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Speaker 1: My Day. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the

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Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna be talking about crabs.

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Speaker 1: I think this will be the first episode in a

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Speaker 1: in a series that we're doing here at least two

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Speaker 1: parts to this, because the crabs are ravenous and we're

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking all about crabs eating things. You know,

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Speaker 1: this is kind of a holiday tradition for us. So

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Speaker 1: I figured how many years ago it was that we did, uh,

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Speaker 1: we did Christmas Crabs. We talked about the Crabs of

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Speaker 1: Christmas Island as our Christmas episode and and so it

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Speaker 1: feels appropriate that as we enter into the holiday season

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Speaker 1: here with in November and December, that we should return

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Speaker 1: to the world of crabs and the feasts that crabs

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Speaker 1: engage in. Have you ever noticed how the crabs come

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Speaker 1: earlier every year? At least it feels that way. But yes,

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Speaker 1: anyway that this will be a feast day of an episode,

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Speaker 1: because will all be about crabs feasting sometimes things feasting

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Speaker 1: on crabs, mostly what crabs themselves feast on. It's funny

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Speaker 1: how crabs are are a natural source of feasting related content. Uh, Rob,

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Speaker 1: I I think you saw my note about this beforehand,

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Speaker 1: but I discovered the strangest Google results phenomenon before we

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Speaker 1: came in here. What I found out earlier today was

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Speaker 1: that when I do a Google search for crabs, it's

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Speaker 1: five letter word crabs. You'd think the first result would

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Speaker 1: be what like Wikipedia page for this animal, but no,

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Speaker 1: the first result is seafood restaurants featuring crabs. They're trying

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Speaker 1: to sell me some crab legs and drawn butter. And

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Speaker 1: then the second result is the is like a health

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Speaker 1: node about pubic lice. And then finally the third thing

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Speaker 1: and the result is about the actual animals, the decapod crustaceans. Well, um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: after you mentioned this, I had to try it out

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Speaker 1: for myself, and granted, and I'm not going in like

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Speaker 1: fresh you know, I do use Google quite a bit. Um.

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Speaker 1: Uh So for me, when I did a search for

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Speaker 1: crabs c R A B s um, the number one

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Speaker 1: hit is sponsored seafood content, but then it's the wiki

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Speaker 1: for the decapod crustaceans, and then it's pubic lice in

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Speaker 1: number at number three. Um. And then it's more pubic lice,

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Speaker 1: and then it's some stuff about the crab nebula I

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Speaker 1: think video content about the crab nebula uh, and then

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Speaker 1: it's back to pubic lice once more, before rounding out

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Speaker 1: page one search results with the Britannica dot com article

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Speaker 1: about decapod crustaceans. Okay, so as our top three go,

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Speaker 1: basically Google just thinks I'm going to be more interested

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Speaker 1: in uh in in the lice than you are. I

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Speaker 1: have no idea, I mean it could. I mean we

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Speaker 1: were both probably searching for crabs all morning um and

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Speaker 1: and perhaps you know, in days before as well. So

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Speaker 1: it seems like, I mean, I don't know how these

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Speaker 1: algorithms work, but it seems like they would have gotten

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Speaker 1: into their robotic minds that these are gentlemen who are

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Speaker 1: interested in decapod us stations and we should serve them

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Speaker 1: up even more. It guy, I don't know, it's all

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Speaker 1: mysteries in there. Who knows the mind of the machine

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Speaker 1: crabs that that order all those results for us? Um?

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Speaker 1: But I wanted to come back to uh this uh

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Speaker 1: image and amber. So there's a study that was just

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Speaker 1: published in Science Advances earlier this year by Javier Luquay

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Speaker 1: at all and it was called Crab and Amber reveals

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Speaker 1: an early colonization of non marine environments during the Cretaceous.

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Speaker 1: So this discovery concerns a fossil found in a piece

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Speaker 1: of amber mind in modern day me and Mar dating

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Speaker 1: back roughly a hundred million years or so, so squarely

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Speaker 1: in the middle of the Cretaceous period, containing a remarkably

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Speaker 1: well preserved specimen of a crab bearing the author's note,

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Speaker 1: large compound eyes, delicate mouthparts, and even gills. Basically, it's

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Speaker 1: wholly intact. The whole thing is in there. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: quite impressive looking in the way that it is um

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Speaker 1: its body. It's position too, it looks like it is

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Speaker 1: like throwing up its clause and defensive position that we've

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Speaker 1: all seen and I think, or if you haven't seen

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Speaker 1: it in person, you've probably seen a picture of it,

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Speaker 1: of a crab like on the beach saying stand back, mammal,

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Speaker 1: do not make me pinch you. Um. So it's as

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Speaker 1: if through you know, across uh, this is vast stretch

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Speaker 1: of time, the crab is warning us to stay back

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Speaker 1: with such ferocity that the very forces of geology like

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Speaker 1: conspired to preserve this this uh, this stance it's doing.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, maybe I maybe I sound silly, but I

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Speaker 1: give this image five out of five coal wal hoads.

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Speaker 1: I am profoundly stirred by this crab trapped in amber.

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Speaker 1: And and not just because it you know, it looks

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Speaker 1: like that haunting mosquito and amber prop from Jurassic Park. Um.

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Speaker 1: But but there's something a little bit more to this too,

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Speaker 1: because it raises these questions like, how did a crab

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Speaker 1: dred million years ago get stuck in tree resin to

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Speaker 1: become part of a fossilized piece of amber. We don't

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Speaker 1: know the answer to this, but the researchers hypothesized, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe this was a crab that lived a partially arboreal lifestyle.

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Speaker 1: There are crabs today that climb trees as part of

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Speaker 1: their lifestyle, so maybe this crab was climbing trees for

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Speaker 1: some reason. Uh and uh, and and maybe it's also

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Speaker 1: just because it causes you to realize that crabs existed

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Speaker 1: and we're already beginning to come out of the oceans

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Speaker 1: to move inland from the beaches a hundred million years

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Speaker 1: ago when dinosaurs were at their apex. And I always

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Speaker 1: love those realization moments where you have like, oh, yes,

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Speaker 1: animals of this kind and this kind actually did live

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Speaker 1: alongside one another terrestrial dinosaurs and terrestrial or semi terrestrial

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Speaker 1: crabs and Robert, I think you'll be very familiar with

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Speaker 1: the the the did they fight mindset. Right as soon

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Speaker 1: as you imagine that, the my sort of like eight

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Speaker 1: year old boys rain starts going did they ever fight

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Speaker 1: each other? Dinosaurs versus crabs? I don't know how much

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Speaker 1: of a fight that would have been, but I guess

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Speaker 1: more more relevantly I could say, did they ever eat

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Speaker 1: one another? And? Uh, you actually gotta give you credit

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Speaker 1: because you turned up the source on this for the

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Speaker 1: copper light study that found a pretty good case that yes,

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Speaker 1: at least the eating was going one way. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: the details of this I was surprised at because you know,

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Speaker 1: not not to say that that some like smaller, you know,

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Speaker 1: beachcombing dinosaur wasn't also hunting and gobbling up crabs. But

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Speaker 1: the evidence here points to a different mode of consumption. Right.

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Speaker 1: So this is a study published in Scientific Reports in UH.

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Speaker 1: The lead author was a Professor Karen Chin, who is

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Speaker 1: Curator of Paleontology at Colorado University Boulders Museum of Natural History.

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Speaker 1: And uh so this was by by chin Feldman and

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Speaker 1: Tashman called consumpt of Crustaceans by mega herbivorous Dinosaurs, dietary flexibility,

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Speaker 1: and dinosaur life history strategies. So this is a copper

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Speaker 1: light study, and you've gotta love a copper light study.

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Speaker 1: Copper light, of course, is fossilized animal dung. This is

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Speaker 1: dung that has become a mineral of the Earth. And

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Speaker 1: the top line on this is that, uh collections of

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Speaker 1: fossilized dinosaur feces from seventy five million years ago found

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Speaker 1: in modern day Montana revealed that some giant herbivorous dinosaurs

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Speaker 1: weren't always strictly herbivorous. Now, this would not be the

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Speaker 1: first time a subject like this has come up on

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Speaker 1: the show before. I think it was in our episodes

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Speaker 1: on the Minotaur that we talked about evidence of bovines

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Speaker 1: cows and bulls and related animals sometimes eating flesh and

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Speaker 1: in addition to their mostly vegetable diets. But it looks

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Speaker 1: like maybe something similar was going on with giant herbivorous dinosaurs.

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Speaker 1: So these feces probably belonged to hadrosaur wars or the

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Speaker 1: duck build dinosaurs. And it looks from the contents of

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Speaker 1: these copper lights like these giant herbivores sometimes would supplement

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Speaker 1: their vegetable diets by eating rotten wood and crustaceans. You

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Speaker 1: can tell by these uh these remains preserved in the

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Speaker 1: fossilized dung, which are full of wood, fiber and crustacean shells. Now, again,

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Speaker 1: this this raises these wonderful questions like how did this happen? Why?

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Speaker 1: And you could imagine it's possibly some kind of accident.

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Speaker 1: Maybe a duck build dinosaur is eating a rotten log

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Speaker 1: for some reason, trying to get some kind of nutrients

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Speaker 1: from all this rough rotten wood, and the rotten log

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Speaker 1: just happens to be full of crabs. But to come

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Speaker 1: back against that, against the accident hypothesis, I just want

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Speaker 1: to read briefly from the press release describing this study

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Speaker 1: quote the size of the crustacean shell bits in the

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Speaker 1: copper lights indicate the crustaceans were at least two inches

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Speaker 1: in length and perhaps larger UH. And this is according

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Speaker 1: to the lead author Karen Chin. Individual crustaceans comprised from

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Speaker 1: twenty six of the width of a common had resour beak,

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Speaker 1: suggesting it was unlikely that crustaceans were unwittingly swallowed. Uh So,

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Speaker 1: the idea is, it looks like whatever these crustaceans were,

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Speaker 1: maybe they were crabs. We don't know for sure what

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Speaker 1: they were, but there have been fossilized crab claws found

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Speaker 1: from around the same area and going back even further

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Speaker 1: in time. So there were crabs around. These crustacean shells

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Speaker 1: could have belonged to crabs that were smashed up too

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Speaker 1: much in the in the copper light to know for sure,

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Speaker 1: but they could have been crabs, and they would have

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Speaker 1: been big enough that it kind of seems unlikely they

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Speaker 1: just accidentally went into the had resour's mouth. Seems like

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Speaker 1: the hadrosour would kind of have to choose to eat

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Speaker 1: the crab. Yeah, I mean, I'm also for me, it

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Speaker 1: just makes me wondered, like what was the digestive system

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Speaker 1: of a hadrosaur, Like it was just it seems like

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Speaker 1: an industrial processing plant, you know, it's just rotten wood. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's all these these are these these fairly large like

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Speaker 1: whole crustaceans and or their shells embedded in it and

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Speaker 1: you just you just eat that down because you're still hungry.

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Speaker 1: And it may not have been about just obtaining raw

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Speaker 1: calories like they may have been searching for a specific

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Speaker 1: nutrient like we see in some other cases of otherwise

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Speaker 1: herbivorous animals sometimes eating say bones or something, where they're

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Speaker 1: looking out certain types of minerals, maybe calcium or something.

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Speaker 1: It could have been the case that maybe eating eating

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Speaker 1: crustaceans like crabs for the hadrosaurs was linked to the

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Speaker 1: reproductive cycle. They may have been seeking to bulk up

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Speaker 1: on calcium or something. We don't know though, but oh

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Speaker 1: whatever the answer there, I just I love it so

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Speaker 1: mega herbivorous or so called herbivorous dinosaurs eating crabs or

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Speaker 1: crab like crustaceans seventy five million years ago and crabs

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Speaker 1: a hundred million years ago getting frozen in amber for

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Speaker 1: all of time. Uh, it just it just fills my

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Speaker 1: you know, I got butter flies under my skin, all

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Speaker 1: over my limbs. It's like this makes me so happy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean for the crabs though this is just another

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Speaker 1: couple of pages in the history of the crab planet.

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Speaker 1: Well right, because it all it raises the question going

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Speaker 1: the other way, the one we're saying we didn't know

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Speaker 1: if we could answer. But so it looks like some

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Speaker 1: dinosaurs in some cases eight crabs or crab like animals,

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Speaker 1: other crustaceans. But the other question would be did crabs

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Speaker 1: ever eat dinosaurs? I don't know about you. I could

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Speaker 1: not find anything, any evidence to directly address that question.

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Speaker 1: As far as I know, there is no physical evidence

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Speaker 1: anybody is aware of, uh to settle this issue. But

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Speaker 1: I would say, if we can't find an answer to

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Speaker 1: the question, based on everything else we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about in the series, I think I would argue that

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Speaker 1: in the absence of any evidence, our default assumption should

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Speaker 1: be yes. I believe so. I think based on what

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Speaker 1: we know about the nature of crabs in general and

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Speaker 1: the sort of things they do eat, it it only

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Speaker 1: makes sense that that they would they would partake of

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Speaker 1: dinosaur meat if they came across it in their environment.

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Speaker 1: All right, well, I say, from here on out, for

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Speaker 1: the rest of the series, we're just going to be

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Speaker 1: looking at crabs eating all kinds of stuff. So, uh so, Rob,

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Speaker 1: if you're ready, let's let's begin the crab feast. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but like, just like with human face, it's not enough

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Speaker 1: to know what you're going to be eating, it's it's

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Speaker 1: also about how you're going to eat, uh, you know that,

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Speaker 1: So we should we should probably start there with how

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Speaker 1: crabs go about, uh consuming their various feasts. Right. So,

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Speaker 1: crabs are of course a a diverse subgroup of the

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Speaker 1: order of decapod crustaceans. So the decapod is in having

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Speaker 1: ten feet. They are crustaceans, so they're you know, creatures

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Speaker 1: with an exoskeleton. In order to grow bigger, they have

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Speaker 1: to molds theft to shed their hard exoskeleton and come

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Speaker 1: out with a soft one, while they can rapidly increase

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Speaker 1: in size and then reharden that. Crabs of course live

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Speaker 1: in all kinds of environments. They originally come from the ocean,

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Speaker 1: but over time and evolutionary history, like we saw with

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Speaker 1: the crab preserved in amber, they started to move out

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Speaker 1: away from the ocean and eventually into freshwater environments, and

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Speaker 1: there are even land crabs. So as to the question

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Speaker 1: of how and what do crabs normally consume, well, there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of different species of crabs, and some

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Speaker 1: of them have different dietary specialization. So there's no one

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Speaker 1: answer to that question, but if you just want to

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Speaker 1: sort of be general overall, it seems like the majority

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Speaker 1: of crabs are not especially picky. Uh. Many crabs appear

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Speaker 1: to be omnivorous opportunists who will eat pretty much anything

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Speaker 1: they can shove into their mouths, and this can include

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Speaker 1: everything from vegetation just gobbling up algae and fresh plant

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Speaker 1: material leaf litter to UH to eating meat of course,

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Speaker 1: scavenging scavenging carry in which crabs do a lot, or

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Speaker 1: just getting little bits of organic or animal detritus, to

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Speaker 1: actively hunting live prey with their claws, which some crabs

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Speaker 1: do so as to diet. Crabs are all over the map.

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Speaker 1: But the next thing I wanted to mention this was

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Speaker 1: new information to me when when I was getting ready

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Speaker 1: for this episode. So animal bodies, you know, they've usually

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Speaker 1: got some kind of special equipment to help them extract

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Speaker 1: the maximum amount of nutritional value from their food, and

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Speaker 1: this often involves either chemically or mechanically breaking down the

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Speaker 1: food from its original form, often to increase the surface

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Speaker 1: area or the ease of access to nutrients by the

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Speaker 1: digestive system. So there might be some kind of chemical

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Speaker 1: breakdown as well, so you know, you know, you know

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Speaker 1: the equipment you've got. Humans have teeth that we chew

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Speaker 1: with and that that mashes food up and to increased

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Speaker 1: surface area. You've got gastric acid secreted by the cells

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Speaker 1: in the lining of your stomach. But then you know

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Speaker 1: they're all kinds of other strategies. Spiders will vomit digestive

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Speaker 1: enzymes over and into their prey to uh sort of

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Speaker 1: reduce the nutritious parts down to a fluid or mush

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Speaker 1: that they can then slurp up with the mouth. And

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Speaker 1: they also do have a form of chewing with their

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Speaker 1: jaws what you are called chillissary. But crabs have one

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Speaker 1: of the most glorious digestive aids I think I've ever

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Speaker 1: read about. So if you ask the question do crabs

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Speaker 1: have teeth, I think the answer would have to be

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Speaker 1: yes and no in a couple of ways. So obviously

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Speaker 1: crabs do not have teeth like us. Uh. They typically

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Speaker 1: eat first by using their claws to tear food into

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Speaker 1: small chunks before bringing it up to their mouth parts,

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Speaker 1: and then they usually have a number of different moving

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Speaker 1: mouth parts. These consist of um these things called maxilla heads,

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Speaker 1: also known as jaw legs, which are sort of like

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Speaker 1: hands within the mouth. These are are modified a little

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Speaker 1: leg parts that will sort of grab bits of food

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Speaker 1: and pass them inward and onward to other parts of

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Speaker 1: the mouth known as the mac silly and the mandibles,

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Speaker 1: which can further shred the food apart into smaller pieces

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Speaker 1: that can be swallowed. But then once the food is

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Speaker 1: swallow load it is inside the digestive system where the

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Speaker 1: most amazing feature appears, and it's this. Crabs, along with

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Speaker 1: other related crustaceans, have an organ known as a gastric mill,

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Speaker 1: which is more or less teeth inside the stomach. They've

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Speaker 1: got gut teeth. They can chew with the insides of

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Speaker 1: their stomachs. And this is another one that really got me.

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Speaker 1: This is also worth googling some pictures of if you can,

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Speaker 1: because there there are some, uh some photos you can

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Speaker 1: find on the Internet of like gastric mills having been

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Speaker 1: extracted from the inside of a of a crabs digestive system.

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Speaker 1: And they it's hard to describe how they look. They've

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Speaker 1: they've got the kind of they're like a semi translucent,

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Speaker 1: pinkish orange uh sci fi weapon hood. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: It's but it's also kind of beak like. It's very unnerving.

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Speaker 1: I think, what are the interesting things about about the

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Speaker 1: way of crab eats? And especially as evident if you're watching, um, say,

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Speaker 1: close up video of a crab, is that there even

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Speaker 1: more so with other creatures this there's this sense of

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Speaker 1: meticulous um disassembly. The crab is not so much I mean,

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Speaker 1: it is consuming, but it is also just uh, just

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Speaker 1: taking whatever it is consuming completely apart. It is disassembling

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Speaker 1: matter and putting it into itself. Well, yeah, the crab

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Speaker 1: makes you think about how much how much humans actually

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Speaker 1: need to use tools for the kind of disassembly that

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Speaker 1: they do leading into into eating say meat or something

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Speaker 1: you know. Like so, humans devote a huge amount of

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Speaker 1: their technological energy over the history of time into creating

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Speaker 1: like tools for butchery of food, cutting food into smaller

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Speaker 1: and smaller pieces that are manageable that you can bite into,

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Speaker 1: chew up and all that. The crab, they they've got

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Speaker 1: their disassembly tools right there on their body. They've got

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Speaker 1: the claws, they've got the maxilly and the mandibles, and

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Speaker 1: then once the food's inside, they've got additional opportunities for chewing.

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Speaker 1: You don't have to stop chewing once you have swallowed.

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Speaker 1: So the way the gastrit mill works is that it

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Speaker 1: sort of choose the food from inside the stomach by

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Speaker 1: grinding it between these hard parts like plates or surfaces

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Speaker 1: that are moved around by powerful gut muscles. And so

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Speaker 1: while I was reading about the gas strit mill, I

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Speaker 1: came across a really interesting piece of research from twenty

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Speaker 1: nineteen that I just had to mention as as we're

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Speaker 1: going along here, and this was by Jennifer R. A. Taylor,

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Speaker 1: Maya S. Devrees, and Damian O. Elias, published in the

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Speaker 1: Proceedings of the Royal Society be In in nineteen called

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Speaker 1: growling from the Gut co Optation of the gastric mill

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Speaker 1: for acoustic communication in ghost crabs. So the short version

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Speaker 1: of this discovery is that you've got this animal, the

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Speaker 1: ghost crab scientific names quadrata, and it will sometimes make

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Speaker 1: a threatening sound by way of having evolved. Quote a

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Speaker 1: novel stridulate action apparatus on the clause that is used

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Speaker 1: during agonistic interactions. So strigulation is any sound that is

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Speaker 1: made by an animal rubbing pieces of its skeleton or

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Speaker 1: exoskeleton together. The very common example you can think of

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Speaker 1: is the sounds made by crickets or grasshoppers. That's strigulation.

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Speaker 1: They rub parts of their legs or their carapists together

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Speaker 1: and that makes this chirping sound that is useful to

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Speaker 1: the animal for some reason, maybe for maybe for mating,

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Speaker 1: or maybe as warning signals or something. The ghost crab

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Speaker 1: appears to use this strigulation of rubbing its claws as

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Speaker 1: a as a warning sign A sounds like Hey, I'm threatened,

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Speaker 1: I am dangerous. I've got these big claws. You do

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Speaker 1: not want to get near me. But in addition to

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Speaker 1: the strigulation they make with their with their claws, to

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Speaker 1: quote from the abstract of this paper by tailor at

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Speaker 1: all quote, but they also produce a rasping sound without

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Speaker 1: their claw apparatus. We investigated the nature of these sounds

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Speaker 1: and showed oh quadratta adopted a unique and redundant mode

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Speaker 1: of sound production by co opting the gastric mill, the

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Speaker 1: grinding teeth of the foregut. Acoustic characteristics of the sound

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Speaker 1: are consistent with strigulation and are produced by both male

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Speaker 1: and female crabs during aggressive interactions. Uh so, yes they

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Speaker 1: are actually they can like chirp like a cricket with

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Speaker 1: the grinding teeth inside their stomachs in order to have

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Speaker 1: a redundant way of making this aggressive sound display that

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Speaker 1: they do when they're being threatened. And the authors actually

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Speaker 1: speculate as to why they would have this redundancy, why

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Speaker 1: be able to make this sound with two different parts

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Speaker 1: of their body. They write, quote, A key advantage of

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Speaker 1: using gastri strigulation over the claw apparatus is that it

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Speaker 1: provides signal while freeing up the chel a for postural

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Speaker 1: display and attack readiness. So you know, basically this this

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Speaker 1: allows you to have claws out to be maximally visually

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Speaker 1: rettn ing and maybe maximally dangerous if a fight actually

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Speaker 1: does start, while still making the grinding scary sound. So yes, anyway,

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Speaker 1: crabs and related crustaceans gastric mills, the chewing doesn't have

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Speaker 1: to stop once you go down the gullet. And like

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Speaker 1: we said, a lot of crabs are not very picky eaters,

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Speaker 1: So who knows, maybe maybe if you could be taken

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Speaker 1: apart into small enough pieces, you would go down the gullet.

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Speaker 1: I guess from here we're gonna start getting into the

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Speaker 1: various meals of the crabs. You know, what do they

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Speaker 1: use this uh, this fabulous uh equipment for? And I

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Speaker 1: guess that I was thinking that one of the best

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Speaker 1: places to start would be talking about crabs eating humans,

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Speaker 1: because obviously that's going to be one of the most

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Speaker 1: pressing questions to us the humans. Right, Sure, it eats

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Speaker 1: but will it eat me? How delicious? Am I? Do

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Speaker 1: I deserve to be eaten by crabs? Um? Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think it's an understandable question. I mean, on one hand,

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Speaker 1: like we are concerned with with this question with any

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Speaker 1: creature on some level, you know, we have to have

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Speaker 1: that that that that box checked off or or empty?

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Speaker 1: Will it eat me? Is it incapable of eating me?

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Speaker 1: Does it want to eat me? Uh? These are always

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Speaker 1: questions that we have about other creatures in the animal kingdom,

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Speaker 1: and the various horror movies and animal creature flicks that

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Speaker 1: we uh we watch they don't help matters either, because,

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Speaker 1: on one hand, we have our giant crab movies in

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Speaker 1: which giant crabs, you know, in addition to occasionally wanting

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Speaker 1: to take over the world or destroy whole cities, they

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Speaker 1: want to grab people with their claws and either try

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Speaker 1: to eat them or it's implied that that crab is

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Speaker 1: grabbing you because it wants to eat you, or, in

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Speaker 1: the case of Attack of the Crab Monsters by Roger Corman,

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Speaker 1: not just eat you but also absorb your soul and

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Speaker 1: intelligence in so doing. Right, But then, uh, we also

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Speaker 1: have countless movies in which we see crabs scavenging, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, crawling around on the corpses of humans who

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Speaker 1: have probably been dispatched by some kind of slasher or

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Speaker 1: some sort of monster that it itself that it that

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00:23:08,400 --> 00:23:11,600
Speaker 1: is not concerned with eating the human. Uh. This is

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Speaker 1: like a standard scene. And oh goodness. I was trying

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Speaker 1: to think of specific examples, and I couldn't come up

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Speaker 1: with one. But I know I've seen it over and

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Speaker 1: over again. Like cut from the you have a dark

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Speaker 1: scene with something spooky happening, an attack is um is

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Speaker 1: shown or implied, and then it's daylight and cops are

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Speaker 1: discovering a body and their crabs on it. I can

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Speaker 1: think of two examples. One is in Jaws, after the

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Speaker 1: initial attack attack at the beginning, when they discovered the

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Speaker 1: body of the first victim on the beach, their crabs

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Speaker 1: everywhere and it makes the police sound sick. Um. Second

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Speaker 1: one is an even better movie. It is I Know

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Speaker 1: What You Did Last Summer, in which there is a

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Speaker 1: part where, uh, the nineties teen slasher movie where Jennifer

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Speaker 1: Lovehughwott finds a body in the trunk of her car.

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Speaker 1: She did not put it there. I think she's being

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Speaker 1: messed with by a killer and it's covered in crabs

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Speaker 1: that are presumably scavenging it. So yeah, and I think

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Speaker 1: there are various other films. I feel like I've seen

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Speaker 1: a Jellow film where there's there there crabs on a body.

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Speaker 1: It's just it makes sense. They're discovering a body, put

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Speaker 1: some crabs on it, um and uh, and it will

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Speaker 1: make it a little a little creepier. Um and then

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Speaker 1: it it You know, it does because it's like this

426
00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:20,919
Speaker 1: person is not only dead, but now they are the

427
00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:26,040
Speaker 1: domain of the crabs. Um. So in thinking about this, though,

428
00:24:26,080 --> 00:24:30,080
Speaker 1: it reminded me of a bit of UM. I guess

429
00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:36,200
Speaker 1: it's folk wisdom that I learned from my mother in law. Uh,

430
00:24:36,240 --> 00:24:40,000
Speaker 1: and that is, don't eat crabs after a hurricane. Have

431
00:24:40,119 --> 00:24:42,920
Speaker 1: you ever heard this before, Joe? I think maybe you

432
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:46,719
Speaker 1: and I have talked about this off Mike. Maybe, Okay,

433
00:24:46,800 --> 00:24:49,000
Speaker 1: because I was. I was looking around for more on

434
00:24:49,040 --> 00:24:52,240
Speaker 1: this online, and I found some sort of echoes of it,

435
00:24:52,960 --> 00:24:56,760
Speaker 1: but I did not find enough on it that made

436
00:24:56,800 --> 00:25:00,640
Speaker 1: me satisfied that this is not something that just originated

437
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:04,000
Speaker 1: with my mother in law or her family, or like,

438
00:25:04,280 --> 00:25:06,600
Speaker 1: you know, a local area that like her parents were

439
00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:10,119
Speaker 1: in or something. But I'll continue to discuss it here

440
00:25:10,119 --> 00:25:13,280
Speaker 1: and certainly if anyone out there has heard the same

441
00:25:13,320 --> 00:25:16,320
Speaker 1: thing or is privy to the same folk wisdom and

442
00:25:16,359 --> 00:25:19,199
Speaker 1: has some insight into why it is, uh, well, obviously

443
00:25:19,240 --> 00:25:22,359
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from you. But the notion

444
00:25:22,440 --> 00:25:26,280
Speaker 1: here seems to be, uh that, Okay, those crabs in

445
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 1: the wake of a hurricane, they have been feasting on

446
00:25:28,640 --> 00:25:30,919
Speaker 1: the flesh of people who died in the storm, and

447
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:35,880
Speaker 1: therefore they should be avoided. Okay, I can understand that. Yeah, yeah,

448
00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:37,560
Speaker 1: I mean it's I guess a lot of it comes

449
00:25:37,560 --> 00:25:40,119
Speaker 1: down to the idea that if these crabs have been

450
00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:43,679
Speaker 1: eating humans and we eat those crabs, it's kind of

451
00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:48,080
Speaker 1: cannibalism by proxy, right, Yeah, And generally we don't eat

452
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:50,720
Speaker 1: like a lot of even if we're eating meat, we're

453
00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:54,080
Speaker 1: not eating carnivores or we're not eating animals that are

454
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:55,960
Speaker 1: that are eating a lot of meat. We tend to

455
00:25:56,000 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 1: consume herbivores. Well, I mean, if you're eating seafoods, you're

456
00:25:59,760 --> 00:26:01,840
Speaker 1: probably eating a lot of car Well, yes, yes, the

457
00:26:01,920 --> 00:26:05,600
Speaker 1: seafood for sure. But yeah, but I also I did

458
00:26:06,040 --> 00:26:08,040
Speaker 1: find some just looking around, I saw some people like

459
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 1: asking and some of these like question websites saying is

460
00:26:10,640 --> 00:26:12,879
Speaker 1: it okay to eat? Like they were kind of applying

461
00:26:12,920 --> 00:26:15,480
Speaker 1: the same concern to just see life in general, like

462
00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:18,560
Speaker 1: should I be concerned that the fish that I'm eating

463
00:26:18,880 --> 00:26:22,959
Speaker 1: might have themselves eaten human flesh? Well, that's a sticky

464
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 1: idea that'll get in your head. Yeah. Yeah, So I

465
00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:28,439
Speaker 1: decided to look into it a bit more, and I

466
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:29,840
Speaker 1: was looking. First of all, I was looking at a

467
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:34,119
Speaker 1: few different sources in uh. They included Coastal Angler magazine

468
00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:37,919
Speaker 1: and also editions of the Sun Sentinel. Um And so

469
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:40,680
Speaker 1: it's worth remembering that hurricanes are destructive not only the

470
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:43,840
Speaker 1: humans and human civilization, but they also impact marine environments.

471
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:46,639
Speaker 1: This can result in extra dead sea life in the water,

472
00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:50,480
Speaker 1: and that includes crabs, and this can often be due

473
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:55,440
Speaker 1: to um reduced dissolved oxygen in the water, rapid salinity changes,

474
00:26:55,600 --> 00:27:00,280
Speaker 1: and violence surf and this can certainly impact crapping as

475
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:03,840
Speaker 1: a human enterprise, either by damaging the equipment that's necessary

476
00:27:03,880 --> 00:27:07,840
Speaker 1: for crabbing or disrupting key crabbing locations. And this applies

477
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:11,000
Speaker 1: to other organisms as well. Um. It can you know,

478
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:15,080
Speaker 1: be especially rough on oyster seed grounds, for instance. And

479
00:27:15,119 --> 00:27:17,879
Speaker 1: as far as oysters go, the other key issues related

480
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:21,360
Speaker 1: to hurricanes and other storms is flood run off from

481
00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 1: the mainland carrying various chemicals into their environment. And as

482
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:29,680
Speaker 1: oysters or filter feeders, they can pick up those chemicals um.

483
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:33,800
Speaker 1: And that can then be composed a danger to humans

484
00:27:33,800 --> 00:27:36,560
Speaker 1: consuming those oysters. Uh. And of course there are other

485
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:40,240
Speaker 1: potential risks involved with eating raw shellfish as well, But

486
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:42,800
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, this doesn't really impact

487
00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:45,600
Speaker 1: crabs so much. Um. But I wanted to look a

488
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:47,520
Speaker 1: little bit more about the you know, the idea of

489
00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 1: of corpse eating crabs. First of all, I wanted to

490
00:27:49,760 --> 00:27:52,840
Speaker 1: sort of check my my assumptions on this and and

491
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:54,840
Speaker 1: find out well it is as true or am I

492
00:27:54,880 --> 00:27:57,720
Speaker 1: just sort of learning this from movies? Do crabs want

493
00:27:57,760 --> 00:28:01,639
Speaker 1: to eat human bodies? Uh? And And luckily, you know,

494
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:04,480
Speaker 1: there's a lot of material out there in the world

495
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:09,520
Speaker 1: of Forensics UM and Biology UM. Human corps in water

496
00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:13,480
Speaker 1: may be set upon by fish, water, rats, crabs, m

497
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:16,800
Speaker 1: various other creatures. According to UM, one paper was looking

498
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:21,119
Speaker 1: at by zerin er Call and Urdum Hoskuler in post

499
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:25,080
Speaker 1: mortem animal attacks on human corpses came out and so

500
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:27,840
Speaker 1: this applies to shallow water as well as deep water,

501
00:28:27,960 --> 00:28:32,159
Speaker 1: where crabs will uh may even gnaw the bones that

502
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:35,760
Speaker 1: they find down there. Wo. Now, apparently some crabs are

503
00:28:35,760 --> 00:28:39,080
Speaker 1: going to be more indiscriminate than others. So yeah, I

504
00:28:39,080 --> 00:28:40,440
Speaker 1: guess you know, we have to be carefulhen we talk

505
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:43,320
Speaker 1: about crabs, because there's not just one type of crab there.

506
00:28:43,360 --> 00:28:46,360
Speaker 1: They are multitude, and they all have different strategies and

507
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 1: different environments and different temperaments. UM. I believe blue crabs

508
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 1: in particular are often observed to scavenge human flesh and

509
00:28:56,760 --> 00:28:59,360
Speaker 1: and that probably has to do again with like environments

510
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:02,760
Speaker 1: in which law enforcement or finding bodies and bodies are

511
00:29:02,760 --> 00:29:05,440
Speaker 1: retrieved and uh, and that's gonna happen to be the

512
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:09,360
Speaker 1: same environment where the blue crabs are active. Another type

513
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:10,960
Speaker 1: of crab that we've talked about on the show before,

514
00:29:11,040 --> 00:29:14,640
Speaker 1: the coconut crab. Uh, they seem to generally be game

515
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:17,400
Speaker 1: for for anything. So it seems like a safe assumption

516
00:29:17,440 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 1: to say that, yes, you have given the opportunity, the

517
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:23,400
Speaker 1: coconut crab would feast on human flesh as well. But

518
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:25,600
Speaker 1: as for other species, I would say, check with your

519
00:29:25,600 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 1: local crab. I don't know if they want to eat

520
00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:30,120
Speaker 1: you or not um, And a lot of it's gonna

521
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:33,160
Speaker 1: depend on are you where that crab is, what is

522
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 1: that crab normally eat and so forth. Now, I was

523
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:40,960
Speaker 1: also looking at an article titled Decomposition and Invertebrate Colonization

524
00:29:41,040 --> 00:29:44,480
Speaker 1: of Cadavers in Coastal marine Environments by Gail S. Anderson

525
00:29:44,600 --> 00:29:47,760
Speaker 1: from two thousand and nine, and in this the author

526
00:29:47,800 --> 00:29:52,880
Speaker 1: points out that in saltwater environments, crabs, crayfish, and barnacles

527
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:55,440
Speaker 1: are generally the most important Arthur pods from a forensics

528
00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:59,280
Speaker 1: point of view. And they point out that crabs especially,

529
00:29:59,320 --> 00:30:01,160
Speaker 1: we'll we'll just it right in there. They'll go for

530
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:05,440
Speaker 1: the facial flesh and the eyes, the open orifices of

531
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 1: the face are I mean, just think about this practically, Joe,

532
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:13,560
Speaker 1: don't to like, if you're gonna start munching on a human, uh,

533
00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:15,760
Speaker 1: all those holes in the face that's just a great

534
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:18,520
Speaker 1: place to get started, you know. Yeah, that's the that's

535
00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:21,960
Speaker 1: like the oysters on a chicken. Yeah, so that's that's

536
00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:26,160
Speaker 1: generally where they start. But once they get going, apparently

537
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:29,680
Speaker 1: they can rapidly d flesh a body. Um. I was

538
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:31,720
Speaker 1: looking around to see if I could find some hard

539
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:33,560
Speaker 1: numbers on that, because I know a lot of times

540
00:30:33,560 --> 00:30:37,200
Speaker 1: that is of of key interest in forensics. Um. You know, Okay,

541
00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:39,800
Speaker 1: animals will do this to a body, scavengers will do

542
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 1: this to a body. How long does it take for

543
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:44,040
Speaker 1: them to do it? Because then we can time the

544
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:47,440
Speaker 1: you know, the death of the of this particular individual,

545
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 1: or we can time when their body entered this environment.

546
00:30:51,080 --> 00:30:53,840
Speaker 1: I could not find any any time. That doesn't mean

547
00:30:53,840 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 1: they're not out there. So if you know those, if

548
00:30:56,000 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 1: you happen to have like a you know, some sort

549
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:00,680
Speaker 1: of study that involves a stop watch, a human cadaver

550
00:31:00,840 --> 00:31:03,080
Speaker 1: in a whole bunch of blue crabs, uh, then send

551
00:31:03,080 --> 00:31:04,600
Speaker 1: it my way. I would look to take a look

552
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:08,040
Speaker 1: at it. Do your personal eco friendly funeral plans involve

553
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:13,640
Speaker 1: crabs crab bial I mean why not? Why not? So

554
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 1: I want to come back to the question. Okay, Uh, so,

555
00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:18,280
Speaker 1: first of all, Okay, I think we can say it's

556
00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 1: safe to say that crabs definitely will de flesh the

557
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:26,320
Speaker 1: human form um. Now, as for this idea of there

558
00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:29,520
Speaker 1: being something bad about eating those crabs after they have

559
00:31:29,600 --> 00:31:33,640
Speaker 1: tasted human flesh, um, again, I think there is this

560
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:38,560
Speaker 1: sort of superstitious view there. There's perhaps this you know,

561
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 1: revulsion of the idea that you might eat something that

562
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:43,320
Speaker 1: has eaten people and then you know, to some extent

563
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 1: you are engaging in cannibalism by proxy. Now, where this

564
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:49,080
Speaker 1: gets interesting, though, is when you start looking at the

565
00:31:49,120 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: subject of cholera and crabs. Um. Joe, had you ever uh,

566
00:31:54,080 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 1: were you privy did any of this information before? No?

567
00:31:57,080 --> 00:31:59,880
Speaker 1: I mean cholera And I know cholera is typically a

568
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:03,960
Speaker 1: water borne illness that has spread through contamination of water

569
00:32:04,040 --> 00:32:07,239
Speaker 1: sources by infected people. Yeah, yeah, and uh, and so

570
00:32:07,280 --> 00:32:09,320
Speaker 1: when you think about cholera, you tend to think about

571
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:13,600
Speaker 1: you to think about a sewage, You think about you know,

572
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:18,040
Speaker 1: you know, poor water treatment, water sources, that sort of thing. Um.

573
00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:23,120
Speaker 1: But apparently crabs and uh and some other shellfish can

574
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:28,240
Speaker 1: also uh be a means of acquiring cholera. Now, as

575
00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 1: and I was looking around him mostly mostly when we're

576
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:36,040
Speaker 1: talking about this, we're talking about UH some some particular situations,

577
00:32:36,080 --> 00:32:39,160
Speaker 1: and there've been particular outbreaks that have been linked to

578
00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:43,040
Speaker 1: the consumption of crabs that that are infected with cholera

579
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:47,200
Speaker 1: um or at least they have cholera like clinging to

580
00:32:47,560 --> 00:32:51,280
Speaker 1: the bacterium clinging to their their shells, UH, to the

581
00:32:51,320 --> 00:32:54,040
Speaker 1: hard parts of their body. For instance, there was an

582
00:32:54,040 --> 00:32:58,800
Speaker 1: outbreak in nine in coastal Louisiana and it was blamed

583
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:03,280
Speaker 1: on improper storage or cooking of crab. The crab and

584
00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 1: the crab and in questions seem to have have you know,

585
00:33:06,880 --> 00:33:10,360
Speaker 1: the cholera bacterium clinging to it? Apparently there was a

586
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:14,680
Speaker 1: similar case in Texas UH previous decades. I was able

587
00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:18,920
Speaker 1: to find some news footage from the late seventies from

588
00:33:18,960 --> 00:33:22,280
Speaker 1: like from Louisiana Public television where they were talking about

589
00:33:22,320 --> 00:33:24,280
Speaker 1: this UH and it was quite interesting because you know,

590
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:25,840
Speaker 1: it was it was a big deal. There were a

591
00:33:25,840 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 1: lot of questions like, well, Okay, what's happening here, Why

592
00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:30,960
Speaker 1: did these crabs have cholera? Why are people you know,

593
00:33:31,800 --> 00:33:33,920
Speaker 1: what's going on? And then there was concern over how

594
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:36,880
Speaker 1: is it gonna impact the crabbing industry, and just people's

595
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:41,000
Speaker 1: lives in general. UM. And uh, yeah, it was quite

596
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:45,200
Speaker 1: interesting because you know, to be clear, cholera UH is

597
00:33:45,760 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: generally we think about it as a as a human situation.

598
00:33:48,400 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: You know, this is where you you find the cholera

599
00:33:51,600 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 1: collor are pathogenic to humans. UM. So they're not actually

600
00:33:57,680 --> 00:34:02,800
Speaker 1: you know, infecting uh, the crustaceans in question here, but

601
00:34:02,840 --> 00:34:06,000
Speaker 1: it would be a situation of them being in waters

602
00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:11,239
Speaker 1: infected uh, that that are tainted by cholera or potentially

603
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:13,560
Speaker 1: and this seems to be like a less firm point.

604
00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:16,839
Speaker 1: It seems like potentially if you had these crabs coming

605
00:34:16,880 --> 00:34:20,000
Speaker 1: in contact with the bodies of humans that had cholera,

606
00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:23,000
Speaker 1: they could partitually get it that way. But it seems

607
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:25,760
Speaker 1: like for the most part we're talking about just water

608
00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:30,080
Speaker 1: that is, say, tainted by untreated sewage, and and you

609
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:33,640
Speaker 1: have people in the population that had cholera contributing to

610
00:34:33,800 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 1: said sewage. I see. So it seems like moral of

611
00:34:36,640 --> 00:34:41,480
Speaker 1: the story is definitely properly cook your your your seafood. Yes, definitely,

612
00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:46,640
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a proper storage, proper cooking UM. And

613
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:48,560
Speaker 1: that seemed to be the main point they were getting

614
00:34:48,600 --> 00:34:50,600
Speaker 1: to in this situation. I believe based on some of

615
00:34:50,600 --> 00:34:52,560
Speaker 1: the follow up information was looking at from the CDC,

616
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:57,920
Speaker 1: it seems like this had to do with with with

617
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:01,040
Speaker 1: the with pollution of the water, either due to some

618
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:05,319
Speaker 1: sort of a sewage situation, sewage treatment, or sewage run

619
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:08,160
Speaker 1: off from something else, potentially something linked to U two

620
00:35:08,200 --> 00:35:13,400
Speaker 1: ships um but um. Looking also at the CDC, they

621
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: point out, quote, brackish and marine waters are the natural

622
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:22,840
Speaker 1: environment for the ideologic agents of cholera H Vibrio colorae

623
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:26,720
Speaker 1: UH zero group zero one or zero one three nine.

624
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 1: There are no known animal hosts for Vibrio colorad. However,

625
00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:38,360
Speaker 1: the bacteria attached themselves easily to chitten containing shells of crabs, shrimps,

626
00:35:38,440 --> 00:35:41,280
Speaker 1: and other shellfish, which can be a source for human

627
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:44,680
Speaker 1: infections when eaten raw or undercooked. Now, I know what

628
00:35:44,719 --> 00:35:46,960
Speaker 1: you're saying. You're you're probably thinking to yourself, Well, that

629
00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:50,319
Speaker 1: still doesn't answer the question can can Does that mean

630
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:52,640
Speaker 1: you can catch cholera from a crab that eight human

631
00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:55,920
Speaker 1: being with cholera? I'm still I'm still not sure. I

632
00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:58,000
Speaker 1: don't but but I don't think any of the evidence

633
00:35:58,080 --> 00:36:00,399
Speaker 1: is pointing to that being. Like the primary a way

634
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:02,919
Speaker 1: that you would get sick from, you know, for meeting

635
00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:05,839
Speaker 1: a crab or that has anything to do with with

636
00:36:05,920 --> 00:36:10,439
Speaker 1: concerns over eating crabs post hurricane. So I'm not sure.

637
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I can't ask my mother in law

638
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:16,040
Speaker 1: anymore about this, but I have this suspicion that perhaps

639
00:36:16,160 --> 00:36:20,240
Speaker 1: it's kind of a kind of like a Cajun stew

640
00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:22,719
Speaker 1: of like maybe a little bit of folklore in there.

641
00:36:23,239 --> 00:36:26,520
Speaker 1: Also maybe a little bit uh left over stemming from

642
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:30,680
Speaker 1: this late seventies um you know, fear about cholera and

643
00:36:30,719 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 1: the crabs. Uh. And you know, perhaps some other stuff

644
00:36:33,520 --> 00:36:36,439
Speaker 1: thrown in there as well, um uh. And also maybe

645
00:36:36,440 --> 00:36:40,040
Speaker 1: she was just you know, messing with me, not being

646
00:36:40,120 --> 00:36:42,720
Speaker 1: maybe that's familiar with the ways of the of coastal

647
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 1: Louisiana and so forth. Well, I mean, I would say,

648
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:49,120
Speaker 1: whatever the base of this, uh, this piece of advice

649
00:36:49,200 --> 00:36:52,840
Speaker 1: or folk wisdom is, I would say that it's probably

650
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 1: always going to be different. I mean, unless you're in

651
00:36:55,080 --> 00:36:58,440
Speaker 1: some kind of like farmed bond villain scenario, it's always

652
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:00,759
Speaker 1: going to be difficult to know whether or not a

653
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:04,759
Speaker 1: crab that you have actually acquired to eat like what

654
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:07,520
Speaker 1: it has been eating in its past. Yeah. I mean

655
00:37:07,680 --> 00:37:09,880
Speaker 1: you just never really know if it had eaten a

656
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:12,040
Speaker 1: part of a human or not, but the odds are

657
00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:17,040
Speaker 1: probably against it. Yeah yeah. And um and in terms

658
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:19,720
Speaker 1: of other crab and just crabs in general, like eating humans,

659
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:22,040
Speaker 1: like another area to get into as well, would a

660
00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:25,480
Speaker 1: crab kill a human and eat it? And uh, this

661
00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:27,200
Speaker 1: does come up from time to time. I think there

662
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:29,440
Speaker 1: was you know, largely you know, unproven and to a

663
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:33,680
Speaker 1: certain extent at least discredited theory that coconut crabs consumed

664
00:37:33,760 --> 00:37:37,399
Speaker 1: aviator Amelia Earhart, or at least consumed her remains after

665
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:40,240
Speaker 1: she crashed. Um. Again, I don't think there's any proof

666
00:37:40,280 --> 00:37:42,000
Speaker 1: for this, and and I don't know that anyone is

667
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:44,560
Speaker 1: actually arguing that the crab crabs would have killed her,

668
00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:50,160
Speaker 1: but um uh you you know, it's one of those

669
00:37:50,160 --> 00:37:52,440
Speaker 1: things where you can make any kind of argument for Okay,

670
00:37:52,480 --> 00:37:56,040
Speaker 1: what if somebody was sufficiently injured and then crabs came

671
00:37:56,120 --> 00:38:01,040
Speaker 1: upon them, Could the crabs deal the killing? Could the

672
00:38:01,080 --> 00:38:03,440
Speaker 1: crabs be the one to finish you off? And I

673
00:38:03,480 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 1: guess it's like with the dinosaurs, like could could crabs

674
00:38:06,200 --> 00:38:10,560
Speaker 1: kill a dinosaur? Well? I guess so if they had

675
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:13,279
Speaker 1: enough of an advantage, uh, you know, if the if

676
00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:16,680
Speaker 1: the prey was severely weakened. Um, But I don't know,

677
00:38:16,719 --> 00:38:18,600
Speaker 1: it seems kind of pointless to to worry about this

678
00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:21,080
Speaker 1: too much. I mean not to be insulting, but a

679
00:38:21,120 --> 00:38:24,759
Speaker 1: crab is not really a particularly analytical creature, So I

680
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:27,360
Speaker 1: don't think it could size us up and figure out

681
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:29,960
Speaker 1: what part of the body it needed to attack in

682
00:38:30,080 --> 00:38:33,080
Speaker 1: order to finish us off. We are not part of

683
00:38:33,120 --> 00:38:38,080
Speaker 1: a crabs like natural uh you know, habituated diet, so

684
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:40,359
Speaker 1: I don't think it would have instincts about what part

685
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:43,000
Speaker 1: of the body to attack to finish us off. So

686
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:45,279
Speaker 1: I would say, if a crab attacks the human is

687
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:48,400
Speaker 1: probably just randomly pinching at whatever parts of the body

688
00:38:48,440 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: it can get at. So my guess would be that

689
00:38:50,880 --> 00:38:53,720
Speaker 1: it would be very unlikely for even the most powerful crabs,

690
00:38:53,719 --> 00:38:58,239
Speaker 1: even your coconut crabs, to to really initiate a successful

691
00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:01,600
Speaker 1: deadly attack on a human. But there is something about

692
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:04,360
Speaker 1: maybe it comes back to that defensive display of the crab.

693
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:07,960
Speaker 1: It's so impressive even though it's small, uh, that it

694
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:11,440
Speaker 1: just reverberates through the human psyche and takes on the

695
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:16,040
Speaker 1: form of say crabs attacking hercules and myth or you know,

696
00:39:16,120 --> 00:39:21,799
Speaker 1: crabs rising up against humanity in Roger Corman films, and

697
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 1: so we just get it just shows how effective that

698
00:39:24,160 --> 00:39:26,160
Speaker 1: display is. We're like, we we know that crab is

699
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:29,920
Speaker 1: not actually gonna come over here and and and whoop us. Uh,

700
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:33,160
Speaker 1: but but it takes on these uh, these enormous forms

701
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:35,960
Speaker 1: in our mind, right, I mean, the the rasp of

702
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:39,120
Speaker 1: the gastric mill does not lie. There's no reason to

703
00:39:39,120 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 1: go messing around with that thing, putting your fingers into

704
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:44,799
Speaker 1: its pintures and stuff. But I am generally curious though,

705
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:47,400
Speaker 1: So if anyone out there, again, if you've heard anything

706
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:50,680
Speaker 1: about this, um, this bit of folk wisdom that you

707
00:39:50,680 --> 00:39:53,520
Speaker 1: shouldn't eat crabs after a hurricane, or that eating crabs

708
00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:57,520
Speaker 1: that of eating humans is is is somehow specifically a

709
00:39:57,560 --> 00:40:00,360
Speaker 1: bad idea, uh filming in I would oft to know

710
00:40:00,400 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 1: more before we move on. I just wanted to say

711
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:05,520
Speaker 1: about the coconut crabs thing. I had also come across

712
00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:09,640
Speaker 1: that people supposedly claiming that that Amelia Earhart was eaten

713
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:12,600
Speaker 1: by coconut crabs, really without any evidence to say that.

714
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 1: I think people were just kind of guessing, oh, what

715
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:18,759
Speaker 1: if this happened. Um, But but that did make me

716
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:22,840
Speaker 1: think back on on Charles Darwin's comments about how coconut

717
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:25,799
Speaker 1: crabs actually being delicious and under their tails having that

718
00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:29,200
Speaker 1: big mass of fat which turned into wonderful limpid oil.

719
00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:32,399
Speaker 1: You remember that, Oh, yes, I do remember that. Yeah,

720
00:40:32,600 --> 00:40:35,200
Speaker 1: you know, this reminds me. I was. I was looking around, um,

721
00:40:35,239 --> 00:40:38,680
Speaker 1: you know, doing various searches on fatalities related to coconut crabs,

722
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:42,759
Speaker 1: and I did find, um, I think a couple that occurred. Uh.

723
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:45,160
Speaker 1: And but they didn't have anything to do with crabs

724
00:40:45,160 --> 00:40:47,480
Speaker 1: attacking people. They had to do with the coconut crabs

725
00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:51,080
Speaker 1: haven't eaten something that contained a toxin, and then when

726
00:40:51,120 --> 00:40:55,839
Speaker 1: that crab was consumed by humans resulted in fatality. Oh,

727
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:58,560
Speaker 1: that would make sense, So I think, oh yeah, ultimately

728
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: it crabs dupo was the greatest risk to human beings

729
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 1: in the form of you know, of of tainted food

730
00:41:05,520 --> 00:41:07,759
Speaker 1: of one sort or another. But that can be that

731
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:09,359
Speaker 1: can be said for a lot of things. It's gonna

732
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:14,640
Speaker 1: as with our past Thanksgiving episodes on dangerous foods, um,

733
00:41:14,680 --> 00:41:17,600
Speaker 1: you know, any kind of if food is cooked improperly

734
00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:22,359
Speaker 1: or stored improperly, prepared improperly. Um, you know, it's it's

735
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 1: pretty easy to get into dangerous zone. Oh yeah, I

736
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:27,040
Speaker 1: mean one of the points we made repeatedly in that

737
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:30,360
Speaker 1: series is if you're actually just like tallying up edge cases,

738
00:41:31,120 --> 00:41:34,600
Speaker 1: all kinds of strange things can seem very dangerous, you know, Uh,

739
00:41:34,719 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 1: improperly washed packaged greens, bottles of peanut butter and all

740
00:41:39,640 --> 00:41:41,759
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. Yeah, I mean, I'll go and throw

741
00:41:41,800 --> 00:41:44,680
Speaker 1: this out there. Don't try and eat um a live

742
00:41:44,719 --> 00:41:48,120
Speaker 1: crab whole. I think you're probably going to hurt yourself.

743
00:41:48,280 --> 00:41:49,720
Speaker 1: May have to go to the hut of the hospital

744
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:52,720
Speaker 1: over that. Yeah, don't go for the had resort crude.

745
00:41:52,760 --> 00:42:03,600
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, alright. The next example of the next course

746
00:42:03,640 --> 00:42:06,800
Speaker 1: in the Crab Feast I wanted to talk about is, uh,

747
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:09,960
Speaker 1: maybe the I can't remember for sure. This may have

748
00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 1: been the thing I was reading about that gave me

749
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:16,040
Speaker 1: the idea to do this episode. Um, and this is

750
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:18,760
Speaker 1: one where you can actually watch the video I'm about

751
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:22,680
Speaker 1: to talk about yourself, because the subject here is a

752
00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 1: field recording that was uploaded by the Monterey Bay Aquarium

753
00:42:27,040 --> 00:42:32,120
Speaker 1: Research Institute or in Bari, originally captured in two thousand eleven.

754
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:34,799
Speaker 1: You can find it on their YouTube channel now. And

755
00:42:34,840 --> 00:42:37,520
Speaker 1: this took place on an expedition led by a researcher

756
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: named Peter Brewer. So the team here was investigating oil

757
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:47,759
Speaker 1: seeps and methane hydrates along the sea floor off the

758
00:42:47,800 --> 00:42:50,359
Speaker 1: coast of British Columbia. Again, this was back in two

759
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:52,600
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, so this would have been on in the

760
00:42:52,640 --> 00:42:57,200
Speaker 1: ocean off the west coast of Canada. And methane hydrates

761
00:42:57,239 --> 00:43:00,640
Speaker 1: are a very strange and fascinating phenomenon. I again didn't

762
00:43:00,640 --> 00:43:04,000
Speaker 1: know a lot about them before I started researching for

763
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:07,000
Speaker 1: this episode, and this has really captured my mind. So

764
00:43:07,560 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 1: these are essentially chunks of solid icy material containing large

765
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:19,560
Speaker 1: amounts of methane alongside regular water molecules. So it's got

766
00:43:19,840 --> 00:43:23,440
Speaker 1: methane gas or H four, which is a naturally forming

767
00:43:23,520 --> 00:43:27,520
Speaker 1: hydro hydrocarbon. Methane is the primary constituent of so called

768
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:31,600
Speaker 1: natural gas, as well as being a byproduct of bacterial

769
00:43:31,680 --> 00:43:35,200
Speaker 1: decomposition of organic matter that gets buried down in the

770
00:43:35,239 --> 00:43:39,040
Speaker 1: sediment at the bottom of the ocean, and pockets of

771
00:43:39,160 --> 00:43:42,840
Speaker 1: natural gas underneath the modern sea floor, or just generally

772
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:45,600
Speaker 1: any methane content in the sediment or the or the

773
00:43:45,640 --> 00:43:50,120
Speaker 1: bedrock below the ocean. Sometimes the methane in these pockets

774
00:43:50,200 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 1: get exposed so that gas can escape up through little

775
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:56,640
Speaker 1: holes or rifts in the in the sea floor and

776
00:43:56,719 --> 00:44:01,759
Speaker 1: float away. But sometimes, under the right conditions, methane that

777
00:44:01,920 --> 00:44:05,840
Speaker 1: escapes from these pockets does not just float away. Sometimes,

778
00:44:05,920 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 1: because of very high pressure at the bottom of the

779
00:44:09,080 --> 00:44:13,480
Speaker 1: water column and extreme cold in the deep ocean, the

780
00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:18,360
Speaker 1: methane gas becomes trapped along with water ice in chunks

781
00:44:18,480 --> 00:44:23,400
Speaker 1: of this strange frozen solid. These are methane hydrates, and

782
00:44:23,480 --> 00:44:26,600
Speaker 1: to be clear, the name is a little bit misleading

783
00:44:26,640 --> 00:44:30,839
Speaker 1: because methane hydrates are actually not a new chemical compound

784
00:44:31,480 --> 00:44:35,919
Speaker 1: joining water molecules and methane molecules with chemical bonds. Rather,

785
00:44:36,280 --> 00:44:40,279
Speaker 1: methane hydrates are what's known in chemistry technically as a

786
00:44:40,520 --> 00:44:44,200
Speaker 1: class rate, which is a composite in which you've got

787
00:44:44,239 --> 00:44:47,560
Speaker 1: molecules of one kind of substance, in this case methane,

788
00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 1: that are physically trapped within the crystal structure of another

789
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:56,040
Speaker 1: type of substance, in this case water ice. So little

790
00:44:56,080 --> 00:45:00,760
Speaker 1: molecules of methane stuck within a lattice structure of water ice.

791
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:05,879
Speaker 1: And because of this unusual structure, methane hydrates can make

792
00:45:05,920 --> 00:45:09,439
Speaker 1: a literally flammable ice. So you can have a big

793
00:45:09,520 --> 00:45:12,680
Speaker 1: chunk of this stuff. It looked pretty much like regular ice.

794
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:14,480
Speaker 1: You can set it in a dish on a table,

795
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:16,960
Speaker 1: but if you hold a match up to it, this

796
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:21,200
Speaker 1: is ice which will catch on fire and burn, and

797
00:45:21,280 --> 00:45:26,439
Speaker 1: for this reason, methane hydrates are sometimes called fire ice. Now,

798
00:45:26,440 --> 00:45:29,760
Speaker 1: it's generally believed today that large amounts of solid methane

799
00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:34,399
Speaker 1: hydrates lie buried in formations underneath the seafloor all around

800
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:38,720
Speaker 1: the world, though there's debate about exactly how much. According

801
00:45:38,760 --> 00:45:42,239
Speaker 1: to a range I found given on a page by

802
00:45:42,239 --> 00:45:45,000
Speaker 1: the U. S Department of Energy Fossil Energy and Carbon

803
00:45:45,080 --> 00:45:48,840
Speaker 1: Management site, there could be anywhere from two hundred and

804
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:53,040
Speaker 1: fifty thousand trillion cubic feet of methane locked up in

805
00:45:53,160 --> 00:45:56,359
Speaker 1: hydrates around the world, from that two d fifty all

806
00:45:56,400 --> 00:46:00,279
Speaker 1: the way up to seven hundred thousand trillion cubic feat

807
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 1: and these hydrates contain a really dense concentration of hydrocarbons.

808
00:46:05,880 --> 00:46:08,239
Speaker 1: A claim I've seen cited in a number of sources

809
00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:12,640
Speaker 1: is that one cubic meter of methane hydrate would typically

810
00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:18,040
Speaker 1: contain a hundred and sixty four cubic meters of methane gas.

811
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:21,799
Speaker 1: So a very small volume of this solid material, this

812
00:46:22,040 --> 00:46:26,120
Speaker 1: icy stuff, the hydrate, if disrupted, will potentially release a

813
00:46:26,160 --> 00:46:29,560
Speaker 1: ton of gas, which of course is one reason that

814
00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:32,480
Speaker 1: methane hydrates have people who think about climate change a

815
00:46:32,520 --> 00:46:36,200
Speaker 1: little bit concerned, because it seems that there's actually a

816
00:46:36,239 --> 00:46:41,200
Speaker 1: significant amount of potential greenhouse gases that could be released

817
00:46:41,200 --> 00:46:44,800
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere locked up in these solid icy forms,

818
00:46:44,840 --> 00:46:48,200
Speaker 1: and if something causes these solids to melt, a lot

819
00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:51,520
Speaker 1: more stuff can be released into the atmosphere. But anyway,

820
00:46:51,719 --> 00:46:54,960
Speaker 1: so these methane hydrates exist in these you know, rocky

821
00:46:55,120 --> 00:46:57,680
Speaker 1: icy formations under the CEA floor, but they can also

822
00:46:57,880 --> 00:47:03,239
Speaker 1: form spontaneously when methane and very cold water mix under

823
00:47:03,320 --> 00:47:06,000
Speaker 1: high pressure, like at the bottom of the ocean. So

824
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:08,400
Speaker 1: coming back to this video, I was talking about the

825
00:47:08,480 --> 00:47:12,200
Speaker 1: video captured by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute team

826
00:47:12,280 --> 00:47:16,320
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven. So they were doing a survey

827
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:18,920
Speaker 1: for of these methane hydrates and oil seeps at a

828
00:47:19,040 --> 00:47:23,160
Speaker 1: depth of about one two hundred and sixty meters, and

829
00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:25,960
Speaker 1: the team came across a rift in the sea floor

830
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:29,800
Speaker 1: that was producing this steady little trickle of bubbles rising

831
00:47:29,840 --> 00:47:33,600
Speaker 1: towards the surface. And while the researchers were looking at

832
00:47:33,640 --> 00:47:37,480
Speaker 1: this stream of bubbles, suddenly, hey, here comes a crab.

833
00:47:37,560 --> 00:47:41,560
Speaker 1: It just there's a crab coming into frame, and the

834
00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:44,200
Speaker 1: narrator of the video suggests that the crab may have

835
00:47:44,360 --> 00:47:47,880
Speaker 1: been attracted by the pulsing in the water column at

836
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:50,920
Speaker 1: the side of the gas vent. But whatever the reason,

837
00:47:51,480 --> 00:47:55,040
Speaker 1: this crab comes ambling over. It's walking along the bottom,

838
00:47:55,080 --> 00:47:57,080
Speaker 1: and then it comes right up to the hole in

839
00:47:57,120 --> 00:47:59,239
Speaker 1: the ocean floor that the bubbles are coming out of.

840
00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:02,759
Speaker 1: And then, in the first of a series of real

841
00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:06,520
Speaker 1: awe buddy moments, it reaches out at the stream of

842
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:10,600
Speaker 1: bubbles with its claws. It's trying to grab them, very

843
00:48:10,640 --> 00:48:15,360
Speaker 1: like you know, dog dog chasing its tail behavior. Presumably

844
00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:18,400
Speaker 1: it thinks that the movement in the water indicates some

845
00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:21,759
Speaker 1: kind of potential prey or other food source. And you

846
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:25,520
Speaker 1: see it repeatedly lunge at the bubble tower with its claws,

847
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:28,040
Speaker 1: but of course there's nothing to grab, so it just

848
00:48:28,080 --> 00:48:31,680
Speaker 1: sort of hugs the bubble jets several times. But then

849
00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:35,160
Speaker 1: from here things start getting weirder, because again, what are

850
00:48:35,200 --> 00:48:39,200
Speaker 1: these bubbles their methane and what can potentially happen to

851
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:42,280
Speaker 1: methane at this depth and temperature When mixed with water,

852
00:48:42,640 --> 00:48:45,440
Speaker 1: it can turn into methane hydrates. So the narrator of

853
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:49,120
Speaker 1: this video explains that the methane gas bubbles rapidly form

854
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:53,080
Speaker 1: into solid pieces of methane hydrate as they stick to

855
00:48:53,160 --> 00:48:56,480
Speaker 1: the crabs for limbs, So it's you know, reaching out

856
00:48:56,520 --> 00:48:59,399
Speaker 1: to grab the methane bubbles. It thinks their food. Then

857
00:48:59,600 --> 00:49:03,800
Speaker 1: they the bubbles are freezing into a coating of fire

858
00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:08,200
Speaker 1: ice on this crabs clause and then trying to explain

859
00:49:08,280 --> 00:49:12,000
Speaker 1: what happens next, the narrator of this video hypothesizes that

860
00:49:12,080 --> 00:49:16,360
Speaker 1: the chemical reaction that transforms the methane gas into the

861
00:49:16,520 --> 00:49:20,400
Speaker 1: solid chunks of methane hydrate uh quote may have given

862
00:49:20,400 --> 00:49:25,560
Speaker 1: the sensation of something slightly warm and mushy. Uh So.

863
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:28,719
Speaker 1: I guess this is just supposition on on the researchers part,

864
00:49:28,800 --> 00:49:34,200
Speaker 1: But maybe what they're suggesting here is that the crab thinks, oh,

865
00:49:34,239 --> 00:49:38,000
Speaker 1: I've got some kind of potentially delicious organic goo, maybe

866
00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:40,279
Speaker 1: from a dead whale carcass or something, and it's all

867
00:49:40,280 --> 00:49:43,160
Speaker 1: over my claws now. So of course, when in doubt

868
00:49:43,200 --> 00:49:46,000
Speaker 1: tried out. You know, better eat it and see if

869
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:49,000
Speaker 1: it's good. So the crab begins to try to eat

870
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:52,920
Speaker 1: the methane hydrate off of its own claws, and this

871
00:49:53,000 --> 00:49:57,240
Speaker 1: goes very poorly because the hydrate essentially freezes the crabs

872
00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:00,759
Speaker 1: mouth parts or mandibles, which rem finds me that thing

873
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:03,520
Speaker 1: where you know, you stick your tongue to a frozen flagpole,

874
00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 1: like in that Christmas movie, except I guess here the

875
00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:10,239
Speaker 1: flagpole would be like stuck to your own mouth and

876
00:50:10,320 --> 00:50:13,800
Speaker 1: it would be coming along with you. And the narrator

877
00:50:13,840 --> 00:50:16,120
Speaker 1: of the video actually describes it as quote a milk

878
00:50:16,280 --> 00:50:19,680
Speaker 1: mustache of solid hydrate. Well, now I'm beginning I'm growing

879
00:50:19,680 --> 00:50:21,759
Speaker 1: worried for this crab. This that is that this has

880
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:24,359
Speaker 1: really taken a turn. I know, it went from like

881
00:50:24,680 --> 00:50:26,879
Speaker 1: kind of cute and bumbling to like, oh no, what's

882
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:29,800
Speaker 1: going to happen to this crab's mouth? Uh? And apparently

883
00:50:29,800 --> 00:50:32,480
Speaker 1: the crab does whatever it's feeling. It does not like

884
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:34,719
Speaker 1: it at all, so it starts trying to use its

885
00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:38,400
Speaker 1: claws to remove the frozen methane coating from its mouth,

886
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:41,799
Speaker 1: and you can see it's scraping at the solid white

887
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:44,800
Speaker 1: massive hydrate with the tips of its of its claws

888
00:50:45,280 --> 00:50:50,120
Speaker 1: while shedding flakes of it into the surrounding water. And unfortunately,

889
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:52,680
Speaker 1: I do not know the answer to the question did

890
00:50:52,719 --> 00:50:55,239
Speaker 1: the crab ever get its mouth on frozen? I I

891
00:50:55,280 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 1: hope so, but the researchers do not have an answer

892
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:02,920
Speaker 1: to offer on this up jecked. On the pessimistic side,

893
00:51:03,040 --> 00:51:06,600
Speaker 1: the narrator claims that pure methane hydrate is twenty times

894
00:51:06,600 --> 00:51:10,320
Speaker 1: harder than regular water ice, though I couldn't find independent

895
00:51:10,360 --> 00:51:13,880
Speaker 1: corroboration of that fact. But on the plus side, that

896
00:51:14,040 --> 00:51:16,000
Speaker 1: like you can see in the video that the crab

897
00:51:16,080 --> 00:51:18,680
Speaker 1: is doing a decent job scraping pieces of it off,

898
00:51:18,719 --> 00:51:21,000
Speaker 1: Like you can see the flakes just coming off and

899
00:51:21,040 --> 00:51:24,560
Speaker 1: floating up into the water. So I'm gonna say with crabs,

900
00:51:24,600 --> 00:51:27,200
Speaker 1: many things are possible, maybe all things are possible. And

901
00:51:27,440 --> 00:51:30,360
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that it really just it. It scraped

902
00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:33,120
Speaker 1: and scraped and scraped with those uh, those spiny tips

903
00:51:33,200 --> 00:51:36,040
Speaker 1: until until it got its mouth parts free and went

904
00:51:36,080 --> 00:51:40,720
Speaker 1: on to to scavenge many a human corpse. But anyway,

905
00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:43,560
Speaker 1: I mean, so this is on top of being just

906
00:51:43,640 --> 00:51:46,680
Speaker 1: a strange and interesting example of a crab eating something

907
00:51:46,719 --> 00:51:49,680
Speaker 1: that was not food, because you know, I think anybody

908
00:51:49,719 --> 00:51:52,480
Speaker 1: who has a dog will recognize that a lot of

909
00:51:52,520 --> 00:51:55,400
Speaker 1: animals have the impulse of like if if something is

910
00:51:55,480 --> 00:51:58,880
Speaker 1: ambiguously presenting as maybe food, might as well put it

911
00:51:58,880 --> 00:52:01,560
Speaker 1: in the mouth and give it a try. But on

912
00:52:01,640 --> 00:52:03,880
Speaker 1: top of that, it also shows an interesting thing that

913
00:52:03,920 --> 00:52:07,360
Speaker 1: we don't usually think about being land levers, which is

914
00:52:07,640 --> 00:52:12,000
Speaker 1: the role of naturally forming hydrocarbons as a part of

915
00:52:12,040 --> 00:52:15,479
Speaker 1: the environment that animals would have to interact with every day,

916
00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:18,440
Speaker 1: you know, on on the sea floor. There were actually

917
00:52:18,480 --> 00:52:23,440
Speaker 1: all kinds of ways that organisms regularly interact with I

918
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:26,040
Speaker 1: don't know what you might call, you know, the constituents

919
00:52:26,080 --> 00:52:29,799
Speaker 1: of the deep earth, uh, from from the ecosystems that

920
00:52:29,840 --> 00:52:35,040
Speaker 1: form around hydrothermal vents, to these weird interactions between animals

921
00:52:35,080 --> 00:52:38,400
Speaker 1: and methane hydrates from under the under the ground or

922
00:52:38,480 --> 00:52:42,200
Speaker 1: under the sea floor. Obviously, for the crab in this video,

923
00:52:42,440 --> 00:52:46,359
Speaker 1: this was at least a very uh frustrating and unfortunate

924
00:52:46,520 --> 00:52:50,520
Speaker 1: random encounter, but some animals actually have a much closer

925
00:52:50,560 --> 00:52:55,960
Speaker 1: and more dedicated evolutionary relationship with these same substances. With

926
00:52:56,080 --> 00:53:00,920
Speaker 1: deep sea hydrates. Gas hydrates like methane hydrate they're actually

927
00:53:01,120 --> 00:53:05,319
Speaker 1: marine biological communities that appear in some way to depend

928
00:53:05,520 --> 00:53:09,879
Speaker 1: on methane hydrates for their energy needs. And just one

929
00:53:09,880 --> 00:53:12,960
Speaker 1: example I wanted to mention I found described in a

930
00:53:13,000 --> 00:53:16,319
Speaker 1: paper from published in the year two thousand and uh

931
00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:20,759
Speaker 1: nat your vissenshaften Um by a cr fisher at all

932
00:53:21,160 --> 00:53:25,280
Speaker 1: called methane ice worms hes e O SKA methanic coola

933
00:53:25,440 --> 00:53:29,840
Speaker 1: colonizing fossil fuel reserves and Rob I've got an image

934
00:53:29,880 --> 00:53:31,640
Speaker 1: for you to look at while I described this here.

935
00:53:31,719 --> 00:53:35,080
Speaker 1: But so in this case, the story behind this discovery

936
00:53:35,160 --> 00:53:38,760
Speaker 1: was that a bunch of researchers were conducting an exploratory

937
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:42,120
Speaker 1: dive with a miniature submarine in the Gulf of Mexico

938
00:53:42,200 --> 00:53:45,680
Speaker 1: along the seafloor at a depth of five and forty meters.

939
00:53:45,719 --> 00:53:49,239
Speaker 1: I guess this was in the late nineties sometime, and

940
00:53:49,280 --> 00:53:53,279
Speaker 1: they came across a large gas hydrate, a chunk of

941
00:53:53,320 --> 00:53:56,480
Speaker 1: this stuff, the fire ice that was they said about

942
00:53:56,520 --> 00:54:00,120
Speaker 1: one meter thick and two meters in diameter, and they

943
00:54:00,120 --> 00:54:02,400
Speaker 1: said it had recently breached the sea floor. So I

944
00:54:02,400 --> 00:54:05,520
Speaker 1: guess this has been This had been some subsurface for

945
00:54:05,560 --> 00:54:08,240
Speaker 1: a long time, and for some reason it had recently

946
00:54:08,280 --> 00:54:11,279
Speaker 1: been you know, berthed up from the bottom of the

947
00:54:11,320 --> 00:54:14,279
Speaker 1: ocean and was now exposed, and this was a big

948
00:54:14,280 --> 00:54:17,279
Speaker 1: old chunk of this stuff. And then the authors write

949
00:54:17,280 --> 00:54:21,240
Speaker 1: in their abstract quote two distinct color bands of hydrate

950
00:54:21,280 --> 00:54:25,520
Speaker 1: were present in the same mound, and the entire exposed

951
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:30,160
Speaker 1: surface of the hydrate was infested with two to four

952
00:54:30,280 --> 00:54:34,840
Speaker 1: centimeter long worms, since described as a new species, and

953
00:54:34,880 --> 00:54:39,279
Speaker 1: they said the density of the worms reached individuals for

954
00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:44,440
Speaker 1: every square meter. So this was a previously unknown type

955
00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:47,840
Speaker 1: of poly cute worm that appeared to make a habitat

956
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:51,640
Speaker 1: out of these gas hydrates. It was originally called uh

957
00:54:51,640 --> 00:54:54,560
Speaker 1: hesio ska methanic cola. I think now it has a

958
00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:57,239
Speaker 1: different name. I think now the genus is uh sear

959
00:54:57,360 --> 00:55:00,120
Speaker 1: so s i r s o e so sears so

960
00:55:00,400 --> 00:55:05,280
Speaker 1: methanic cola uh so. This would obviously raise the question,

961
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:08,440
Speaker 1: if you live around gas hydrates at the bottom of

962
00:55:08,480 --> 00:55:10,759
Speaker 1: the ocean, what do you eat? How do you make

963
00:55:10,800 --> 00:55:15,320
Speaker 1: a living well. Tissue samples were consistent with the worms

964
00:55:15,400 --> 00:55:20,920
Speaker 1: acquiring nutrition from a chemo autotrophic organism. That would mean

965
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:25,359
Speaker 1: an organism that makes its own energy by consuming geologic

966
00:55:25,440 --> 00:55:29,960
Speaker 1: chemicals rather than than by sunlight. Like a photosynthetic organism would.

967
00:55:30,440 --> 00:55:32,520
Speaker 1: And the authors in this study weren't able to prove

968
00:55:32,520 --> 00:55:37,120
Speaker 1: anything conclusively, but they hypothesized that these worms, these new worms,

969
00:55:37,120 --> 00:55:43,120
Speaker 1: were surviving by eating chemosynthetic bacteria that colonized the surface

970
00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:46,360
Speaker 1: of the gas hydrates. So there would be bacteria that

971
00:55:46,360 --> 00:55:49,480
Speaker 1: that form mats on the surface of these frozen methane

972
00:55:49,560 --> 00:55:55,000
Speaker 1: hydrates that would metabolize chemicals contained within them in order

973
00:55:55,080 --> 00:55:57,680
Speaker 1: for the bacteria to survive, and then the worms would

974
00:55:57,719 --> 00:56:01,280
Speaker 1: eat the bacterial mats. And then the author's right quote

975
00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:04,560
Speaker 1: the activities of the polykey it's grazing on the hydrate

976
00:56:04,640 --> 00:56:08,839
Speaker 1: bacteria and supplying oxygen to their habitats appears to contribute

977
00:56:08,840 --> 00:56:13,000
Speaker 1: to the dissolution of hydrates in surface sediments. So I

978
00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:15,279
Speaker 1: guess this would be one thing that explains how these

979
00:56:15,320 --> 00:56:18,680
Speaker 1: hydrates disappear over time once they're exposed on the bottom

980
00:56:18,719 --> 00:56:22,000
Speaker 1: of the ocean. But Rob, I've also attached to an

981
00:56:22,040 --> 00:56:24,360
Speaker 1: image for you to look at. That's uh. I believe

982
00:56:24,440 --> 00:56:28,680
Speaker 1: this is a micrograph close up of the face of

983
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:31,120
Speaker 1: one of these polycy worms that lives on the hydrate.

984
00:56:31,640 --> 00:56:34,359
Speaker 1: It is absolutely terrifying. It looks like some sort of

985
00:56:34,400 --> 00:56:37,920
Speaker 1: a Dark Destroyer unleashed from a shadows. It has a

986
00:56:38,000 --> 00:56:40,719
Speaker 1: kind of bristling fuzziness which you would think would make

987
00:56:40,760 --> 00:56:43,960
Speaker 1: it a little more cuddly, but actually makes it worse. Yeah,

988
00:56:44,120 --> 00:56:46,279
Speaker 1: though those fibers are not for cuddling, you can tell.

989
00:56:46,640 --> 00:56:48,880
Speaker 1: And it looks like it Edges has this enormous mouth

990
00:56:48,960 --> 00:56:53,600
Speaker 1: to like just suck down dreams. Very very true. And yeah,

991
00:56:53,680 --> 00:56:55,800
Speaker 1: it's mouth, I would say it's mouth actually looks like

992
00:56:55,920 --> 00:56:59,680
Speaker 1: you ever see those um endoscopic images of of the

993
00:56:59,760 --> 00:57:04,560
Speaker 1: lay Ranks or the voice box. Yeah, it also reminds

994
00:57:04,600 --> 00:57:06,480
Speaker 1: me it has the mouth of some of the more

995
00:57:06,560 --> 00:57:09,640
Speaker 1: terrifying muppets. I think you know where their mouth is

996
00:57:09,680 --> 00:57:12,919
Speaker 1: kind of articulated bad, Yes, like the the hip pip

997
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:15,640
Speaker 1: Aliens that has that kind of thing going on. Oh god,

998
00:57:15,800 --> 00:57:19,480
Speaker 1: the Yippi Apps are so evil. All right, Well, I

999
00:57:19,520 --> 00:57:20,960
Speaker 1: think we're gonna have to call it right there for

1000
00:57:21,040 --> 00:57:23,760
Speaker 1: part one, but we will definitely be back next time

1001
00:57:23,800 --> 00:57:27,080
Speaker 1: to continue the crab feast. What will happen when crabs

1002
00:57:27,120 --> 00:57:30,440
Speaker 1: put other things in their mouths while their mouths freeze?

1003
00:57:31,000 --> 00:57:33,800
Speaker 1: Will they find it delicious? Um? You'll just have to

1004
00:57:33,840 --> 00:57:36,600
Speaker 1: tune in to find out the world is a buffet

1005
00:57:36,640 --> 00:57:42,520
Speaker 1: and the customers are crabs all right? Uh? In the meantime, yes,

1006
00:57:42,600 --> 00:57:45,800
Speaker 1: certainly right in let us know where your thoughts are

1007
00:57:45,840 --> 00:57:49,120
Speaker 1: in the crabs that we discussed in this episode. Um.

1008
00:57:49,160 --> 00:57:51,000
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, you can find other episodes of

1009
00:57:51,000 --> 00:57:53,200
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind in the Stuff to Blow

1010
00:57:53,240 --> 00:57:56,080
Speaker 1: your Mind podcast feed, which you will find wherever you

1011
00:57:56,120 --> 00:57:59,520
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we have core

1012
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:02,520
Speaker 1: episode modes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. On Monday's

1013
00:58:02,520 --> 00:58:05,480
Speaker 1: we have listener mail. On Wednesdays we have artifact episodes,

1014
00:58:05,520 --> 00:58:07,400
Speaker 1: and on Friday we have Weird How Cinema. That's our

1015
00:58:07,440 --> 00:58:10,280
Speaker 1: time to set aside most serious concerns and talk about

1016
00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:13,200
Speaker 1: a weird movie. Huge thanks as always to our wonderful

1017
00:58:13,240 --> 00:58:16,480
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to

1018
00:58:16,520 --> 00:58:18,880
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode

1019
00:58:18,960 --> 00:58:21,040
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

1020
00:58:21,160 --> 00:58:23,760
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact

1021
00:58:23,840 --> 00:58:33,880
Speaker 1: at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to

1022
00:58:33,880 --> 00:58:36,400
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind It's production of I Heart Radio. For

1023
00:58:36,520 --> 00:58:39,280
Speaker 1: more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,

1024
00:58:39,440 --> 00:58:54,760
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.

1025
00:59:00,000 --> 00:59:00,040
Speaker 1: No