Speaker 2: of course isn't actually the case, but you know, it's
Speaker 2: based on observations that people had, and therefore it becomes
Speaker 2: the symbol of sticking together for the long term.
Speaker 3: Like nice to imagine that you're seeing the same ones
Speaker 3: together over and over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, and it's you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: essentially a made up story for us, but you know,
Speaker 2: it's based on observations of the horseshoe crab. I also
Speaker 2: found it kind of interesting to note that despite the
Speaker 2: horseshoe crab being quite important in modern medicine for biomedical testing,
Speaker 2: their blood contains an important clotting agent that reactsively to biotoxins.
Speaker 2: I think this is something we talked about in an
Speaker 2: old episode. But despite this, they apparently have little to
Speaker 2: no presence in traditional Chinese medicine, So I found that
Speaker 2: kind of kind of interesting. But yeah, coming back to
Speaker 2: their design, you can if you look up pictures of
Speaker 2: the horseshoe crab, they do look like weird little biotanks.
Speaker 2: So I think it makes sense that someone might look
Speaker 2: to nature and say, okay, who has the best battle armor?
Speaker 2: What is the best sort of armored shell that could
Speaker 2: exist over some sort of mechanism, And it makes sense
Speaker 2: that you might consider the horseshoe crab an option.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think this highlights something interesting, which is
Speaker 3: that biomimicry is a real principle in engineering and design,
Speaker 3: but there's kind of sophisticated biomemicry and then superficial biomemicry.
Speaker 3: And there is a tendency often to just go by
Speaker 3: what like, something that looks fearsome would therefore be a
Speaker 3: good war machine. But that's not always the case, because
Speaker 3: something that is useful, say at a certain scale with
Speaker 3: the chemistry and you know, the ecology of a small
Speaker 3: animal might be very effective at that scale for that animal,
Speaker 3: but does not scale up or you know, doesn't work
Speaker 3: with the kinds of materials we would use to make
Speaker 3: a warship or you know, or conflicts with ways that
Speaker 3: we would need to control a vehicle or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another area to highlight would be flight, where a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, there are a lot of things
Speaker 2: to learn about flight from looking at evolved biological methods
Speaker 2: of flight in different animals, but there are also a
Speaker 2: lot of just rough missteps and like, well, okay, these
Speaker 2: look like wings, these feel like wings. Let's have a
Speaker 2: run off the top of this barn and see.
Speaker 3: Or actually, I think a great comparison here is a
Speaker 3: lot of inventors assuming that technological flight would involve the
Speaker 3: flapping of wings like we see in basic basically every
Speaker 3: flying organism in birds and insects and stuff. But then
Speaker 3: we learned that actually flapping is not a very efficient
Speaker 3: way to you know, degenerate thrust and to for a
Speaker 3: machine to fly. It's better to have other methods of
Speaker 3: generating forward thrust and having fixed wings.
Speaker 2: Yeah. A lot of the best examples of biomimicry that
Speaker 2: we've discussed on the show before they come down to
Speaker 2: subtle interactions, things that are happening at like a material level,
Speaker 2: or things that are happening, you know, specific aerodynamic problems
Speaker 2: that occur and so forth, as opposed to like bigger
Speaker 2: situations like all right, if you're if you're gonna be
Speaker 2: tough in the animal world, let's translate that into being
Speaker 2: tough on the battle.
Speaker 3: Thing, all right. So to come back to this letter,
Speaker 3: CDK here says that an engine of war modeled on
Speaker 3: the Horseshoe Crab could quote destroy any vessel now afloat.
Speaker 3: How do they claim this is going to happen? Well,
Speaker 3: the letter reads, quote this creature is provided with almost
Speaker 3: everything requisite for a first class RAM ship. And to
Speaker 3: this I would invite the attention of scientific men and
Speaker 3: naval constructors. I will not enter into a scientific description
Speaker 3: of the animal in detail, but I will simply state
Speaker 3: its most prominent features for the purpose specified. And this
Speaker 3: part did have me wondering for a second. Are they
Speaker 3: saying that they won't give a detailed description for the
Speaker 3: sake of brevity, or because like the enemy might be reading.
Speaker 3: You know, if certain Crab facts reach the enemy, they
Speaker 3: could make the King Crab warship. First, I think it's
Speaker 3: the former, but I was tempted to think the latter.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I'm excited to find out how something shaped
Speaker 2: like a large horseshoe crab is going to ram things.
Speaker 3: Well, let's read the rest of the letter. CDK goes
Speaker 3: on quote in shape, it is like a turtle, covered
Speaker 3: with a thick shell or armor, and armed with a
Speaker 3: sharp stylet or prow. Now that's a little confusing because
Speaker 3: maybe I don't know my naval terminology right, but I
Speaker 3: would think prow usually goes at the front of a ship.
Speaker 3: And the style it I think would be referring to
Speaker 3: the telson, right, which is the tail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's the sharp part of the
Speaker 2: horseshoe crab. It's hard, and you know, I can't imagine
Speaker 2: it ramming anything by going backwards. And I also can't
Speaker 2: imagine it really being a ramming vessel if it's moving forward.
Speaker 3: Maybe we're not understanding something about this. Maybe something is
Speaker 3: getting lost in the description here. But CDK goes on quote,
Speaker 3: the back of it is brought down wedge shape, which
Speaker 3: will enable it to have considerable speed through the wall.
Speaker 3: Its propelling power is placed underneath so that its feet
Speaker 3: or paddles are hid and are not liable to be injured.
Speaker 3: It has apparatus to lower and raise itself in the
Speaker 3: water around the bow, and it is armed with a
Speaker 3: row of smaller spikes which would be sure to strike
Speaker 3: anything met in its path through the water. A vessel
Speaker 3: constructed to contain in itself the above mentioned principles, with
Speaker 3: the addition of a telescopic smoke stack and pilot house,
Speaker 3: and perhaps a revolving prow, would be really formidable. Manned
Speaker 3: with a pilot engineer and fireman, it could attack any
Speaker 3: vessel with impunity, being submerged when in action and showing
Speaker 3: nothing but the smoke stack. It could approach a vessel
Speaker 3: without being seen. With its great speed and weight. It
Speaker 3: could strike a blow with the force of a dozen
Speaker 3: swamp angels. A swamp angel here referring to a type
Speaker 3: of heavy artillery that was used in the bombardment of Charleston.
Speaker 2: Okay, I was imagining something entirely different, but yeah, thing, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're kind of like, yeah, some swamp angels are just
Speaker 2: like literal angels from the swamp covered and some sort
Speaker 2: of Spanish moss.
Speaker 3: Mermaids or sirens of the swamp with some algae. Anyway,
Speaker 3: CDK says, thus utterly demolishing its opponent. If attacked and
Speaker 3: surrounded by boats, it could rise to the surface, spin around,
Speaker 3: and scatter its assailants like chips. In fact, under almost
Speaker 3: any circumstances, I can see in a monster king crab
Speaker 3: admirable means for protection and defense. Signed CDK.
Speaker 2: Frankford, Pa, Wow, Well, I love the kaiju sized day
Speaker 2: dreaming involved in this scenario, and I don't know some
Speaker 2: of it, I can, I can get. I mean, certainly
Speaker 2: you can admit that if all of these things were
Speaker 2: possible on a machine level, it could be effective. And
Speaker 2: it is you know, he observes that. Okay, you know,
Speaker 2: essentially the legs and underbelly the mechanisms propelling the horseshoe
Speaker 2: crab are protected by the shell. True, And so I
Speaker 2: guess you could you could make some sort of an
Speaker 2: argument for some sort of a big shell like that
Speaker 2: covering the machinery that propels a ship through the water.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, it kind of makes me wonder if CDK had
Speaker 3: been reading a lot about ancient Mediterranean combat with the
Speaker 3: try rems, which did function, and there were still ramming
Speaker 3: attacks in naval tactics at the time of the Civil War.
Speaker 3: We can talk about that in it. But you know,
Speaker 3: the age of the Tryrem, you would have very much
Speaker 3: a ramming focused naval combat where you know, a ship
Speaker 3: is trying to build up speed to ram an opponent
Speaker 3: ship broadside. But then another type of attack that you
Speaker 3: would get with the Tryrem would be these ships trying
Speaker 3: to come up against another ship and shear off its
Speaker 3: ores to you know, make it to prevent it from moving.
Speaker 3: So so yeah, maybe that makes me think maybe he's
Speaker 3: got similar things in mind, like you got to protect
Speaker 3: the oars or the legs he specifies can be either one.
Speaker 3: The ship could have oars or legs. What how would
Speaker 3: it have legs? I'm a little a little confused confused there,
Speaker 3: maybe like you know, many poles sticking out the bottom
Speaker 3: like a pole barge that goes along.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now it is interesting to think though that if
Speaker 2: he is invoking, you know, the ideas of the Trireem
Speaker 2: and so forth, he would be reproducing a pattern we
Speaker 2: see quite a lot in human thought, and that is
Speaker 2: when we try to imagine the future of warfare, we
Speaker 2: often extrapolate things off of the past warfare and not
Speaker 2: really on the present nature of warfare. So he would
Speaker 2: not be alone in making that air.
Speaker 3: So we'll come back to the specific naval details. But
Speaker 3: I do want to, of course mention that despite the
Speaker 3: compelling pitch, this was never built. The King Crab Warship
Speaker 3: was never realized. I went looking to see if I
Speaker 3: could find anything else about this letter, like any you know,
Speaker 3: notice from historians or attempts to put it in context.
Speaker 3: But I really couldn't find anything like that. So I
Speaker 3: think the King Crab proposal remains a just weird, barely noticed,
Speaker 3: obscure little curiosity. It's just a strange little letter hanging
Speaker 3: out there in history that never really went anywhere.
Speaker 2: Oh it's kind of a shame because you can really
Speaker 2: catch cdk's excitement here, and you know, I would have
Speaker 2: hoped he would at least found one other human out
Speaker 2: there in the world that he could share this with.
Speaker 3: I really suspect CDK was talking about this a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it came up. I think it came up
Speaker 3: at dinner. I think it came up at work.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think there was a lot of this talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was probably a significant other that was like,
Speaker 2: you know, you should write to Scientific American about this
Speaker 2: insteads just continuing to tell me about it. I think
Speaker 2: someone there might be excited to hear from you.
Speaker 3: But this actually leads me to the broader context I
Speaker 3: wanted to put this in. So I was reading, I
Speaker 3: was trying to find context for this letter, and like
Speaker 3: I said, didn't really find anything. But I did, through
Speaker 3: that quest, end up reading about an interesting phenomenon taking
Speaker 3: place during the Civil War, of which this seems to
Speaker 3: be one example, which was a kind of frenzied period
Speaker 3: of amateur inventors scrambling to talk to anyone who would
Speaker 3: listen about their designs for stupendous machines that would win
Speaker 3: the war. So one source that was really useful here
Speaker 3: is a history book that I found online. You can
Speaker 3: read the full text online called Lincoln and the Tools
Speaker 3: of War, originally published in nineteen fifty six by University
Speaker 3: of Illinois Press by the Pulitzer Prize winning American historian
Speaker 3: Robert V. Bruce. Now I haven't read the whole book,
Speaker 3: but I read a couple of chapters that discussed the
Speaker 3: sort of patent fever that accompanied Lincoln's presidency and the
Speaker 3: outbreak of the US Civil War, where many aspiring amateur
Speaker 3: inventors did not seem to be aware of the proper
Speaker 3: channels to get their designs noticed, such as contacting the
Speaker 3: Army depart Department of Ordinance. So they would just try
Speaker 3: to get in touch directly with the President. And the
Speaker 3: strange thing is, in a lot of cases, Lincoln would
Speaker 3: hear them out. Bruce writes, quote, scarcely had parade torches
Speaker 3: gutted out, campaign songs died away, and votes been counted
Speaker 3: in the election which made Abraham Lincoln sixteenth President of
Speaker 3: the United States. When inventors began writing the successful candidate,
Speaker 3: and he gives an example of one such early letter, quote,
Speaker 3: it looks like war. I have invented a machine which
Speaker 3: will fire five hundred bullets simultaneously. Write me if you
Speaker 3: wish me to explain it to you. And then Bruce
Speaker 3: adds that Lincoln jotted a note for his secretary, John
Speaker 3: Nikolay across the top of this letter which just said,
Speaker 3: need not answer this. But Bruce has a whole chapter
Speaker 3: in this book called Patent Nonsense, which is focused on
Speaker 3: the sheer volume of invention proposals, on what Bruce calls
Speaker 3: cranks and dreamers that Lincoln waded through during and before
Speaker 3: the war. I'll just mention a few examples. There was
Speaker 3: a general craze at this time from multiple sources and
Speaker 3: with different designs for steam powered guns as opposed to
Speaker 3: gunpowder powdered guns. Sounds like an interesting idea, but the
Speaker 3: problem was that they were usually not an improvement on
Speaker 3: existing technology. I think it was a case of a
Speaker 3: solution in search of a problem here, where like you know,
Speaker 3: you had all this like great new innovations in steam
Speaker 3: powered machinery, and people are thinking, we can make this
Speaker 3: make a better gun. But from what I was reading,
Speaker 3: the models that were actually built and tested were unreliable
Speaker 3: and produced less muzzle velocity than gunpowder. So actually gunpowder
Speaker 3: was already better. It was just people trying to, I think,
Speaker 3: take one thing they knew and combine it with a
Speaker 3: use case where it didn't actually work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like we're real steampunk inner here though, Well, yes's
Speaker 2: the supply steam to everything.
Speaker 3: Another thing that inventors were going wild for at the
Speaker 3: time of the Civil War was the double cannon or
Speaker 3: the fork This what Bruce calls it is the quote
Speaker 3: forked cannon firing chain shot.
Speaker 2: Rob.
Speaker 3: I think this has somehow come up on the show before,
Speaker 3: but I don't remember what episode that was.
Speaker 2: Well, let's keep going and maybe it'll maybe I'll remember.
Speaker 3: This was an extremely popular suggestion, with seemingly dozens of
Speaker 3: different inventors all writing to Lincoln about this fearful design,
Speaker 3: imagining that they were each the first to think of it.
Speaker 3: To summarize the basic idea, I'll read from Bruce here
Speaker 3: quote from two diverging cannon joined at the breach were
Speaker 3: to be fired two projectiles linked by a chain. As
Speaker 3: the two shots spread apart, the chain between them was
Speaker 3: supposed to snap taut and cut a terrible swathe through
Speaker 3: the rebel ranks. One guy from Connecticut wrote Lincoln not once,
Speaker 3: not twice, but five times about the double cannon idea.
Speaker 3: But this is a great example of you know, when
Speaker 3: everybody is having the same great idea and nobody's actually
Speaker 3: using it, there's usually a good reason. And the reason
Speaker 3: in this case is it had been tried multiple times
Speaker 3: in the past. It did not usually work as intended,
Speaker 3: in part because you couldn't in part because you couldn't
Speaker 3: get the two cannons to fire at exactly the same
Speaker 3: time or with the same initial velocity, so you know
Speaker 3: it would go you would go off target or you
Speaker 3: would get kind of malfunctions. The Confederates actually built one
Speaker 3: of these and tested it in Athens, Georgia, and I've
Speaker 3: read there are competing accounts of what happened here. Bruce
Speaker 3: mentions this story that when they fired it, one of
Speaker 3: the guns fired before the other one, and the chain
Speaker 3: whipped back around the unfired barrel and killed most of
Speaker 3: the artillery crew. From what I was reading that that
Speaker 3: is a I think that is now the less subscribed
Speaker 3: to account of what actually happened. A more subscribe to
Speaker 3: account that I was reading instead says that both barrels fired,
Speaker 3: but the contraption could not be aimed effectively and the
Speaker 3: chain snapped, so both balls and chain flew off target,
Speaker 3: accidentally smashing a chimney and killing a cow in a
Speaker 3: nearby field.
Speaker 2: Hmm. Wow. It's certainly a brutal idea for a weapon,
Speaker 2: and I cannot help but wonder how much of it
Speaker 2: is thinking about what the technology can do to improve
Speaker 2: the nature of warfare, and how much of it is
Speaker 2: just kind of like almost a reflection on just how
Speaker 2: nasty and brutal modern warfare had become, and just sort
Speaker 2: of like turning that back on technology and maybe in
Speaker 2: an almost subconscious way, thinking well, how could what else
Speaker 2: can we do in the spirit of how awful warfare
Speaker 2: is at this present moment.
Speaker 3: This one does feel to me less like the steam
Speaker 3: powered gun idea. Feels like somebody is somewhat familiar with
Speaker 3: steam technology and steam mechanisms and they're just trying to
Speaker 3: apply it to a different domain. They're like, oh, now
Speaker 3: there's a need for new war technology. Can we apply
Speaker 3: steam to that? Yeah, this one, the double cannon, feels
Speaker 3: more like the way people would dream up like horror
Speaker 3: movie scripts, like you know, like you're writing, you know,
Speaker 3: saw scripts, trying to think up new grizzly ideas of
Speaker 3: things that could happen to people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: One last example here from the dreamers category, Lincoln got
Speaker 3: a bunch of letters from a machinist named Edward Tippett
Speaker 3: who kept writing to him about designs for a mighty
Speaker 3: battle balloon, which we laugh at, but that will come
Speaker 3: back to that. That's actually not a bad idea in principle,
Speaker 3: and Lincoln did use a form of balloons.
Speaker 2: But nobody ever called them battle balloons. No.
Speaker 3: The letters from this guy also contained a lot of
Speaker 3: theological warnings and obscure references to the Bible. So just
Speaker 3: some quotes from his letters. You must have my balloon
Speaker 3: to put down all four and foes. I again warn
Speaker 3: you against secret enemies. Watch well, and you will find
Speaker 3: the golden wedge and the Achan too. Bruce thinks the
Speaker 3: Achen here is a reference to a story in Joshua
Speaker 3: chapter seven, where an Israelite named Achan is punished for
Speaker 3: stealing spoils of war after the fall of Jericho. I
Speaker 3: couldn't piece together all of the elements of this, but
Speaker 3: finally later this letter says, I say, you cannot conquer
Speaker 3: without my navigating balloon. That said. In this book, Bruce
Speaker 3: describes how Lincoln had a real appetite for hearing from inventors.
Speaker 3: Like it wasn't just like all these people are bombarding
Speaker 3: him with ideas and annoying him. Even though a lot
Speaker 3: of these ideas turned out to be useless or impractical,
Speaker 3: some of them are just outright crankery. Lincoln kept hearing
Speaker 3: inventors out, he would read their letters, he would invite
Speaker 3: them to the White House to give demonstrations, and Bruce
Speaker 3: gives several reasons for this. One is Lincoln's firm belief
Speaker 3: that technological advantage could help win the war, so he
Speaker 3: thought that new inventions would be critical for overall victory.
Speaker 3: The second thing is Lincoln's personal interest in all things mechanical.
Speaker 3: He was a bit of an engineering nerd, and in
Speaker 3: fact was the only US president to actually have taken
Speaker 3: out a patent himself. He patented a device that was
Speaker 3: used to lift riverboats over shoals and sandbars, like had
Speaker 3: these inflatable bellows on the side, so if your riverboat
Speaker 3: runs in the shallows, you can inflate the bellows and
Speaker 3: get over them. And then also there's something that kind
Speaker 3: of comes through in this chapter, which is Lincoln having
Speaker 3: a bit of a tolerance and sometimes even an affectionate
Speaker 3: amusement at pitches that turned out to be dead end
Speaker 3: fantasies I would say, like the King Crab, though there
Speaker 3: is no evidence Lincoln ever encountered or considered the King
Speaker 3: Crab warship idea. But I do want to emphasize that
Speaker 3: Lincoln's tolerance dealing with nonsense from amateur inventors was not
Speaker 3: just because he found it amusing. There's a bit of
Speaker 3: amusement you can read between the lines here, But the
Speaker 3: main thrust, at least according to Bruce, is that he
Speaker 3: was desperate to win the war as fast as possible
Speaker 3: and thought, to some degree correctly, that new inventions would
Speaker 3: bring about that end, and there are some examples where
Speaker 3: that proved correct. One commonly cited example is the Spencer
Speaker 3: repeating rifle, which is a seven shot lever action rifle
Speaker 3: that Lincoln tried out at the White House after meeting
Speaker 3: its inventor, Christopher Spencer, in eighteen sixty three. Lincoln was
Speaker 3: very impressed, and he advocated its use by the Union Army,
Speaker 3: even overruling some initial resistance from the Department of Ordnance leadership,
Speaker 3: and it is thought by some historians that this rifle
Speaker 3: made a big difference. It significantly increased the firing rate
Speaker 3: of the Union cavalry and gave them a distinct advantage
Speaker 3: on the battlefield. Another example, I told you I'd come
Speaker 3: back to balloons, despite the fact that Tippetts you cannot
Speaker 3: conquer without my balloon. Pitch went nowhere. Lincoln actually did
Speaker 3: personally push for the Union to use hot air balloons
Speaker 3: for aerial reconnaissance, and this was after he was impressed
Speaker 3: by a demonstration from an inventor and aeronaut named Thaddeus
Speaker 3: Lowe in eighteen sixty one, during at least one of
Speaker 3: these demonstrations. I don't know how many there were, There
Speaker 3: might have just been one, but at one of these demonstrations,
Speaker 3: Lowe famously sent Lincoln a telegraph via wire from hundreds
Speaker 3: of feet up in the air describing what he could
Speaker 3: see from above. You can easily imagine how that would
Speaker 3: be incredibly important in gathering intelligence at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And of course airships and balloons would continue to
Speaker 2: be very important in warfare, you know, over the decades
Speaker 2: to come.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, So how does this come back to the
Speaker 3: King Crab and naval designs? Well, As I said, the
Speaker 3: exact design of the King Crab warship was never used,
Speaker 3: but the basic idea of a submersible or semi submersible
Speaker 3: ship that would attack by ramming was actually used in
Speaker 3: the US Civil War. Maybe a lot of people don't
Speaker 3: know this, but there were several basically submarines or semi
Speaker 3: submersible ships. Several of these were used by the Confederacy.
Speaker 3: Though there ramming attack was not like the trirems of
Speaker 3: the ancient Mediterranean, which would again those would ram each
Speaker 3: other broadside with a kind with an you know, a
Speaker 3: kind of thing sticking out of the front of the
Speaker 3: ship I think usually called a ram. The ramming attacks
Speaker 3: of Civil War submersibles involved hitting enemy vessels with a
Speaker 3: mounted torpedo. So imagine it's just a big spike with
Speaker 3: explosives on the end. I think this is sometimes called
Speaker 3: a torpedo spar.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also this is just this is the age
Speaker 2: of the ironclad ships as well, so right, yeah, you
Speaker 2: know very much. The idea of what if a ship
Speaker 2: had an exoskeleton, how effective would that be?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Very I mean again, you can imagine to what
Speaker 3: extent that was or was not inspired by crabs or
Speaker 3: Arthur buds generally, I don't know, but yeah, plating putting
Speaker 3: iron plating around a ship that that was also not
Speaker 3: just submersibles, but you know, but top floating ships. That
Speaker 3: was used in the Civil War as well. The Union
Speaker 3: Army actually did develop some submersible technology, so they developed
Speaker 3: a forty seven foot long iron submersible with an animal name.
Speaker 3: Though it was not called the King Crab, it was
Speaker 3: called the USS Alligator. Launched in eighteen sixty two, It
Speaker 3: was based on an earlier design by a French inventor
Speaker 3: named Brutus de Villeroi, and in its final form, the
Speaker 3: Alligator was powered by a small propeller at the stern,
Speaker 3: not by legs or ores like the King Crab describes.
Speaker 3: But though actually an earlier version of the USS Alligator
Speaker 3: design did have oars, it was powered by ores operated
Speaker 3: by the crew from inside. But it turns out ores
Speaker 3: don't worked very well for underwater vessels. I mean, they
Speaker 3: can kind of work, but propellers are more efficient in
Speaker 3: underwater vessels, so the propeller was added swapped out for
Speaker 3: the oars. The propeller was rotated by a hand powered
Speaker 3: crank operated by the crew inside. Air was supplied by
Speaker 3: tubes that were attached to floats that went to the surface,
Speaker 3: and there was an air pump, so these floats would
Speaker 3: follow along with the ship at the surface and allow
Speaker 3: gas exchange. Something about that feels tenuous and scary. I
Speaker 3: guess all of this does, because it, you know, eighteen
Speaker 3: sixty submersible. Apparently, light was provided by glass plates at
Speaker 3: the top of the hull, and the Alligator was put
Speaker 3: into service for a brief time, and the US Navy
Speaker 3: had various plans for it, like they talked about potentially
Speaker 3: using it to attack bridges or blockade runner ships. But
Speaker 3: before it could do very much, it was lost at
Speaker 3: sea off the coast of North Carolina during bad weather
Speaker 3: in eighteen sixty three, So exactly a King Crab in design,
Speaker 3: but sharing some characteristics with the proposal, though of course
Speaker 3: this had already been built at the time this letter
Speaker 3: came into Scientific American.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also just kind of an interesting snapshot of marine
Speaker 2: warfare to come.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I'll say final verdict from me, the King
Speaker 3: Crab warship. Maybe not a practical design, but I admire
Speaker 3: the spirit the actual Atlantic horseshoe crab. Very good design.
Speaker 3: Thumbs up, thumbs up. Evolution.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, you know we mentioned how in one
Speaker 2: of the previous episodes we did talk about crabs and
Speaker 2: demonology to a certain extent. I want to come back
Speaker 2: to that again, at least in a limited fashion, before
Speaker 2: getting into another more prominent topic. But yeah, I was
Speaker 2: looking around and I found a source from eighteen seventies,
Speaker 2: so another older source here. This was titled The Folklore
Speaker 2: of China by Nicholas Bellfield. I'm sorry, Nicholas Bellfield Denny's,
Speaker 2: and it regarded this one little snippet, one little place
Speaker 2: in the book concerned crabs and exorcisms among the people
Speaker 2: in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujin. According to the author,
Speaker 2: shortly before a child's birth, priests would attempt to scare
Speaker 2: away demons that might harm the child during birth. So
Speaker 2: I'm just going to read a snippet from this again,
Speaker 2: again stressing that this isn't an older text, and I
Speaker 2: couldn't find much. I couldn't find anything about this. It's
Speaker 2: more contemporary. But according to this text quote, ten or
Speaker 2: twenty pieces of a kind of grass, cut up about
Speaker 2: an inch long, and several likenesses of the crab cut
Speaker 2: out of common paper are put into censor and burned,
Speaker 2: or sometimes several live crabs, after being used in this
Speaker 2: ceremony are taken and turned into the street by way
Speaker 2: of frightening or propitiating the spirits. The reason why crabs
Speaker 2: are used is that the name of one of these
Speaker 2: demons sounds like that of crab in the local dialect.
Speaker 3: Now wait a minute, I'm a little confused here. Based
Speaker 3: on the description, are the crabs the thing that are
Speaker 3: the things that are being exercised to protect the mother
Speaker 3: and the child, or are the crabs doing the protecting.
Speaker 2: If I'm understanding this correctly, I think it's the idea
Speaker 2: that there's just the idea of the crab is a
Speaker 2: counter to the demon, because the demon's name sounds like crab. Okay, well,
Speaker 2: it's almost like a mocking. I'm again I don't completely
Speaker 2: understand it, but given that it's crab based exorcism, I
Speaker 2: had to at least mention it.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. But so in one form you would burn
Speaker 3: an effigy of the crab, but in another form you
Speaker 3: would release the crabs too into the streets, swarm the
Speaker 3: street in front of your house to provide protection, or
Speaker 3: scare the spirits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess again. I couldn't find much in the
Speaker 2: way of recent sources on this, outside of some some
Speaker 2: crab statues being sold online as Finchwei exorcism animals, though
Speaker 2: I believe that in general, within fin Schwei and elsewhere
Speaker 2: in Chinese culture, crabs are primarily symbols of wealth and advancement,
Speaker 2: and in fact, if you look around, they are sometimes
Speaker 2: depicted as holding aloft a coin or another treasure in
Speaker 2: a very similar fashion to what we discussed previously with
Speaker 2: the crab holding up the crucifix or some sort of
Speaker 2: a you know, a Buddhist treasure.
Speaker 3: Wow, so you've got an image in the outline here
Speaker 3: of a crab holding up a coin. This, this is
Speaker 3: a Chinese artifact here, Yes, okay, the posture is exactly
Speaker 3: the same as that a seventeenth century or maybe it
Speaker 3: was eighteenth century, I don't remember. The silver sculpture of
Speaker 3: the crab holding the crucifix. I, you know, could just
Speaker 3: be coincidence, But I wonder if one is inspired by
Speaker 3: the other. Could the Catholic crab imagery have been inspired
Speaker 3: by traditional China imagery.
Speaker 2: It seems possible or certainly that both of these images
Speaker 2: are speaking to a longer tradition of having a crab
Speaker 2: hold up some sort of a treasure. Yeah. And then
Speaker 2: also more common within Chinese iconography is the image of
Speaker 2: the crab setting upon a bed of coins, almost like
Speaker 2: a dragon in its layer. I think one thing I
Speaker 2: think we touched on this as well. But one thing
Speaker 2: to keep in mind is that when we look at
Speaker 2: a crab's there is the observation of what a crab
Speaker 2: does with its body, certainly, but there We also can't
Speaker 2: help but to imagine what would we do. What would
Speaker 2: a human do with a crab's body if we could,
Speaker 2: we would do things like hold coins, grab coins and
Speaker 2: hold them aloft, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the become an arthropods symbol of your own greed yep, cliff. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So for more answers on this, I was fortunate enough
Speaker 2: to find a full paper from Frontiers and Marine Science
Speaker 2: than twenty twenty five by Yan and Zang titled the
Speaker 2: Connotation of Chinese Crab Culture a Comprehensive Review from the
Speaker 2: perspectives of Literature, Art and diet. So this paper is
Speaker 2: pretty fun. It's a great breakdown of crab culture. That's
Speaker 2: the term they use in China across numerous dynasties, so
Speaker 2: covering a huge stretch of time. And they stress that
Speaker 2: of course you can't ignore the fact that crabs are delicious,
Speaker 2: and then on top of them just being delicious, they
Speaker 2: hold not only this practical value but also significant theoretical value. Again,
Speaker 2: we can't help but look at the crab and imagine
Speaker 2: things related to the crab. What would we do if
Speaker 2: we were a crab? What does the crab say about us?
Speaker 2: And so forth. So they quote numerous bits of old
Speaker 2: Chinese poetry, and a lot of these are first and
Speaker 2: foremost talking about how delicious crab meat is, but then
Speaker 2: in doing so also talking about how novel the creature
Speaker 2: are to look at. I'm gonna read this is a
Speaker 2: This is a snippet from the paper that quote the quote.
Speaker 2: The quotes a poem as well. They say, Zoo Way,
Speaker 2: a famous writer and painter in the Ming dynasty, once
Speaker 2: wrote a poem which reads as follows. In the village
Speaker 2: alongside rivers, the crabs are plump. When the rice is ripe,
Speaker 2: the two kilipet of the crabs stand up like a
Speaker 2: halbard in the green mud of the paddy field. If
Speaker 2: you turn them over, you see a round and bulging
Speaker 2: navel like dong Zou's belly button. And that's the end
Speaker 2: of the poem. But then the authors continue while praising
Speaker 2: the fatness of crab meat. This poem also uses metaphor
Speaker 2: to satirize Dongzhou, a tyrannical trader. Naturally, this kind of
Speaker 2: direct metaphor with the appearance characteristics of crab is slightly shallow.
Speaker 2: But they go on to decite other poems as well,
Speaker 2: where there is like the main point tends to be
Speaker 2: man crab meat is so delicious, or there's more than
Speaker 2: one where it's like crab meat and wine. What a
Speaker 2: great comba.
Speaker 3: This makes me think about how the I mean this
Speaker 3: might be obvious, but about how the connotations of comparing
Speaker 3: a person to a particular animal or not culturally universal,
Speaker 3: So like comparing a person to a dog or a
Speaker 3: pig in one culture might have very different connotations than
Speaker 3: in another culture. And I have basically no cultural context
Speaker 3: for comparing a person to a crab? What does that
Speaker 3: mean at all?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I have yet. This would be a
Speaker 2: great opportunity for listeners out there, but I can't think
Speaker 2: of any examples where that I've ever heard where a
Speaker 2: person is directly compared to a crab in a favorable way. Now, again,
Speaker 2: we are discussing, and we'll be discussing a prime example
Speaker 2: of a crab as a positive totem, as a as
Speaker 2: a as an icon of good luck. And that's one thing.
Speaker 2: But in terms of saying, hey, you're being a crab,
Speaker 2: or you are like a crab, or that person is
Speaker 2: like a crab, I don't know if I've ever heard
Speaker 2: it with a real with a with a strong positive
Speaker 2: framing to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I don't know how to take the crab's
Speaker 3: navel is like this tyrannical trader's belly button.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it sounds like they're mocking a someone
Speaker 2: who's considered a batty in an enemy. Yeah. But they
Speaker 2: they also cite a legend. The authors here side a
Speaker 2: legend regarding the first consumption of crab. There's talk about
Speaker 2: how well crabs are fearsome, So the first people to
Speaker 2: eat the crab meat, they had to have been warriors.
Speaker 2: They had have been mighty, because who would think to
Speaker 2: do this? Who would think to rise up against the crabs?
Speaker 2: But they cited a legend regarding the originator of eating crabs,
Speaker 2: and they say that it was said to have been
Speaker 2: a flood manager named Baja working for the legendary engineer
Speaker 2: you the Great, who we've talked about on the show before,
Speaker 2: very much a cultural hero, you know, someone who steals
Speaker 2: the or acquires the supernatural soil to aid in flood management.
Speaker 2: And then one of his essentially underlings is the first
Speaker 2: to boil a crab, smell the aroma and say this
Speaker 2: just seems pretty good. And then eat it and then
Speaker 2: pass that wisdom on to people as well. So I
Speaker 2: guess maybe the idea here is that, like, you know,
Speaker 2: realizing you can eat crabs is almost kind of like
Speaker 2: a great cultural achievement on par with flood management.
Speaker 3: This just reminds me. I'm having a hazy memory of
Speaker 3: another Chinese folk character we've talked about on the show
Speaker 3: before who is famous for figuring out what foods are
Speaker 3: good to eat.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you're thinking of Shinong the Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: The legend goes, you know, tried every orb, basically tried
Speaker 2: all these different poisons, even in order to determine what
Speaker 2: is good and what is usable and so forth.
Speaker 3: Okay, but here we have the seafood focused version of that,
Speaker 3: or at least not trying all of them, but at
Speaker 3: least trying the crab.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It looks a little scary at first, but it is good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And apparently there's a there's a park in
Speaker 2: Kunshan City in China that is that is named for
Speaker 2: this figure, and it has a number of different statues
Speaker 2: of crabs. This is mentioned in the article, and they
Speaker 2: include some photographs which I reproduce for you here. Joe
Speaker 2: in our notes. Uh, and you can see there's one
Speaker 2: that has a child, either a large child or well,
Speaker 2: either a small child or a large crab. But there
Speaker 2: is a it is a large statue of a crab
Speaker 2: with a child on its back.
Speaker 3: Adorable.
Speaker 2: And then there here is another giant heap of coins
Speaker 2: and a crab is on top of that pile of coins,
Speaker 2: again like a like a Western dragon.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So uh the crab has this recurring association with
Speaker 3: with riches and abundance.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, And so I dug into that a little
Speaker 2: bit to term to determine like where does that come from?
Speaker 2: And uh, Basically the crab wealth connection comes down to
Speaker 2: some of the crab's symbolic characteristics and also another classic
Speaker 2: Chinese homophone, you know, words that sound the same but
Speaker 2: have unrelated meanings. So the shell of a crab is ja,
Speaker 2: which also means if it would mean if I was
Speaker 2: one hundred percent pronouncing it correctly, and I am probably not,
Speaker 2: But it means number one with or you know, top performing,
Speaker 2: but with special connotations regarding the old Imperial examination ranking system.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, number one, best of the best.
Speaker 2: Right right, So the crab shell and also you know,
Speaker 2: ranking number one in something. These ideas are closely ranked
Speaker 2: symbolically linked via language, and then you have some other
Speaker 2: things in play too. So the crab has an auspicious
Speaker 2: number of legs eight and it's there also is this
Speaker 2: idea that it's sideways walking has business success connotations concerning
Speaker 2: easy money or side fortunes.
Speaker 3: This is that like making money on the side or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like hinkai, I think, And I think sometimes
Speaker 2: that has very negative connotations, like you're running a scam
Speaker 2: or it's ill gotten gains. But I think depending on
Speaker 2: how it's used, it can also mean things that are
Speaker 2: that are certainly legal and above board, but are also
Speaker 2: kind of like a matter of luck, you know, coming
Speaker 2: down to good fortune in business, things outside of your control.
Speaker 2: And I guess lateral movement. And then yeah, and then
Speaker 2: the big one too is that this comes back to
Speaker 2: what we were saying earlier. Just crab claws look like things
Speaker 2: that could hold onto coins. They could grab coins and
Speaker 2: then hold on to them. And also coming down to
Speaker 2: just the nature of the crab, knowing that you know,
Speaker 2: a crab can be a little fighty if cornered the
Speaker 2: flighty or fighty there, they can be a little intimidating.
Speaker 2: They can appear to stand their ground, so we can
Speaker 2: imagine them saying, no, that's my coin and I'm not
Speaker 2: going to let it go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can see all of that. And I don't know,
Speaker 3: this might have gone past me. But if we didn't clarify,
Speaker 3: why is it that, in addition to having the tequila
Speaker 3: or that the two claws, it has eight legs? Why
Speaker 3: would eight be auspicious that generally the number eight is
Speaker 3: thought of as lucky in Chinese culture? Correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So it's like all these things kind of
Speaker 2: coming together with the crab, and I think again also
Speaker 2: just the huge factor that crabs are amusing to look at.
Speaker 2: If the crab wasn't so entertaining in and out itself,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't heap on all of these ideas.
Speaker 3: Well, Rob, I think we need to wrap up part
Speaker 3: three of the crab Bag there, but this has been
Speaker 3: yet another enjoyable and enlightening episode. So, folks at home,
Speaker 3: I hope you will join us for crab Bag number
Speaker 3: four on Thursday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in the meantime, go ahead and write in.
Speaker 2: We'd love to hear. I'd love to hear from anyone
Speaker 2: out there who can speak more to the crab as
Speaker 2: a symbol of business, luck and good fortune in Chinese cultures. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you have some personal examples or observations of that
Speaker 2: right in, send your photos. We would love to hear
Speaker 2: from you.
Speaker 3: Also, if there is some really significant way that crabs
Speaker 3: feature in your culture, something interesting about crabs where you
Speaker 3: live that we haven't talked about yet, send it on
Speaker 3: our way let us know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what is your favorite sci fi crab based
Speaker 2: war machine? Also fair game and I know some of
Speaker 2: you will write in about that for sure. Just a
Speaker 2: reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core
Speaker 2: episodes in Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays
Speaker 2: and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird film on weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Stuff to blil Your Mind has been around for years
Speaker 2: and years. At this point, we are new to Netflix, however,
Speaker 2: so there are only so many episodes that you'll find
Speaker 2: in a visual form on Netflix. The rest are going
Speaker 2: to be in audio form wherever you get your audio podcasts,
Speaker 2: and you can find pretty extensive archive there.
Speaker 3: That's right, and it's the same show. By the way,
Speaker 3: just in case people are wondering, the version that we're
Speaker 3: putting out on Netflix is just the video version of
Speaker 3: the audio podcast that we release at the same time
Speaker 3: in audio feed. So yeah, if you have a found
Speaker 3: us in one on one platform and you want to
Speaker 3: check us out on the other, go for it. Absolutely huge,
Speaker 3: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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