Speaker 1: My Day. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna be talking about crabs.
Speaker 1: I think this will be the first episode in a
Speaker 1: in a series that we're doing here at least two
Speaker 1: parts to this, because the crabs are ravenous and we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking all about crabs eating things. You know,
Speaker 1: this is kind of a holiday tradition for us. So
Speaker 1: I figured how many years ago it was that we did, uh,
Speaker 1: we did Christmas Crabs. We talked about the Crabs of
Speaker 1: Christmas Island as our Christmas episode and and so it
Speaker 1: feels appropriate that as we enter into the holiday season
Speaker 1: here with in November and December, that we should return
Speaker 1: to the world of crabs and the feasts that crabs
Speaker 1: engage in. Have you ever noticed how the crabs come
Speaker 1: earlier every year? At least it feels that way. But yes,
Speaker 1: anyway that this will be a feast day of an episode,
Speaker 1: because will all be about crabs feasting sometimes things feasting
Speaker 1: on crabs, mostly what crabs themselves feast on. It's funny
Speaker 1: how crabs are are a natural source of feasting related content. Uh, Rob,
Speaker 1: I I think you saw my note about this beforehand,
Speaker 1: but I discovered the strangest Google results phenomenon before we
Speaker 1: came in here. What I found out earlier today was
Speaker 1: that when I do a Google search for crabs, it's
Speaker 1: five letter word crabs. You'd think the first result would
Speaker 1: be what like Wikipedia page for this animal, but no,
Speaker 1: the first result is seafood restaurants featuring crabs. They're trying
Speaker 1: to sell me some crab legs and drawn butter. And
Speaker 1: then the second result is the is like a health
Speaker 1: node about pubic lice. And then finally the third thing
Speaker 1: and the result is about the actual animals, the decapod crustaceans. Well, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: after you mentioned this, I had to try it out
Speaker 1: for myself, and granted, and I'm not going in like
Speaker 1: fresh you know, I do use Google quite a bit. Um.
Speaker 1: Uh So for me, when I did a search for
Speaker 1: crabs c R A B s um, the number one
Speaker 1: hit is sponsored seafood content, but then it's the wiki
Speaker 1: for the decapod crustaceans, and then it's pubic lice in
Speaker 1: number at number three. Um. And then it's more pubic lice,
Speaker 1: and then it's some stuff about the crab nebula I
Speaker 1: think video content about the crab nebula uh, and then
Speaker 1: it's back to pubic lice once more, before rounding out
Speaker 1: page one search results with the Britannica dot com article
Speaker 1: about decapod crustaceans. Okay, so as our top three go,
Speaker 1: basically Google just thinks I'm going to be more interested
Speaker 1: in uh in in the lice than you are. I
Speaker 1: have no idea, I mean it could. I mean we
Speaker 1: were both probably searching for crabs all morning um and
Speaker 1: and perhaps you know, in days before as well. So
Speaker 1: it seems like, I mean, I don't know how these
Speaker 1: algorithms work, but it seems like they would have gotten
Speaker 1: into their robotic minds that these are gentlemen who are
Speaker 1: interested in decapod us stations and we should serve them
Speaker 1: up even more. It guy, I don't know, it's all
Speaker 1: mysteries in there. Who knows the mind of the machine
Speaker 1: crabs that that order all those results for us? Um?
Speaker 1: But I wanted to come back to uh this uh
Speaker 1: image and amber. So there's a study that was just
Speaker 1: published in Science Advances earlier this year by Javier Luquay
Speaker 1: at all and it was called Crab and Amber reveals
Speaker 1: an early colonization of non marine environments during the Cretaceous.
Speaker 1: So this discovery concerns a fossil found in a piece
Speaker 1: of amber mind in modern day me and Mar dating
Speaker 1: back roughly a hundred million years or so, so squarely
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Cretaceous period, containing a remarkably
Speaker 1: well preserved specimen of a crab bearing the author's note,
Speaker 1: large compound eyes, delicate mouthparts, and even gills. Basically, it's
Speaker 1: wholly intact. The whole thing is in there. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: quite impressive looking in the way that it is um
Speaker 1: its body. It's position too, it looks like it is
Speaker 1: like throwing up its clause and defensive position that we've
Speaker 1: all seen and I think, or if you haven't seen
Speaker 1: it in person, you've probably seen a picture of it,
Speaker 1: of a crab like on the beach saying stand back, mammal,
Speaker 1: do not make me pinch you. Um. So it's as
Speaker 1: if through you know, across uh, this is vast stretch
Speaker 1: of time, the crab is warning us to stay back
Speaker 1: with such ferocity that the very forces of geology like
Speaker 1: conspired to preserve this this uh, this stance it's doing.
Speaker 1: And yeah, maybe I maybe I sound silly, but I
Speaker 1: give this image five out of five coal wal hoads.
Speaker 1: I am profoundly stirred by this crab trapped in amber.
Speaker 1: And and not just because it you know, it looks
Speaker 1: like that haunting mosquito and amber prop from Jurassic Park. Um.
Speaker 1: But but there's something a little bit more to this too,
Speaker 1: because it raises these questions like, how did a crab
Speaker 1: dred million years ago get stuck in tree resin to
Speaker 1: become part of a fossilized piece of amber. We don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to this, but the researchers hypothesized, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this was a crab that lived a partially arboreal lifestyle.
Speaker 1: There are crabs today that climb trees as part of
Speaker 1: their lifestyle, so maybe this crab was climbing trees for
Speaker 1: some reason. Uh and uh, and and maybe it's also
Speaker 1: just because it causes you to realize that crabs existed
Speaker 1: and we're already beginning to come out of the oceans
Speaker 1: to move inland from the beaches a hundred million years
Speaker 1: ago when dinosaurs were at their apex. And I always
Speaker 1: love those realization moments where you have like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: animals of this kind and this kind actually did live
Speaker 1: alongside one another terrestrial dinosaurs and terrestrial or semi terrestrial
Speaker 1: crabs and Robert, I think you'll be very familiar with
Speaker 1: the the the did they fight mindset. Right as soon
Speaker 1: as you imagine that, the my sort of like eight
Speaker 1: year old boys rain starts going did they ever fight
Speaker 1: each other? Dinosaurs versus crabs? I don't know how much
Speaker 1: of a fight that would have been, but I guess
Speaker 1: more more relevantly I could say, did they ever eat
Speaker 1: one another? And? Uh, you actually gotta give you credit
Speaker 1: because you turned up the source on this for the
Speaker 1: copper light study that found a pretty good case that yes,
Speaker 1: at least the eating was going one way. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the details of this I was surprised at because you know,
Speaker 1: not not to say that that some like smaller, you know,
Speaker 1: beachcombing dinosaur wasn't also hunting and gobbling up crabs. But
Speaker 1: the evidence here points to a different mode of consumption. Right.
Speaker 1: So this is a study published in Scientific Reports in UH.
Speaker 1: The lead author was a Professor Karen Chin, who is
Speaker 1: Curator of Paleontology at Colorado University Boulders Museum of Natural History.
Speaker 1: And uh so this was by by chin Feldman and
Speaker 1: Tashman called consumpt of Crustaceans by mega herbivorous Dinosaurs, dietary flexibility,
Speaker 1: and dinosaur life history strategies. So this is a copper
Speaker 1: light study, and you've gotta love a copper light study.
Speaker 1: Copper light, of course, is fossilized animal dung. This is
Speaker 1: dung that has become a mineral of the Earth. And
Speaker 1: the top line on this is that, uh collections of
Speaker 1: fossilized dinosaur feces from seventy five million years ago found
Speaker 1: in modern day Montana revealed that some giant herbivorous dinosaurs
Speaker 1: weren't always strictly herbivorous. Now, this would not be the
Speaker 1: first time a subject like this has come up on
Speaker 1: the show before. I think it was in our episodes
Speaker 1: on the Minotaur that we talked about evidence of bovines
Speaker 1: cows and bulls and related animals sometimes eating flesh and
Speaker 1: in addition to their mostly vegetable diets. But it looks
Speaker 1: like maybe something similar was going on with giant herbivorous dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: So these feces probably belonged to hadrosaur wars or the
Speaker 1: duck build dinosaurs. And it looks from the contents of
Speaker 1: these copper lights like these giant herbivores sometimes would supplement
Speaker 1: their vegetable diets by eating rotten wood and crustaceans. You
Speaker 1: can tell by these uh these remains preserved in the
Speaker 1: fossilized dung, which are full of wood, fiber and crustacean shells. Now, again,
Speaker 1: this this raises these wonderful questions like how did this happen? Why?
Speaker 1: And you could imagine it's possibly some kind of accident.
Speaker 1: Maybe a duck build dinosaur is eating a rotten log
Speaker 1: for some reason, trying to get some kind of nutrients
Speaker 1: from all this rough rotten wood, and the rotten log
Speaker 1: just happens to be full of crabs. But to come
Speaker 1: back against that, against the accident hypothesis, I just want
Speaker 1: to read briefly from the press release describing this study
Speaker 1: quote the size of the crustacean shell bits in the
Speaker 1: copper lights indicate the crustaceans were at least two inches
Speaker 1: in length and perhaps larger UH. And this is according
Speaker 1: to the lead author Karen Chin. Individual crustaceans comprised from
Speaker 1: twenty six of the width of a common had resour beak,
Speaker 1: suggesting it was unlikely that crustaceans were unwittingly swallowed. Uh So,
Speaker 1: the idea is, it looks like whatever these crustaceans were,
Speaker 1: maybe they were crabs. We don't know for sure what
Speaker 1: they were, but there have been fossilized crab claws found
Speaker 1: from around the same area and going back even further
Speaker 1: in time. So there were crabs around. These crustacean shells
Speaker 1: could have belonged to crabs that were smashed up too
Speaker 1: much in the in the copper light to know for sure,
Speaker 1: but they could have been crabs, and they would have
Speaker 1: been big enough that it kind of seems unlikely they
Speaker 1: just accidentally went into the had resour's mouth. Seems like
Speaker 1: the hadrosour would kind of have to choose to eat
Speaker 1: the crab. Yeah, I mean, I'm also for me, it
Speaker 1: just makes me wondered, like what was the digestive system
Speaker 1: of a hadrosaur, Like it was just it seems like
Speaker 1: an industrial processing plant, you know, it's just rotten wood. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's all these these are these these fairly large like
Speaker 1: whole crustaceans and or their shells embedded in it and
Speaker 1: you just you just eat that down because you're still hungry.
Speaker 1: And it may not have been about just obtaining raw
Speaker 1: calories like they may have been searching for a specific
Speaker 1: nutrient like we see in some other cases of otherwise
Speaker 1: herbivorous animals sometimes eating say bones or something, where they're
Speaker 1: looking out certain types of minerals, maybe calcium or something.
Speaker 1: It could have been the case that maybe eating eating
Speaker 1: crustaceans like crabs for the hadrosaurs was linked to the
Speaker 1: reproductive cycle. They may have been seeking to bulk up
Speaker 1: on calcium or something. We don't know though, but oh
Speaker 1: whatever the answer there, I just I love it so
Speaker 1: mega herbivorous or so called herbivorous dinosaurs eating crabs or
Speaker 1: crab like crustaceans seventy five million years ago and crabs
Speaker 1: a hundred million years ago getting frozen in amber for
Speaker 1: all of time. Uh, it just it just fills my
Speaker 1: you know, I got butter flies under my skin, all
Speaker 1: over my limbs. It's like this makes me so happy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean for the crabs though this is just another
Speaker 1: couple of pages in the history of the crab planet.
Speaker 1: Well right, because it all it raises the question going
Speaker 1: the other way, the one we're saying we didn't know
Speaker 1: if we could answer. But so it looks like some
Speaker 1: dinosaurs in some cases eight crabs or crab like animals,
Speaker 1: other crustaceans. But the other question would be did crabs
Speaker 1: ever eat dinosaurs? I don't know about you. I could
Speaker 1: not find anything, any evidence to directly address that question.
Speaker 1: As far as I know, there is no physical evidence
Speaker 1: anybody is aware of, uh to settle this issue. But
Speaker 1: I would say, if we can't find an answer to
Speaker 1: the question, based on everything else we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about in the series, I think I would argue that
Speaker 1: in the absence of any evidence, our default assumption should
Speaker 1: be yes. I believe so. I think based on what
Speaker 1: we know about the nature of crabs in general and
Speaker 1: the sort of things they do eat, it it only
Speaker 1: makes sense that that they would they would partake of
Speaker 1: dinosaur meat if they came across it in their environment.
Speaker 1: All right, well, I say, from here on out, for
Speaker 1: the rest of the series, we're just going to be
Speaker 1: looking at crabs eating all kinds of stuff. So, uh so, Rob,
Speaker 1: if you're ready, let's let's begin the crab feast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but like, just like with human face, it's not enough
Speaker 1: to know what you're going to be eating, it's it's
Speaker 1: also about how you're going to eat, uh, you know that,
Speaker 1: So we should we should probably start there with how
Speaker 1: crabs go about, uh consuming their various feasts. Right. So,
Speaker 1: crabs are of course a a diverse subgroup of the
Speaker 1: order of decapod crustaceans. So the decapod is in having
Speaker 1: ten feet. They are crustaceans, so they're you know, creatures
Speaker 1: with an exoskeleton. In order to grow bigger, they have
Speaker 1: to molds theft to shed their hard exoskeleton and come
Speaker 1: out with a soft one, while they can rapidly increase
Speaker 1: in size and then reharden that. Crabs of course live
Speaker 1: in all kinds of environments. They originally come from the ocean,
Speaker 1: but over time and evolutionary history, like we saw with
Speaker 1: the crab preserved in amber, they started to move out
Speaker 1: away from the ocean and eventually into freshwater environments, and
Speaker 1: there are even land crabs. So as to the question
Speaker 1: of how and what do crabs normally consume, well, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different species of crabs, and some
Speaker 1: of them have different dietary specialization. So there's no one
Speaker 1: answer to that question, but if you just want to
Speaker 1: sort of be general overall, it seems like the majority
Speaker 1: of crabs are not especially picky. Uh. Many crabs appear
Speaker 1: to be omnivorous opportunists who will eat pretty much anything
Speaker 1: they can shove into their mouths, and this can include
Speaker 1: everything from vegetation just gobbling up algae and fresh plant
Speaker 1: material leaf litter to UH to eating meat of course,
Speaker 1: scavenging scavenging carry in which crabs do a lot, or
Speaker 1: just getting little bits of organic or animal detritus, to
Speaker 1: actively hunting live prey with their claws, which some crabs
Speaker 1: do so as to diet. Crabs are all over the map.
Speaker 1: But the next thing I wanted to mention this was
Speaker 1: new information to me when when I was getting ready
Speaker 1: for this episode. So animal bodies, you know, they've usually
Speaker 1: got some kind of special equipment to help them extract
Speaker 1: the maximum amount of nutritional value from their food, and
Speaker 1: this often involves either chemically or mechanically breaking down the
Speaker 1: food from its original form, often to increase the surface
Speaker 1: area or the ease of access to nutrients by the
Speaker 1: digestive system. So there might be some kind of chemical
Speaker 1: breakdown as well, so you know, you know, you know
Speaker 1: the equipment you've got. Humans have teeth that we chew
Speaker 1: with and that that mashes food up and to increased
Speaker 1: surface area. You've got gastric acid secreted by the cells
Speaker 1: in the lining of your stomach. But then you know
Speaker 1: they're all kinds of other strategies. Spiders will vomit digestive
Speaker 1: enzymes over and into their prey to uh sort of
Speaker 1: reduce the nutritious parts down to a fluid or mush
Speaker 1: that they can then slurp up with the mouth. And
Speaker 1: they also do have a form of chewing with their
Speaker 1: jaws what you are called chillissary. But crabs have one
Speaker 1: of the most glorious digestive aids I think I've ever
Speaker 1: read about. So if you ask the question do crabs
Speaker 1: have teeth, I think the answer would have to be
Speaker 1: yes and no in a couple of ways. So obviously
Speaker 1: crabs do not have teeth like us. Uh. They typically
Speaker 1: eat first by using their claws to tear food into
Speaker 1: small chunks before bringing it up to their mouth parts,
Speaker 1: and then they usually have a number of different moving
Speaker 1: mouth parts. These consist of um these things called maxilla heads,
Speaker 1: also known as jaw legs, which are sort of like
Speaker 1: hands within the mouth. These are are modified a little
Speaker 1: leg parts that will sort of grab bits of food
Speaker 1: and pass them inward and onward to other parts of
Speaker 1: the mouth known as the mac silly and the mandibles,
Speaker 1: which can further shred the food apart into smaller pieces
Speaker 1: that can be swallowed. But then once the food is
Speaker 1: swallow load it is inside the digestive system where the
Speaker 1: most amazing feature appears, and it's this. Crabs, along with
Speaker 1: other related crustaceans, have an organ known as a gastric mill,
Speaker 1: which is more or less teeth inside the stomach. They've
Speaker 1: got gut teeth. They can chew with the insides of
Speaker 1: their stomachs. And this is another one that really got me.
Speaker 1: This is also worth googling some pictures of if you can,
Speaker 1: because there there are some, uh some photos you can
Speaker 1: find on the Internet of like gastric mills having been
Speaker 1: extracted from the inside of a of a crabs digestive system.
Speaker 1: And they it's hard to describe how they look. They've
Speaker 1: they've got the kind of they're like a semi translucent,
Speaker 1: pinkish orange uh sci fi weapon hood. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's but it's also kind of beak like. It's very unnerving.
Speaker 1: I think, what are the interesting things about about the
Speaker 1: way of crab eats? And especially as evident if you're watching, um, say,
Speaker 1: close up video of a crab, is that there even
Speaker 1: more so with other creatures this there's this sense of
Speaker 1: meticulous um disassembly. The crab is not so much I mean,
Speaker 1: it is consuming, but it is also just uh, just
Speaker 1: taking whatever it is consuming completely apart. It is disassembling
Speaker 1: matter and putting it into itself. Well, yeah, the crab
Speaker 1: makes you think about how much how much humans actually
Speaker 1: need to use tools for the kind of disassembly that
Speaker 1: they do leading into into eating say meat or something
Speaker 1: you know. Like so, humans devote a huge amount of
Speaker 1: their technological energy over the history of time into creating
Speaker 1: like tools for butchery of food, cutting food into smaller
Speaker 1: and smaller pieces that are manageable that you can bite into,
Speaker 1: chew up and all that. The crab, they they've got
Speaker 1: their disassembly tools right there on their body. They've got
Speaker 1: the claws, they've got the maxilly and the mandibles, and
Speaker 1: then once the food's inside, they've got additional opportunities for chewing.
Speaker 1: You don't have to stop chewing once you have swallowed.
Speaker 1: So the way the gastrit mill works is that it
Speaker 1: sort of choose the food from inside the stomach by
Speaker 1: grinding it between these hard parts like plates or surfaces
Speaker 1: that are moved around by powerful gut muscles. And so
Speaker 1: while I was reading about the gas strit mill, I
Speaker 1: came across a really interesting piece of research from twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen that I just had to mention as as we're
Speaker 1: going along here, and this was by Jennifer R. A. Taylor,
Speaker 1: Maya S. Devrees, and Damian O. Elias, published in the
Speaker 1: Proceedings of the Royal Society be In in nineteen called
Speaker 1: growling from the Gut co Optation of the gastric mill
Speaker 1: for acoustic communication in ghost crabs. So the short version
Speaker 1: of this discovery is that you've got this animal, the
Speaker 1: ghost crab scientific names quadrata, and it will sometimes make
Speaker 1: a threatening sound by way of having evolved. Quote a
Speaker 1: novel stridulate action apparatus on the clause that is used
Speaker 1: during agonistic interactions. So strigulation is any sound that is
Speaker 1: made by an animal rubbing pieces of its skeleton or
Speaker 1: exoskeleton together. The very common example you can think of
Speaker 1: is the sounds made by crickets or grasshoppers. That's strigulation.
Speaker 1: They rub parts of their legs or their carapists together
Speaker 1: and that makes this chirping sound that is useful to
Speaker 1: the animal for some reason, maybe for maybe for mating,
Speaker 1: or maybe as warning signals or something. The ghost crab
Speaker 1: appears to use this strigulation of rubbing its claws as
Speaker 1: a as a warning sign A sounds like Hey, I'm threatened,
Speaker 1: I am dangerous. I've got these big claws. You do
Speaker 1: not want to get near me. But in addition to
Speaker 1: the strigulation they make with their with their claws, to
Speaker 1: quote from the abstract of this paper by tailor at
Speaker 1: all quote, but they also produce a rasping sound without
Speaker 1: their claw apparatus. We investigated the nature of these sounds
Speaker 1: and showed oh quadratta adopted a unique and redundant mode
Speaker 1: of sound production by co opting the gastric mill, the
Speaker 1: grinding teeth of the foregut. Acoustic characteristics of the sound
Speaker 1: are consistent with strigulation and are produced by both male
Speaker 1: and female crabs during aggressive interactions. Uh so, yes they
Speaker 1: are actually they can like chirp like a cricket with
Speaker 1: the grinding teeth inside their stomachs in order to have
Speaker 1: a redundant way of making this aggressive sound display that
Speaker 1: they do when they're being threatened. And the authors actually
Speaker 1: speculate as to why they would have this redundancy, why
Speaker 1: be able to make this sound with two different parts
Speaker 1: of their body. They write, quote, A key advantage of
Speaker 1: using gastri strigulation over the claw apparatus is that it
Speaker 1: provides signal while freeing up the chel a for postural
Speaker 1: display and attack readiness. So you know, basically this this
Speaker 1: allows you to have claws out to be maximally visually
Speaker 1: rettn ing and maybe maximally dangerous if a fight actually
Speaker 1: does start, while still making the grinding scary sound. So yes, anyway,
Speaker 1: crabs and related crustaceans gastric mills, the chewing doesn't have
Speaker 1: to stop once you go down the gullet. And like
Speaker 1: we said, a lot of crabs are not very picky eaters,
Speaker 1: So who knows, maybe maybe if you could be taken
Speaker 1: apart into small enough pieces, you would go down the gullet.
Speaker 1: I guess from here we're gonna start getting into the
Speaker 1: various meals of the crabs. You know, what do they
Speaker 1: use this uh, this fabulous uh equipment for? And I
Speaker 1: guess that I was thinking that one of the best
Speaker 1: places to start would be talking about crabs eating humans,
Speaker 1: because obviously that's going to be one of the most
Speaker 1: pressing questions to us the humans. Right, Sure, it eats
Speaker 1: but will it eat me? How delicious? Am I? Do
Speaker 1: I deserve to be eaten by crabs? Um? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's an understandable question. I mean, on one hand,
Speaker 1: like we are concerned with with this question with any
Speaker 1: creature on some level, you know, we have to have
Speaker 1: that that that that box checked off or or empty?
Speaker 1: Will it eat me? Is it incapable of eating me?
Speaker 1: Does it want to eat me? Uh? These are always
Speaker 1: questions that we have about other creatures in the animal kingdom,
Speaker 1: and the various horror movies and animal creature flicks that
Speaker 1: we uh we watch they don't help matters either, because,
Speaker 1: on one hand, we have our giant crab movies in
Speaker 1: which giant crabs, you know, in addition to occasionally wanting
Speaker 1: to take over the world or destroy whole cities, they
Speaker 1: want to grab people with their claws and either try
Speaker 1: to eat them or it's implied that that crab is
Speaker 1: grabbing you because it wants to eat you, or, in
Speaker 1: the case of Attack of the Crab Monsters by Roger Corman,
Speaker 1: not just eat you but also absorb your soul and
Speaker 1: intelligence in so doing. Right, But then, uh, we also
Speaker 1: have countless movies in which we see crabs scavenging, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, crawling around on the corpses of humans who
Speaker 1: have probably been dispatched by some kind of slasher or
Speaker 1: some sort of monster that it itself that it that
Speaker 1: is not concerned with eating the human. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: like a standard scene. And oh goodness. I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of specific examples, and I couldn't come up
Speaker 1: with one. But I know I've seen it over and
Speaker 1: over again. Like cut from the you have a dark
Speaker 1: scene with something spooky happening, an attack is um is
Speaker 1: shown or implied, and then it's daylight and cops are
Speaker 1: discovering a body and their crabs on it. I can
Speaker 1: think of two examples. One is in Jaws, after the
Speaker 1: initial attack attack at the beginning, when they discovered the
Speaker 1: body of the first victim on the beach, their crabs
Speaker 1: everywhere and it makes the police sound sick. Um. Second
Speaker 1: one is an even better movie. It is I Know
Speaker 1: What You Did Last Summer, in which there is a
Speaker 1: part where, uh, the nineties teen slasher movie where Jennifer
Speaker 1: Lovehughwott finds a body in the trunk of her car.
Speaker 1: She did not put it there. I think she's being
Speaker 1: messed with by a killer and it's covered in crabs
Speaker 1: that are presumably scavenging it. So yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: there are various other films. I feel like I've seen
Speaker 1: a Jellow film where there's there there crabs on a body.
Speaker 1: It's just it makes sense. They're discovering a body, put
Speaker 1: some crabs on it, um and uh, and it will
Speaker 1: make it a little a little creepier. Um and then
Speaker 1: it it You know, it does because it's like this
Speaker 1: person is not only dead, but now they are the
Speaker 1: domain of the crabs. Um. So in thinking about this, though,
Speaker 1: it reminded me of a bit of UM. I guess
Speaker 1: it's folk wisdom that I learned from my mother in law. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that is, don't eat crabs after a hurricane. Have
Speaker 1: you ever heard this before, Joe? I think maybe you
Speaker 1: and I have talked about this off Mike. Maybe, Okay,
Speaker 1: because I was. I was looking around for more on
Speaker 1: this online, and I found some sort of echoes of it,
Speaker 1: but I did not find enough on it that made
Speaker 1: me satisfied that this is not something that just originated
Speaker 1: with my mother in law or her family, or like,
Speaker 1: you know, a local area that like her parents were
Speaker 1: in or something. But I'll continue to discuss it here
Speaker 1: and certainly if anyone out there has heard the same
Speaker 1: thing or is privy to the same folk wisdom and
Speaker 1: has some insight into why it is, uh, well, obviously
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from you. But the notion
Speaker 1: here seems to be, uh that, Okay, those crabs in
Speaker 1: the wake of a hurricane, they have been feasting on
Speaker 1: the flesh of people who died in the storm, and
Speaker 1: therefore they should be avoided. Okay, I can understand that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's I guess a lot of it comes
Speaker 1: down to the idea that if these crabs have been
Speaker 1: eating humans and we eat those crabs, it's kind of
Speaker 1: cannibalism by proxy, right, Yeah, And generally we don't eat
Speaker 1: like a lot of even if we're eating meat, we're
Speaker 1: not eating carnivores or we're not eating animals that are
Speaker 1: that are eating a lot of meat. We tend to
Speaker 1: consume herbivores. Well, I mean, if you're eating seafoods, you're
Speaker 1: probably eating a lot of car Well, yes, yes, the
Speaker 1: seafood for sure. But yeah, but I also I did
Speaker 1: find some just looking around, I saw some people like
Speaker 1: asking and some of these like question websites saying is
Speaker 1: it okay to eat? Like they were kind of applying
Speaker 1: the same concern to just see life in general, like
Speaker 1: should I be concerned that the fish that I'm eating
Speaker 1: might have themselves eaten human flesh? Well, that's a sticky
Speaker 1: idea that'll get in your head. Yeah. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: decided to look into it a bit more, and I
Speaker 1: was looking. First of all, I was looking at a
Speaker 1: few different sources in uh. They included Coastal Angler magazine
Speaker 1: and also editions of the Sun Sentinel. Um And so
Speaker 1: it's worth remembering that hurricanes are destructive not only the
Speaker 1: humans and human civilization, but they also impact marine environments.
Speaker 1: This can result in extra dead sea life in the water,
Speaker 1: and that includes crabs, and this can often be due
Speaker 1: to um reduced dissolved oxygen in the water, rapid salinity changes,
Speaker 1: and violence surf and this can certainly impact crapping as
Speaker 1: a human enterprise, either by damaging the equipment that's necessary
Speaker 1: for crabbing or disrupting key crabbing locations. And this applies
Speaker 1: to other organisms as well. Um. It can you know,
Speaker 1: be especially rough on oyster seed grounds, for instance. And
Speaker 1: as far as oysters go, the other key issues related
Speaker 1: to hurricanes and other storms is flood run off from
Speaker 1: the mainland carrying various chemicals into their environment. And as
Speaker 1: oysters or filter feeders, they can pick up those chemicals um.
Speaker 1: And that can then be composed a danger to humans
Speaker 1: consuming those oysters. Uh. And of course there are other
Speaker 1: potential risks involved with eating raw shellfish as well, But
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, this doesn't really impact
Speaker 1: crabs so much. Um. But I wanted to look a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the you know, the idea of
Speaker 1: of corpse eating crabs. First of all, I wanted to
Speaker 1: sort of check my my assumptions on this and and
Speaker 1: find out well it is as true or am I
Speaker 1: just sort of learning this from movies? Do crabs want
Speaker 1: to eat human bodies? Uh? And And luckily, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of material out there in the world
Speaker 1: of Forensics UM and Biology UM. Human corps in water
Speaker 1: may be set upon by fish, water, rats, crabs, m
Speaker 1: various other creatures. According to UM, one paper was looking
Speaker 1: at by zerin er Call and Urdum Hoskuler in post
Speaker 1: mortem animal attacks on human corpses came out and so
Speaker 1: this applies to shallow water as well as deep water,
Speaker 1: where crabs will uh may even gnaw the bones that
Speaker 1: they find down there. Wo. Now, apparently some crabs are
Speaker 1: going to be more indiscriminate than others. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess you know, we have to be carefulhen we talk
Speaker 1: about crabs, because there's not just one type of crab there.
Speaker 1: They are multitude, and they all have different strategies and
Speaker 1: different environments and different temperaments. UM. I believe blue crabs
Speaker 1: in particular are often observed to scavenge human flesh and
Speaker 1: and that probably has to do again with like environments
Speaker 1: in which law enforcement or finding bodies and bodies are
Speaker 1: retrieved and uh, and that's gonna happen to be the
Speaker 1: same environment where the blue crabs are active. Another type
Speaker 1: of crab that we've talked about on the show before,
Speaker 1: the coconut crab. Uh, they seem to generally be game
Speaker 1: for for anything. So it seems like a safe assumption
Speaker 1: to say that, yes, you have given the opportunity, the
Speaker 1: coconut crab would feast on human flesh as well. But
Speaker 1: as for other species, I would say, check with your
Speaker 1: local crab. I don't know if they want to eat
Speaker 1: you or not um, And a lot of it's gonna
Speaker 1: depend on are you where that crab is, what is
Speaker 1: that crab normally eat and so forth. Now, I was
Speaker 1: also looking at an article titled Decomposition and Invertebrate Colonization
Speaker 1: of Cadavers in Coastal marine Environments by Gail S. Anderson
Speaker 1: from two thousand and nine, and in this the author
Speaker 1: points out that in saltwater environments, crabs, crayfish, and barnacles
Speaker 1: are generally the most important Arthur pods from a forensics
Speaker 1: point of view. And they point out that crabs especially,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll just it right in there. They'll go for
Speaker 1: the facial flesh and the eyes, the open orifices of
Speaker 1: the face are I mean, just think about this practically, Joe,
Speaker 1: don't to like, if you're gonna start munching on a human, uh,
Speaker 1: all those holes in the face that's just a great
Speaker 1: place to get started, you know. Yeah, that's the that's
Speaker 1: like the oysters on a chicken. Yeah, so that's that's
Speaker 1: generally where they start. But once they get going, apparently
Speaker 1: they can rapidly d flesh a body. Um. I was
Speaker 1: looking around to see if I could find some hard
Speaker 1: numbers on that, because I know a lot of times
Speaker 1: that is of of key interest in forensics. Um. You know, Okay,
Speaker 1: animals will do this to a body, scavengers will do
Speaker 1: this to a body. How long does it take for
Speaker 1: them to do it? Because then we can time the
Speaker 1: you know, the death of the of this particular individual,
Speaker 1: or we can time when their body entered this environment.
Speaker 1: I could not find any any time. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: they're not out there. So if you know those, if
Speaker 1: you happen to have like a you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of study that involves a stop watch, a human cadaver
Speaker 1: in a whole bunch of blue crabs, uh, then send
Speaker 1: it my way. I would look to take a look
Speaker 1: at it. Do your personal eco friendly funeral plans involve
Speaker 1: crabs crab bial I mean why not? Why not? So
Speaker 1: I want to come back to the question. Okay, Uh, so,
Speaker 1: first of all, Okay, I think we can say it's
Speaker 1: safe to say that crabs definitely will de flesh the
Speaker 1: human form um. Now, as for this idea of there
Speaker 1: being something bad about eating those crabs after they have
Speaker 1: tasted human flesh, um, again, I think there is this
Speaker 1: sort of superstitious view there. There's perhaps this you know,
Speaker 1: revulsion of the idea that you might eat something that
Speaker 1: has eaten people and then you know, to some extent
Speaker 1: you are engaging in cannibalism by proxy. Now, where this
Speaker 1: gets interesting, though, is when you start looking at the
Speaker 1: subject of cholera and crabs. Um. Joe, had you ever uh,
Speaker 1: were you privy did any of this information before? No?
Speaker 1: I mean cholera And I know cholera is typically a
Speaker 1: water borne illness that has spread through contamination of water
Speaker 1: sources by infected people. Yeah, yeah, and uh, and so
Speaker 1: when you think about cholera, you tend to think about
Speaker 1: you to think about a sewage, You think about you know,
Speaker 1: you know, poor water treatment, water sources, that sort of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But apparently crabs and uh and some other shellfish can
Speaker 1: also uh be a means of acquiring cholera. Now, as
Speaker 1: and I was looking around him mostly mostly when we're
Speaker 1: talking about this, we're talking about UH some some particular situations,
Speaker 1: and there've been particular outbreaks that have been linked to
Speaker 1: the consumption of crabs that that are infected with cholera
Speaker 1: um or at least they have cholera like clinging to
Speaker 1: the bacterium clinging to their their shells, UH, to the
Speaker 1: hard parts of their body. For instance, there was an
Speaker 1: outbreak in nine in coastal Louisiana and it was blamed
Speaker 1: on improper storage or cooking of crab. The crab and
Speaker 1: the crab and in questions seem to have have you know,
Speaker 1: the cholera bacterium clinging to it? Apparently there was a
Speaker 1: similar case in Texas UH previous decades. I was able
Speaker 1: to find some news footage from the late seventies from
Speaker 1: like from Louisiana Public television where they were talking about
Speaker 1: this UH and it was quite interesting because you know,
Speaker 1: it was it was a big deal. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of questions like, well, Okay, what's happening here, Why
Speaker 1: did these crabs have cholera? Why are people you know,
Speaker 1: what's going on? And then there was concern over how
Speaker 1: is it gonna impact the crabbing industry, and just people's
Speaker 1: lives in general. UM. And uh, yeah, it was quite
Speaker 1: interesting because you know, to be clear, cholera UH is
Speaker 1: generally we think about it as a as a human situation.
Speaker 1: You know, this is where you you find the cholera
Speaker 1: collor are pathogenic to humans. UM. So they're not actually
Speaker 1: you know, infecting uh, the crustaceans in question here, but
Speaker 1: it would be a situation of them being in waters
Speaker 1: infected uh, that that are tainted by cholera or potentially
Speaker 1: and this seems to be like a less firm point.
Speaker 1: It seems like potentially if you had these crabs coming
Speaker 1: in contact with the bodies of humans that had cholera,
Speaker 1: they could partitually get it that way. But it seems
Speaker 1: like for the most part we're talking about just water
Speaker 1: that is, say, tainted by untreated sewage, and and you
Speaker 1: have people in the population that had cholera contributing to
Speaker 1: said sewage. I see. So it seems like moral of
Speaker 1: the story is definitely properly cook your your your seafood. Yes, definitely,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a proper storage, proper cooking UM. And
Speaker 1: that seemed to be the main point they were getting
Speaker 1: to in this situation. I believe based on some of
Speaker 1: the follow up information was looking at from the CDC,
Speaker 1: it seems like this had to do with with with
Speaker 1: the with pollution of the water, either due to some
Speaker 1: sort of a sewage situation, sewage treatment, or sewage run
Speaker 1: off from something else, potentially something linked to U two
Speaker 1: ships um but um. Looking also at the CDC, they
Speaker 1: point out, quote, brackish and marine waters are the natural
Speaker 1: environment for the ideologic agents of cholera H Vibrio colorae
Speaker 1: UH zero group zero one or zero one three nine.
Speaker 1: There are no known animal hosts for Vibrio colorad. However,
Speaker 1: the bacteria attached themselves easily to chitten containing shells of crabs, shrimps,
Speaker 1: and other shellfish, which can be a source for human
Speaker 1: infections when eaten raw or undercooked. Now, I know what
Speaker 1: you're saying. You're you're probably thinking to yourself, Well, that
Speaker 1: still doesn't answer the question can can Does that mean
Speaker 1: you can catch cholera from a crab that eight human
Speaker 1: being with cholera? I'm still I'm still not sure. I
Speaker 1: don't but but I don't think any of the evidence
Speaker 1: is pointing to that being. Like the primary a way
Speaker 1: that you would get sick from, you know, for meeting
Speaker 1: a crab or that has anything to do with with
Speaker 1: concerns over eating crabs post hurricane. So I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I can't ask my mother in law
Speaker 1: anymore about this, but I have this suspicion that perhaps
Speaker 1: it's kind of a kind of like a Cajun stew
Speaker 1: of like maybe a little bit of folklore in there.
Speaker 1: Also maybe a little bit uh left over stemming from
Speaker 1: this late seventies um you know, fear about cholera and
Speaker 1: the crabs. Uh. And you know, perhaps some other stuff
Speaker 1: thrown in there as well, um uh. And also maybe
Speaker 1: she was just you know, messing with me, not being
Speaker 1: maybe that's familiar with the ways of the of coastal
Speaker 1: Louisiana and so forth. Well, I mean, I would say,
Speaker 1: whatever the base of this, uh, this piece of advice
Speaker 1: or folk wisdom is, I would say that it's probably
Speaker 1: always going to be different. I mean, unless you're in
Speaker 1: some kind of like farmed bond villain scenario, it's always
Speaker 1: going to be difficult to know whether or not a
Speaker 1: crab that you have actually acquired to eat like what
Speaker 1: it has been eating in its past. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: you just never really know if it had eaten a
Speaker 1: part of a human or not, but the odds are
Speaker 1: probably against it. Yeah yeah. And um and in terms
Speaker 1: of other crab and just crabs in general, like eating humans,
Speaker 1: like another area to get into as well, would a
Speaker 1: crab kill a human and eat it? And uh, this
Speaker 1: does come up from time to time. I think there
Speaker 1: was you know, largely you know, unproven and to a
Speaker 1: certain extent at least discredited theory that coconut crabs consumed
Speaker 1: aviator Amelia Earhart, or at least consumed her remains after
Speaker 1: she crashed. Um. Again, I don't think there's any proof
Speaker 1: for this, and and I don't know that anyone is
Speaker 1: actually arguing that the crab crabs would have killed her,
Speaker 1: but um uh you you know, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where you can make any kind of argument for Okay,
Speaker 1: what if somebody was sufficiently injured and then crabs came
Speaker 1: upon them, Could the crabs deal the killing? Could the
Speaker 1: crabs be the one to finish you off? And I
Speaker 1: guess it's like with the dinosaurs, like could could crabs
Speaker 1: kill a dinosaur? Well? I guess so if they had
Speaker 1: enough of an advantage, uh, you know, if the if
Speaker 1: the prey was severely weakened. Um, But I don't know,
Speaker 1: it seems kind of pointless to to worry about this
Speaker 1: too much. I mean not to be insulting, but a
Speaker 1: crab is not really a particularly analytical creature, So I
Speaker 1: don't think it could size us up and figure out
Speaker 1: what part of the body it needed to attack in
Speaker 1: order to finish us off. We are not part of
Speaker 1: a crabs like natural uh you know, habituated diet, so
Speaker 1: I don't think it would have instincts about what part
Speaker 1: of the body to attack to finish us off. So
Speaker 1: I would say, if a crab attacks the human is
Speaker 1: probably just randomly pinching at whatever parts of the body
Speaker 1: it can get at. So my guess would be that
Speaker 1: it would be very unlikely for even the most powerful crabs,
Speaker 1: even your coconut crabs, to to really initiate a successful
Speaker 1: deadly attack on a human. But there is something about
Speaker 1: maybe it comes back to that defensive display of the crab.
Speaker 1: It's so impressive even though it's small, uh, that it
Speaker 1: just reverberates through the human psyche and takes on the
Speaker 1: form of say crabs attacking hercules and myth or you know,
Speaker 1: crabs rising up against humanity in Roger Corman films, and
Speaker 1: so we just get it just shows how effective that
Speaker 1: display is. We're like, we we know that crab is
Speaker 1: not actually gonna come over here and and and whoop us. Uh,
Speaker 1: but but it takes on these uh, these enormous forms
Speaker 1: in our mind, right, I mean, the the rasp of
Speaker 1: the gastric mill does not lie. There's no reason to
Speaker 1: go messing around with that thing, putting your fingers into
Speaker 1: its pintures and stuff. But I am generally curious though,
Speaker 1: So if anyone out there, again, if you've heard anything
Speaker 1: about this, um, this bit of folk wisdom that you
Speaker 1: shouldn't eat crabs after a hurricane, or that eating crabs
Speaker 1: that of eating humans is is is somehow specifically a
Speaker 1: bad idea, uh filming in I would oft to know
Speaker 1: more before we move on. I just wanted to say
Speaker 1: about the coconut crabs thing. I had also come across
Speaker 1: that people supposedly claiming that that Amelia Earhart was eaten
Speaker 1: by coconut crabs, really without any evidence to say that.
Speaker 1: I think people were just kind of guessing, oh, what
Speaker 1: if this happened. Um, But but that did make me
Speaker 1: think back on on Charles Darwin's comments about how coconut
Speaker 1: crabs actually being delicious and under their tails having that
Speaker 1: big mass of fat which turned into wonderful limpid oil.
Speaker 1: You remember that, Oh, yes, I do remember that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, this reminds me. I was. I was looking around, um,
Speaker 1: you know, doing various searches on fatalities related to coconut crabs,
Speaker 1: and I did find, um, I think a couple that occurred. Uh.
Speaker 1: And but they didn't have anything to do with crabs
Speaker 1: attacking people. They had to do with the coconut crabs
Speaker 1: haven't eaten something that contained a toxin, and then when
Speaker 1: that crab was consumed by humans resulted in fatality. Oh,
Speaker 1: that would make sense, So I think, oh yeah, ultimately
Speaker 1: it crabs dupo was the greatest risk to human beings
Speaker 1: in the form of you know, of of tainted food
Speaker 1: of one sort or another. But that can be that
Speaker 1: can be said for a lot of things. It's gonna
Speaker 1: as with our past Thanksgiving episodes on dangerous foods, um,
Speaker 1: you know, any kind of if food is cooked improperly
Speaker 1: or stored improperly, prepared improperly. Um, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty easy to get into dangerous zone. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean one of the points we made repeatedly in that
Speaker 1: series is if you're actually just like tallying up edge cases,
Speaker 1: all kinds of strange things can seem very dangerous, you know, Uh,
Speaker 1: improperly washed packaged greens, bottles of peanut butter and all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. Yeah, I mean, I'll go and throw
Speaker 1: this out there. Don't try and eat um a live
Speaker 1: crab whole. I think you're probably going to hurt yourself.
Speaker 1: May have to go to the hut of the hospital
Speaker 1: over that. Yeah, don't go for the had resort crude.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, alright. The next example of the next course
Speaker 1: in the Crab Feast I wanted to talk about is, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe the I can't remember for sure. This may have
Speaker 1: been the thing I was reading about that gave me
Speaker 1: the idea to do this episode. Um, and this is
Speaker 1: one where you can actually watch the video I'm about
Speaker 1: to talk about yourself, because the subject here is a
Speaker 1: field recording that was uploaded by the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Speaker 1: Research Institute or in Bari, originally captured in two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: You can find it on their YouTube channel now. And
Speaker 1: this took place on an expedition led by a researcher
Speaker 1: named Peter Brewer. So the team here was investigating oil
Speaker 1: seeps and methane hydrates along the sea floor off the
Speaker 1: coast of British Columbia. Again, this was back in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, so this would have been on in the
Speaker 1: ocean off the west coast of Canada. And methane hydrates
Speaker 1: are a very strange and fascinating phenomenon. I again didn't
Speaker 1: know a lot about them before I started researching for
Speaker 1: this episode, and this has really captured my mind. So
Speaker 1: these are essentially chunks of solid icy material containing large
Speaker 1: amounts of methane alongside regular water molecules. So it's got
Speaker 1: methane gas or H four, which is a naturally forming
Speaker 1: hydro hydrocarbon. Methane is the primary constituent of so called
Speaker 1: natural gas, as well as being a byproduct of bacterial
Speaker 1: decomposition of organic matter that gets buried down in the
Speaker 1: sediment at the bottom of the ocean, and pockets of
Speaker 1: natural gas underneath the modern sea floor, or just generally
Speaker 1: any methane content in the sediment or the or the
Speaker 1: bedrock below the ocean. Sometimes the methane in these pockets
Speaker 1: get exposed so that gas can escape up through little
Speaker 1: holes or rifts in the in the sea floor and
Speaker 1: float away. But sometimes, under the right conditions, methane that
Speaker 1: escapes from these pockets does not just float away. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: because of very high pressure at the bottom of the
Speaker 1: water column and extreme cold in the deep ocean, the
Speaker 1: methane gas becomes trapped along with water ice in chunks
Speaker 1: of this strange frozen solid. These are methane hydrates, and
Speaker 1: to be clear, the name is a little bit misleading
Speaker 1: because methane hydrates are actually not a new chemical compound
Speaker 1: joining water molecules and methane molecules with chemical bonds. Rather,
Speaker 1: methane hydrates are what's known in chemistry technically as a
Speaker 1: class rate, which is a composite in which you've got
Speaker 1: molecules of one kind of substance, in this case methane,
Speaker 1: that are physically trapped within the crystal structure of another
Speaker 1: type of substance, in this case water ice. So little
Speaker 1: molecules of methane stuck within a lattice structure of water ice.
Speaker 1: And because of this unusual structure, methane hydrates can make
Speaker 1: a literally flammable ice. So you can have a big
Speaker 1: chunk of this stuff. It looked pretty much like regular ice.
Speaker 1: You can set it in a dish on a table,
Speaker 1: but if you hold a match up to it, this
Speaker 1: is ice which will catch on fire and burn, and
Speaker 1: for this reason, methane hydrates are sometimes called fire ice. Now,
Speaker 1: it's generally believed today that large amounts of solid methane
Speaker 1: hydrates lie buried in formations underneath the seafloor all around
Speaker 1: the world, though there's debate about exactly how much. According
Speaker 1: to a range I found given on a page by
Speaker 1: the U. S Department of Energy Fossil Energy and Carbon
Speaker 1: Management site, there could be anywhere from two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand trillion cubic feet of methane locked up in
Speaker 1: hydrates around the world, from that two d fifty all
Speaker 1: the way up to seven hundred thousand trillion cubic feat
Speaker 1: and these hydrates contain a really dense concentration of hydrocarbons.
Speaker 1: A claim I've seen cited in a number of sources
Speaker 1: is that one cubic meter of methane hydrate would typically
Speaker 1: contain a hundred and sixty four cubic meters of methane gas.
Speaker 1: So a very small volume of this solid material, this
Speaker 1: icy stuff, the hydrate, if disrupted, will potentially release a
Speaker 1: ton of gas, which of course is one reason that
Speaker 1: methane hydrates have people who think about climate change a
Speaker 1: little bit concerned, because it seems that there's actually a
Speaker 1: significant amount of potential greenhouse gases that could be released
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere locked up in these solid icy forms,
Speaker 1: and if something causes these solids to melt, a lot
Speaker 1: more stuff can be released into the atmosphere. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so these methane hydrates exist in these you know, rocky
Speaker 1: icy formations under the CEA floor, but they can also
Speaker 1: form spontaneously when methane and very cold water mix under
Speaker 1: high pressure, like at the bottom of the ocean. So
Speaker 1: coming back to this video, I was talking about the
Speaker 1: video captured by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute team
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven. So they were doing a survey
Speaker 1: for of these methane hydrates and oil seeps at a
Speaker 1: depth of about one two hundred and sixty meters, and
Speaker 1: the team came across a rift in the sea floor
Speaker 1: that was producing this steady little trickle of bubbles rising
Speaker 1: towards the surface. And while the researchers were looking at
Speaker 1: this stream of bubbles, suddenly, hey, here comes a crab.
Speaker 1: It just there's a crab coming into frame, and the
Speaker 1: narrator of the video suggests that the crab may have
Speaker 1: been attracted by the pulsing in the water column at
Speaker 1: the side of the gas vent. But whatever the reason,
Speaker 1: this crab comes ambling over. It's walking along the bottom,
Speaker 1: and then it comes right up to the hole in
Speaker 1: the ocean floor that the bubbles are coming out of.
Speaker 1: And then, in the first of a series of real
Speaker 1: awe buddy moments, it reaches out at the stream of
Speaker 1: bubbles with its claws. It's trying to grab them, very
Speaker 1: like you know, dog dog chasing its tail behavior. Presumably
Speaker 1: it thinks that the movement in the water indicates some
Speaker 1: kind of potential prey or other food source. And you
Speaker 1: see it repeatedly lunge at the bubble tower with its claws,
Speaker 1: but of course there's nothing to grab, so it just
Speaker 1: sort of hugs the bubble jets several times. But then
Speaker 1: from here things start getting weirder, because again, what are
Speaker 1: these bubbles their methane and what can potentially happen to
Speaker 1: methane at this depth and temperature When mixed with water,
Speaker 1: it can turn into methane hydrates. So the narrator of
Speaker 1: this video explains that the methane gas bubbles rapidly form
Speaker 1: into solid pieces of methane hydrate as they stick to
Speaker 1: the crabs for limbs, So it's you know, reaching out
Speaker 1: to grab the methane bubbles. It thinks their food. Then
Speaker 1: they the bubbles are freezing into a coating of fire
Speaker 1: ice on this crabs clause and then trying to explain
Speaker 1: what happens next, the narrator of this video hypothesizes that
Speaker 1: the chemical reaction that transforms the methane gas into the
Speaker 1: solid chunks of methane hydrate uh quote may have given
Speaker 1: the sensation of something slightly warm and mushy. Uh So.
Speaker 1: I guess this is just supposition on on the researchers part,
Speaker 1: But maybe what they're suggesting here is that the crab thinks, oh,
Speaker 1: I've got some kind of potentially delicious organic goo, maybe
Speaker 1: from a dead whale carcass or something, and it's all
Speaker 1: over my claws now. So of course, when in doubt
Speaker 1: tried out. You know, better eat it and see if
Speaker 1: it's good. So the crab begins to try to eat
Speaker 1: the methane hydrate off of its own claws, and this
Speaker 1: goes very poorly because the hydrate essentially freezes the crabs
Speaker 1: mouth parts or mandibles, which rem finds me that thing
Speaker 1: where you know, you stick your tongue to a frozen flagpole,
Speaker 1: like in that Christmas movie, except I guess here the
Speaker 1: flagpole would be like stuck to your own mouth and
Speaker 1: it would be coming along with you. And the narrator
Speaker 1: of the video actually describes it as quote a milk
Speaker 1: mustache of solid hydrate. Well, now I'm beginning I'm growing
Speaker 1: worried for this crab. This that is that this has
Speaker 1: really taken a turn. I know, it went from like
Speaker 1: kind of cute and bumbling to like, oh no, what's
Speaker 1: going to happen to this crab's mouth? Uh? And apparently
Speaker 1: the crab does whatever it's feeling. It does not like
Speaker 1: it at all, so it starts trying to use its
Speaker 1: claws to remove the frozen methane coating from its mouth,
Speaker 1: and you can see it's scraping at the solid white
Speaker 1: massive hydrate with the tips of its of its claws
Speaker 1: while shedding flakes of it into the surrounding water. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I do not know the answer to the question did
Speaker 1: the crab ever get its mouth on frozen? I I
Speaker 1: hope so, but the researchers do not have an answer
Speaker 1: to offer on this up jecked. On the pessimistic side,
Speaker 1: the narrator claims that pure methane hydrate is twenty times
Speaker 1: harder than regular water ice, though I couldn't find independent
Speaker 1: corroboration of that fact. But on the plus side, that
Speaker 1: like you can see in the video that the crab
Speaker 1: is doing a decent job scraping pieces of it off,
Speaker 1: Like you can see the flakes just coming off and
Speaker 1: floating up into the water. So I'm gonna say with crabs,
Speaker 1: many things are possible, maybe all things are possible. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that it really just it. It scraped
Speaker 1: and scraped and scraped with those uh, those spiny tips
Speaker 1: until until it got its mouth parts free and went
Speaker 1: on to to scavenge many a human corpse. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I mean, so this is on top of being just
Speaker 1: a strange and interesting example of a crab eating something
Speaker 1: that was not food, because you know, I think anybody
Speaker 1: who has a dog will recognize that a lot of
Speaker 1: animals have the impulse of like if if something is
Speaker 1: ambiguously presenting as maybe food, might as well put it
Speaker 1: in the mouth and give it a try. But on
Speaker 1: top of that, it also shows an interesting thing that
Speaker 1: we don't usually think about being land levers, which is
Speaker 1: the role of naturally forming hydrocarbons as a part of
Speaker 1: the environment that animals would have to interact with every day,
Speaker 1: you know, on on the sea floor. There were actually
Speaker 1: all kinds of ways that organisms regularly interact with I
Speaker 1: don't know what you might call, you know, the constituents
Speaker 1: of the deep earth, uh, from from the ecosystems that
Speaker 1: form around hydrothermal vents, to these weird interactions between animals
Speaker 1: and methane hydrates from under the under the ground or
Speaker 1: under the sea floor. Obviously, for the crab in this video,
Speaker 1: this was at least a very uh frustrating and unfortunate
Speaker 1: random encounter, but some animals actually have a much closer
Speaker 1: and more dedicated evolutionary relationship with these same substances. With
Speaker 1: deep sea hydrates. Gas hydrates like methane hydrate they're actually
Speaker 1: marine biological communities that appear in some way to depend
Speaker 1: on methane hydrates for their energy needs. And just one
Speaker 1: example I wanted to mention I found described in a
Speaker 1: paper from published in the year two thousand and uh
Speaker 1: nat your vissenshaften Um by a cr fisher at all
Speaker 1: called methane ice worms hes e O SKA methanic coola
Speaker 1: colonizing fossil fuel reserves and Rob I've got an image
Speaker 1: for you to look at while I described this here.
Speaker 1: But so in this case, the story behind this discovery
Speaker 1: was that a bunch of researchers were conducting an exploratory
Speaker 1: dive with a miniature submarine in the Gulf of Mexico
Speaker 1: along the seafloor at a depth of five and forty meters.
Speaker 1: I guess this was in the late nineties sometime, and
Speaker 1: they came across a large gas hydrate, a chunk of
Speaker 1: this stuff, the fire ice that was they said about
Speaker 1: one meter thick and two meters in diameter, and they
Speaker 1: said it had recently breached the sea floor. So I
Speaker 1: guess this has been This had been some subsurface for
Speaker 1: a long time, and for some reason it had recently
Speaker 1: been you know, berthed up from the bottom of the
Speaker 1: ocean and was now exposed, and this was a big
Speaker 1: old chunk of this stuff. And then the authors write
Speaker 1: in their abstract quote two distinct color bands of hydrate
Speaker 1: were present in the same mound, and the entire exposed
Speaker 1: surface of the hydrate was infested with two to four
Speaker 1: centimeter long worms, since described as a new species, and
Speaker 1: they said the density of the worms reached individuals for
Speaker 1: every square meter. So this was a previously unknown type
Speaker 1: of poly cute worm that appeared to make a habitat
Speaker 1: out of these gas hydrates. It was originally called uh
Speaker 1: hesio ska methanic cola. I think now it has a
Speaker 1: different name. I think now the genus is uh sear
Speaker 1: so s i r s o e so sears so
Speaker 1: methanic cola uh so. This would obviously raise the question,
Speaker 1: if you live around gas hydrates at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean, what do you eat? How do you make
Speaker 1: a living well. Tissue samples were consistent with the worms
Speaker 1: acquiring nutrition from a chemo autotrophic organism. That would mean
Speaker 1: an organism that makes its own energy by consuming geologic
Speaker 1: chemicals rather than than by sunlight. Like a photosynthetic organism would.
Speaker 1: And the authors in this study weren't able to prove
Speaker 1: anything conclusively, but they hypothesized that these worms, these new worms,
Speaker 1: were surviving by eating chemosynthetic bacteria that colonized the surface
Speaker 1: of the gas hydrates. So there would be bacteria that
Speaker 1: that form mats on the surface of these frozen methane
Speaker 1: hydrates that would metabolize chemicals contained within them in order
Speaker 1: for the bacteria to survive, and then the worms would
Speaker 1: eat the bacterial mats. And then the author's right quote
Speaker 1: the activities of the polykey it's grazing on the hydrate
Speaker 1: bacteria and supplying oxygen to their habitats appears to contribute
Speaker 1: to the dissolution of hydrates in surface sediments. So I
Speaker 1: guess this would be one thing that explains how these
Speaker 1: hydrates disappear over time once they're exposed on the bottom
Speaker 1: of the ocean. But Rob, I've also attached to an
Speaker 1: image for you to look at. That's uh. I believe
Speaker 1: this is a micrograph close up of the face of
Speaker 1: one of these polycy worms that lives on the hydrate.
Speaker 1: It is absolutely terrifying. It looks like some sort of
Speaker 1: a Dark Destroyer unleashed from a shadows. It has a
Speaker 1: kind of bristling fuzziness which you would think would make
Speaker 1: it a little more cuddly, but actually makes it worse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: though those fibers are not for cuddling, you can tell.
Speaker 1: And it looks like it Edges has this enormous mouth
Speaker 1: to like just suck down dreams. Very very true. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's mouth, I would say it's mouth actually looks like
Speaker 1: you ever see those um endoscopic images of of the
Speaker 1: lay Ranks or the voice box. Yeah, it also reminds
Speaker 1: me it has the mouth of some of the more
Speaker 1: terrifying muppets. I think you know where their mouth is
Speaker 1: kind of articulated bad, Yes, like the the hip pip
Speaker 1: Aliens that has that kind of thing going on. Oh god,
Speaker 1: the Yippi Apps are so evil. All right, Well, I
Speaker 1: think we're gonna have to call it right there for
Speaker 1: part one, but we will definitely be back next time
Speaker 1: to continue the crab feast. What will happen when crabs
Speaker 1: put other things in their mouths while their mouths freeze?
Speaker 1: Will they find it delicious? Um? You'll just have to
Speaker 1: tune in to find out the world is a buffet
Speaker 1: and the customers are crabs all right? Uh? In the meantime, yes,
Speaker 1: certainly right in let us know where your thoughts are
Speaker 1: in the crabs that we discussed in this episode. Um.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, you can find other episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind in the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind podcast feed, which you will find wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we have core
Speaker 1: episode modes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. On Monday's
Speaker 1: we have listener mail. On Wednesdays we have artifact episodes,
Speaker 1: and on Friday we have Weird How Cinema. That's our
Speaker 1: time to set aside most serious concerns and talk about
Speaker 1: a weird movie. Huge thanks as always to our wonderful
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
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