Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 3: two in our twenty twenty six crab Bag series. By
Speaker 3: somewhat popular demand, we are we're doing a sort of
Speaker 3: roundup or maybe a pinch up of crab related subject matter.
Speaker 3: This was in part inspired by a listener male that
Speaker 3: we talked about in our most recent listener Mail episode.
Speaker 3: And we're always down to talk about some crab stuff.
Speaker 3: No real organizing principle here, it's just yah assortment of
Speaker 3: crab topics, a crab buffet. So in the last episode
Speaker 3: we talked about the legend of a miraculous crab associated
Speaker 3: with a Catholic figure named Saint Francis Xavier, and how
Speaker 3: that legend sort of connects to a real decapod species
Speaker 3: in the Western Pacific and Indian oceans. We might revisit
Speaker 3: that topic today. I'll explain more about that later. And
Speaker 3: then also at the end of the last episode, we
Speaker 3: talked about an idea known as crab theory or maybe
Speaker 3: under various names, but that's one way to refer to it.
Speaker 3: It's a metaphor for chaotic, anti cooperative human behaviors in
Speaker 3: certain situations, based on the supposed behavior of crabs in
Speaker 3: a bucket. And we briefly got into the question of
Speaker 3: to what extent crabs ever could be said to be
Speaker 3: socially cooperative, And we're back today to talk about more.
Speaker 2: That's right. So for my own part for this episode,
Speaker 2: I kind of poked around and I wanted to find
Speaker 2: something to talk about that's tied directly to some crab species.
Speaker 2: But then also I have some stuff that we'll get
Speaker 2: into later that involves some crab folklore and indeed like
Speaker 2: a crab demon or crab spece from a particular tradition.
Speaker 2: But first, yeah, let's talk about frog crabs. So, listeners,
Speaker 2: do you like to dance like a crab? Have you
Speaker 2: ever danced like a crap? I hope that you have.
Speaker 2: I hope that you can. I hope that you're doing
Speaker 2: it right now. Perhaps scuttling side to side on wide legs,
Speaker 2: arms out to either side with fingers or hands you
Speaker 2: can sort of choose forming the clacking makeshift pinchers, or
Speaker 2: perhaps you prefer to do a kind of crab walk
Speaker 2: that it's in the sense that you might encounter this
Speaker 2: in an exercise class or an exercise routine where you
Speaker 2: move around on all fours and kind of a reverse
Speaker 2: tabletop pose, so belly up, all four limbs on the
Speaker 2: ground walking side to side do I think sometimes people
Speaker 2: do the crab walk back and forth as well.
Speaker 3: All of the above very popular with my three year old.
Speaker 3: In fact, for a while, part of our standard bedtime
Speaker 3: routine was that I had to do a crab dance,
Speaker 3: so like she would demand a crab data performance before
Speaker 3: she would go to bed, and it was really funny
Speaker 3: for a while, and then I guess the gag wore out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I have observed that kids can really do the
Speaker 2: all fours reverse tabletop crab walk like nobody's business. They
Speaker 2: can really get down there and do it. There also
Speaker 2: seems to be a standing crab walk exercise that entails
Speaker 2: side to side movement, but with like banded thighs. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you've encountered this one. You can find
Speaker 2: videos and image of this online.
Speaker 3: This is like a like an exercise or it's.
Speaker 2: A yeah, it looks like it's popping up in exercise
Speaker 2: videos and exercise routine where there's some sort of a
Speaker 2: band that is placed around a human's thighs and then
Speaker 2: they move side.
Speaker 3: To side the thigh master crab method.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it seems to be the case.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: I always think of when I think of crabs moving
Speaker 2: side to side, I think of Zoidberg from Futurama. I
Speaker 2: also think of a particular Japanese rest slur by the
Speaker 2: name of Grand Naniwa, who he's passed now, but for
Speaker 2: a while he was like a comedy wrestler with a
Speaker 2: crab like mask, and one of his signature moves was
Speaker 2: to move side to side whilst making little pinchers with
Speaker 2: his fingers and then doing an elbow drop off the ropes.
Speaker 3: I actually looked this up. So he's he's not only
Speaker 3: walking side by side and pin doing this, but he's
Speaker 3: doing it on the rope between the what do you
Speaker 3: call it the turnstile the turn turnbules.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he's going back and forth on the rope,
Speaker 3: I guess, preparing to jump and do the elbow drop, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, powering up, summoning the power of the crab. I
Speaker 2: don't know how many winds he picked up with this
Speaker 2: particular maneuver, but it was it was funny to watch.
Speaker 3: I found it quite admirable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and great mass for sure. So you know, generally,
Speaker 2: but not always, when we engage in human crab antics, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're gonna move side to side lateral movement, because that's
Speaker 2: how a great many crabs move around on land. If
Speaker 2: you're out walking on the beach or on the pier
Speaker 2: and you're looking at sand crabs or rock crabs and
Speaker 2: you're watching them, you know, secretly move about, you're probably
Speaker 2: watching this rapid side stepping action. This is what they're
Speaker 2: known for. And indeed, true crab anatomy is just optimized
Speaker 2: in general for side stepping. They can do rapid changes
Speaker 2: in direction. If you've ever tried to chase a crab
Speaker 2: on the beach, you've found this out. They can easily
Speaker 2: stop going one way and start going the other way.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, at least for humans, I've found
Speaker 2: that it tends to send a message as well, like
Speaker 2: the crab is saying I'm looking right at you, my
Speaker 2: claws are out, but I'm moving away from you latterly.
Speaker 3: At least, you know, I think a lot of gamers
Speaker 3: might appreciate the metaphor of I don't know a strayfing,
Speaker 3: but whatever it is, it's some kind of like a
Speaker 3: fighting game or first person shooter. You're moving sideways really
Speaker 3: fast to try to confuse your enemy, but you always
Speaker 3: want to be facing them, and I guess have the
Speaker 3: same idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm suddenly I didn't have this in my notes,
Speaker 2: but I'm reminded now. I think I saw this movie,
Speaker 2: or at least I remember seeing trailers for it. But
Speaker 2: there was a two thousand and six Japanese monster movie
Speaker 2: slash sports comedy titled Crab Goalkeeper, in which like a
Speaker 2: football or soccer goalkeeper is like a giant or at
Speaker 2: least man sized crab monster. Yes, because you know that,
Speaker 2: of course, isn't the optimal situation for somebody with phenomenal
Speaker 2: lateral movement.
Speaker 3: That's brilliant. I love it now.
Speaker 2: In general, it's worth knowing that that side to side
Speaker 2: movements of crabs, this is something that evolves as crabs
Speaker 2: leave behind their more lobster like evolutionary origins, and there
Speaker 2: are a number of little explainer articles online about this.
Speaker 2: Matt Slater has one for BBC's Discovered Wildlife in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. You know, look that up if you want
Speaker 2: some more information about it. But basically, like a lobster
Speaker 2: like form is only going to be able to more
Speaker 2: expressly move forward, its tail is going to get in
Speaker 2: the way. And so as it as these organisms took
Speaker 2: on their full crab like form, most of them end
Speaker 2: up having this lateral movement ability.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, so it's a change that occurs from
Speaker 3: the more lobster morph to the crab morph.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, and and it gets it gets a little
Speaker 2: more complicated than that. We'll come back to some examples why.
Speaker 2: But like one extreme example would be the Japanese spider crab.
Speaker 2: I think everyone's seen one of these, you've releast seen pictures,
Speaker 2: but they also pop up in aquariums. They really almost
Speaker 2: don't look real.
Speaker 3: Big long, spindly legs compared to the body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the largest crabs, and they move quite slow in
Speaker 2: you know, deep environments, and they can move side to
Speaker 2: side certainly, and I believe side to side movement is
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit faster. But they all also move front
Speaker 2: to back. So you know, car is subject to change
Speaker 2: with evolution if new matters come to light. Plus, as
Speaker 2: we've touched on before. Not all crabs are true crabs.
Speaker 2: The hermit crab, of course, is a great example. We've
Speaker 2: talked about this before. If you watch them on the beach,
Speaker 2: you know they're going to do a lot of forward
Speaker 2: momentum movements on the beach. You know, they have the
Speaker 2: ability to move around in other directions as well, but
Speaker 2: they're full speed ahead for the most part.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And when it comes to movement, the hermit crabs
Speaker 3: have a whole other thing to contact with. You know,
Speaker 3: they are moving hardware.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So most true crabs are going to generally be
Speaker 2: lateral movers with bodies that are wider than they are long.
Speaker 2: But we do find some exceptions out there, and one
Speaker 2: of the main exceptions is that of the frog crabs,
Speaker 2: also known as the spanner crabs because their claws look
Speaker 2: a bit like wrenches or spanners.
Speaker 3: I can see it. Yes, So these are crabs.
Speaker 2: In the Rannini day family, with Ranina Ranina being the
Speaker 2: best example of this crab variety. This is not to
Speaker 2: be confused with the crab eating frog. This is a
Speaker 2: frog crab, so named because I guess they kind of
Speaker 2: look like frogs when if you find an image of
Speaker 2: one just like a top down image. I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's harder to get that sense of a frog. Basically,
Speaker 2: these guys are squatter, They're not wide, They're narrower and
Speaker 2: longer while still being you know, bulky. They have paddle
Speaker 2: like limbs, and as Jeff Heck pointed out in a
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen article for New Scientists titled the Tasty Crab
Speaker 2: that looks like an Ugly frog, they sometimes assume frog
Speaker 2: like poses. And I think this is where the frogness
Speaker 2: of the thing comes into play. If you look up
Speaker 2: an image of one of some of these creatures, look
Speaker 2: for the images that are not like top down like
Speaker 2: specimen shots, and more like the ones setting around on
Speaker 2: a rock, and you can see, all right, they have
Speaker 2: kind of they can take on this kind of squat
Speaker 2: almost mammalion pose.
Speaker 3: I absolutely see it now. So you've got in the
Speaker 3: outline here one image of a side on image of
Speaker 3: one of these things sitting up against a rock, and
Speaker 3: it looks very much like a frog. It's kind of
Speaker 3: squatting on its back legs. It's got the front legs
Speaker 3: out like you might see a front you know, frog's
Speaker 3: front legs, the long ones pushing it up in the
Speaker 3: sitting posture, and then even on the underside of its
Speaker 3: body there is a paler section than the rest of
Speaker 3: its body, kind of like you often see the paler
Speaker 3: underside of a frog's throat.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, so they're they're pretty neat looking. I
Speaker 2: should note that their spanner like claws are not as
Speaker 2: powerful as that name might imply. So. The crab's limbs
Speaker 2: in general are evolved for superior burling, which they do backwards,
Speaker 2: and the front pinchers are mainly for gripping the sandy bottom.
Speaker 2: They also use them for a grasping soft prey. Generally
Speaker 2: they're scavengers, come out to scavenge things that have fallen down,
Speaker 2: but they will also sometimes grab, you know, small marine
Speaker 2: organisms that they can. They're they're good swimmers. But when
Speaker 2: they're walking about, when they're walking on the on the
Speaker 2: seafloor or on the sand uh I have read that
Speaker 2: they cannot walk sideways. I'm always hesitant to be too
Speaker 2: absolute in those kind of rulings because it's kind of
Speaker 2: like saying dogs can't look up right. But generally speaking,
Speaker 2: their body is positioned in such a way that they
Speaker 2: are they are front back movers, as opposed to lateral movers,
Speaker 2: and we see that in just their basic morphology. Now
Speaker 2: we mentioned already the lobster origins of crabs, and apparently
Speaker 2: for a long time naturalist thought that frog crabs were
Speaker 2: therefore a more primitive form of the crab, kind of
Speaker 2: a missing link between lobster and crab. But now we
Speaker 2: know that this is not the case. So these frog
Speaker 2: crabs evolved and estimated one hundred and twenty five million
Speaker 2: years ago, with their bodies and movements adapting for this
Speaker 2: burrowing behavior. They burrow in the ocean floor sediment as
Speaker 2: a place of refuge, and again they emerge at night
Speaker 2: to scavenge and sometimes use that hiding place as kind
Speaker 2: of a you know, a trap from which to snatch
Speaker 2: small marine animals and eat them.
Speaker 3: Okay, but it's not like all modern crabs were descended
Speaker 3: from a frog crab like ancestor.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, It's more like they went back.
Speaker 2: They're like, actually, the something more lobster would be in
Speaker 2: keeping with what we want to do with our lives. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: while frog crabs are now limited to certain tropical and
Speaker 2: subtropical environments, they were once quite plentiful across Earth's oceans,
Speaker 2: especially during times of low marine oxygen levels, and the
Speaker 2: general theory here seems to be that conditions these conditions
Speaker 2: might have been better for them because they might have
Speaker 2: been predisposed for low oxygen environments because of adaptations they
Speaker 2: had for living in burrows and spending a lot of
Speaker 2: time beneath the sediment.
Speaker 3: This is interesting because it's I think the second example
Speaker 3: we've looked at in just a few days of lineages
Speaker 3: of animals that are thought to have survived harsh conditions
Speaker 3: or mass extinction events because they were burrowing and they
Speaker 3: had burrowing behaviors, like we were recently talking about, Oh,
Speaker 3: in the Pokemon episode, we were talking about the desygnodont tetrapods,
Speaker 3: you know, these thrapsid tetrapods that were affected by the
Speaker 3: Permian Triassic extinction event. Of course, like everything was, but
Speaker 3: some of the lineages of the Desygnodonts survived this extinction event,
Speaker 3: and that is thought to be in part because they
Speaker 3: were burrowing animals and that gave them a leg up
Speaker 3: in this really really harsh environment after the volcanic conditions
Speaker 3: that caused this extinction. And so this would be another
Speaker 3: example of an animal that's thought to be a survivor
Speaker 3: of harsh conditions because it burrows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, but in a marine situation instead. So
Speaker 2: humans apparently don't see these crabs as often as other crabs.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are a lot of crabs that don't
Speaker 2: really want to be seen, especially by birds and other creatures.
Speaker 3: Which crabs do want to be seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think any of them. They would prefer
Speaker 2: you not look at them. They have things, and I
Speaker 2: don't know, I guess there's certain maybe a coconut crab
Speaker 2: is less a very large one, but even then, you know,
Speaker 2: they don't want no organism wants to be looked at
Speaker 2: by things that might want to eat them.
Speaker 3: I guess, as always the question is seen by who. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you got some real show off crabs out there, like
Speaker 3: the fiddler crabs with the big claw, like, yeah, they're
Speaker 3: shown off to somebody, maybe not to us.
Speaker 2: Right, So yeah, given their habitat, they're feeding habits, they
Speaker 2: may not be seen as much, but they are considered
Speaker 2: a delicacy in parts of the world. I understand they're
Speaker 2: particularly popular in Australia and in the Philippines. So listeners
Speaker 2: out there write in if you have tasting notes about
Speaker 2: the frog crab or the spanner crab, how is it different?
Speaker 2: How does a cook up? I don't know. I don't
Speaker 2: think I've ever had one.
Speaker 3: This reminds me that the crucifix crab we talked about
Speaker 3: last time, Caribtis feriata, is also said to be a
Speaker 3: quite delicious crab. So if you've eaten crucifix crab, I
Speaker 3: want to hear about it now.
Speaker 2: Of note the frog crabs here, they're not closely related
Speaker 2: to the decabot crustacean mole crabs. Mole crabs are in
Speaker 2: the superfamily Hippoa day and they have a similar body layout.
Speaker 2: But it's apparently a case of parallel evolution, with each
Speaker 2: crab evolving for burrowing. So if you're gonna if you're
Speaker 2: a crab and you want to backtrack a little bit
Speaker 2: in your body form you want to get into the
Speaker 2: burrowing lifestyle, there's a certain direction your body plan is
Speaker 2: going to go in. Another burrowing crab that I ran
Speaker 2: across is the masked crab or helmet crab of the
Speaker 2: North Atlantic and North Sea. Let's see this one's scientific
Speaker 2: name is and I may butcher this Carrestius castaveolanis, but
Speaker 2: it's so called helmet crab or mass crab because the
Speaker 2: markings on its back allegedly resemble a human face. Included
Speaker 2: an image here for you, Joe, you can you can
Speaker 2: rule on this.
Speaker 3: I see human face. I also kind of see a
Speaker 3: feline face, kind of a big cat.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it looks kind of like whiskers maybe along
Speaker 3: the cheek it does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with the legs certainly add to this effect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but this is another faceback crab, and we've talked
Speaker 3: about this on the show before.
Speaker 2: That's right. This brings us back to the Japanese Hikagani
Speaker 2: crabs with the shell pattern that famously resembles a human
Speaker 2: face or a samuraiz face mask, tied to folklore traditions
Speaker 2: about the crabs being reincarnations of these warriors who were
Speaker 2: defeated and drowned beneath the waves of the Nakel Battle
Speaker 2: of Dan No Lura. We talked about this in a
Speaker 2: previous episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. I believe
Speaker 2: this is one where we also talked about how it
Speaker 2: was discussed back in the day on Carl Sagan's Cosmos
Speaker 2: TV series.
Speaker 3: That's right. Actually, I thought this would be a good
Speaker 3: time to revisit that because when we last talked about these,
Speaker 3: we talked about the idea popularized by Carl Sagan in
Speaker 3: so this was in the original Cosmos TV series. I
Speaker 3: think this was the year nineteen eighty. Carl Sagan was
Speaker 3: not the originator of this idea, but it was made
Speaker 3: very famous on that show. And the idea was that
Speaker 3: the Hikagani carapace could have been made more face like
Speaker 3: over time by the process of artificial selection. And I'm
Speaker 3: going to critique this idea in a minute, but the
Speaker 3: story goes like this. You've got crab fishures going out
Speaker 3: over the centuries catching these crabs, and they would keep
Speaker 3: the crabs that looked less like faces, but throw back
Speaker 3: the crabs that looked more like faces for fear of
Speaker 3: crossing a taboo or eating a human spirit. So it
Speaker 3: looks to human. Oh, I got to get rid of it.
Speaker 3: And the idea was by doing that, you naturally drive
Speaker 3: this species to look more and more like human faces
Speaker 3: over time. It's an interesting idea and in principle could
Speaker 3: be true. Artificial selection like this can and sometimes does happen.
Speaker 3: But I think especially in the years since we first
Speaker 3: talked about the Samurai crabs on the show. I've read
Speaker 3: some additional skeptical takes that make it seem pretty unlikely
Speaker 3: to me that artificial selection had a role in shaping
Speaker 3: the carapace of this crab. We may have actually talked
Speaker 3: about some of the Yeah, we talked about some of
Speaker 3: these reasons in the episode, but it now seems to
Speaker 3: me more like a consensus view that there's probably not
Speaker 3: any artificial selection going on here. One of the main
Speaker 3: reasons is that the Hikagani are not a species significantly
Speaker 3: fished as food anyway, so there is not significant harvesting
Speaker 3: of these crabs in any case, you know, whether they
Speaker 3: look like faces or not. And then the other thing
Speaker 3: is that the patterns on the carapace that we interpret
Speaker 3: as the raised parts of a face, like the nose
Speaker 3: and the cheeks and the depressions of the eyes and
Speaker 3: all that these patterns are not cosmetic in the biological sense.
Speaker 3: They're not just random decorations that can be easily moved
Speaker 3: around to look like whatever. In a nineteen ninety three
Speaker 3: article for Terra magazine, the invertebrate zoologist Joel Martin explained
Speaker 3: this by saying, quote. The grooves and ridges on the
Speaker 3: backs of the crabs have specific purposes and are not
Speaker 3: merely decorative. The grooves are external indications of supportive ridges
Speaker 3: called apidemes inside the crab's carapace that service sites for
Speaker 3: muscle attachment. Elevated areas between these grooves allow for an
Speaker 3: increase in internal space so that the various parts of
Speaker 3: a crab's viscera, gastric, hepatic, cardiac, brachial, et cetera are
Speaker 3: reflected externally. So I think the implication of that is
Speaker 3: that evolution would not be just free to play around
Speaker 3: with rearrangements of these features to favor a non fished
Speaker 3: face morph because the raised and lowered parts are functional,
Speaker 3: so moving them around would not be impossible. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, the functional parts of an animal can move
Speaker 3: through evolution as well, but it would come at a
Speaker 3: high cost of fitness. The pressure to move them around
Speaker 3: would probably have to be very strong. So I was
Speaker 3: thinking about this, and I would wager a guess that
Speaker 3: the resemblance of certain crab shells, like the one you
Speaker 3: were just talking about. What was that called again, the
Speaker 3: mast crab or the helmet crab from the North Atlantic
Speaker 3: and the Samurai crab, that these resemblances to human faces
Speaker 3: are probably going to just be a fairly common coincidence
Speaker 3: because faces and crab bodies have the same primary organizing principle,
Speaker 3: which is bilateral symmetry. So when an animal body region
Speaker 3: is left right symmetrical, you're gonna end up with some
Speaker 3: structures in mirrored pairs on either side, like eyes and cheeks,
Speaker 3: or like lungs and gills, and then you're also going
Speaker 3: to have some structures masked around or near the middle
Speaker 3: near the meridian, like nose, mouth, heart, gut, to that
Speaker 3: sort of thing. So it's I think just not that
Speaker 3: surprising that some surfaces reflecting the arrangement of underlying organs
Speaker 3: and the muscles that support them will look like faces,
Speaker 3: because both faces and internal organs in a crab are
Speaker 3: left right symmetrical, so it's a left right symmetrical Rorschach test.
Speaker 3: You're just gonna get some faces. But on the other hand,
Speaker 3: I want to make clear again that while I think
Speaker 3: this is probably not a case of artificial selection on
Speaker 3: a wild animal population, that absolutely does happen sometimes, so
Speaker 3: it's not like the principle is invalidated. You can have
Speaker 3: artificial selection on wild populations by aggressive hunting of certain
Speaker 3: types of animals. You know, if there is an animal
Speaker 3: that has a certain body part that is prized by
Speaker 3: hunters over time, you know, if that's aggressively harvested and hunted,
Speaker 3: you will see that animal population often shift to basically
Speaker 3: not have that trade anymore. So this can happen, and
Speaker 3: we can see an extreme form of artificial selection in
Speaker 3: domesticated animals and in plants and other organisms of course.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, domestic dogs or bread for extreme
Speaker 3: with extreme selective pressures on desired traits.
Speaker 2: Right, right, So the mechanism absolutely exists, but in this
Speaker 2: particular case, it's probably not a factor. Right, And as
Speaker 2: always we have to stress that as humans, we would
Speaker 2: we look for these faces. We see faces if they're
Speaker 2: just barely there. So it doesn't take much for us
Speaker 2: to look at a crab or any other organism and say, oh,
Speaker 2: my goodness, that is clearly a human face. That is
Speaker 2: clearly a human skull, and in factor our own stories
Speaker 2: into why it is there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me paradolia please.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. In the last episode, you know, we
Speaker 2: talked a little bit about how there may be weren't
Speaker 2: as many crabs in folklore mythology as we would like,
Speaker 2: but we did reference that. You know, there are some
Speaker 2: great examples, and I was looking around for something new
Speaker 2: on this front and I found one. I didn't find
Speaker 2: as many sources, and I didn't find much in the
Speaker 2: way of recent sources. So I do want a flag
Speaker 2: that I'm working from sources here that are from like
Speaker 2: the forties and the twenties in a couple of cases,
Speaker 2: so they're always caveats with that sort of information. But
Speaker 2: what i'd sounded really fascinating. So it is another example
Speaker 2: of a supernatural crab, and it is called the Nakalla,
Speaker 2: and it is a familiar of a male sorcerer that
Speaker 2: takes the form of a kind of demon crab in
Speaker 2: the traditions of Zambia. According to Witchcraft, Divination and Magic
Speaker 2: among the Balival Tribes by cmn Wit nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 2: these are one of several types of familiars said to
Speaker 2: be either inherited in the case of female practitioners of
Speaker 2: dark magic, or quote prepared by matt recipes in the
Speaker 2: case of male practitioners. And this seems to be specific
Speaker 2: to the Lundon people. This is a Boundtu ethnic group. So,
Speaker 2: according to this text, some of these familiars, because there
Speaker 2: seem to be a vast array of familiars that may
Speaker 2: be manifested by these individuals. According to these folk tale
Speaker 2: traditions as related in these texts, some of them, especially
Speaker 2: a snake familiar form, often take on the face of
Speaker 2: their master, and their life force is tied to their master,
Speaker 2: so when the master dies, they die as well. And
Speaker 2: it seems possible from the context here that the Nakala
Speaker 2: crab demon or crab spirit also possesses the face of
Speaker 2: its master. White gives us this description in the text quote.
Speaker 2: The animal spirit known as Nakala also lives in rivers
Speaker 2: and is supposed to resemble a large crab with big
Speaker 2: claws and nose like projections. Describes how it is destroyed
Speaker 2: by the diviner calling it from its hiding place by
Speaker 2: whistling on a horn. This horn contains a preparation made
Speaker 2: from the body of other nicala which he has destroyed.
Speaker 2: The nicala is shot when it makes its appearance, and
Speaker 2: the diviner removes certain parts of it to use for
Speaker 2: future medicine required for calling forth others of its kind.
Speaker 3: Oh Okay.
Speaker 2: Now the Miland here he is referring to is Frank H. Miland,
Speaker 2: who wrote about this spirit crab in an older text
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three is which bound Africa, and he has
Speaker 2: these are some other details from that text. So Milan
Speaker 2: shares that the Nicala is said to be about four
Speaker 2: feet long and kills people by eating their shadow.
Speaker 3: Oh. Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also adds, I'm going to read a section
Speaker 2: here that contains some more details about this quote. It
Speaker 2: is about four feet from head to head, for it
Speaker 2: has a head at either end, oh, and is nearly
Speaker 2: as broad as it is long. Each head resembles the
Speaker 2: head of a hippo, having the same lumps on it
Speaker 2: by the eyes. When it is eating a person's shadow,
Speaker 2: it eats with both heads simultaneously.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There are more details about the killing of the Nkala,
Speaker 2: like what sort of horn is used and so forth,
Speaker 2: like a more complete recipe for how the Nakala slayer
Speaker 2: carries out his business, and I want to mention that elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Seemingly unrelated, He also mentions a Lunda tradition by which
Speaker 2: one's life energy could be magically stored inside a shell
Speaker 2: of some sort. Sometimes a crab shell so that one's
Speaker 2: enemies cannot destroy it with witchcraft, which is interesting. So
Speaker 2: it's like I will take on the crabs protection for
Speaker 2: my own life force or soul.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a spiritual exoskeleton.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So again I wish I had more information about
Speaker 2: this Nakala creature, but what is available does sound very tantalizing.
Speaker 2: So again, a kind of two faced crab monster that
Speaker 2: may exist sort of wild as a magical creature, but
Speaker 2: then also can but also can be created via magic
Speaker 2: to serve a sorcerer, and it eats men's souls, and
Speaker 2: it does so like from both ends at the same time,
Speaker 2: so two mouths simultaneously crunching down the soul or not
Speaker 2: the shadow, but in eating the shadow like destroys the body.
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting that it's also said to have head.
Speaker 3: The two heads are like the heads of a hippo,
Speaker 3: which is you can actually think of some similarities between
Speaker 3: the hippo and the crab. They are both aquatic or
Speaker 3: semi aquatic creatures that walk, so they're like not fish.
Speaker 3: They're not swimming creatures with tails. They have legs, but
Speaker 3: they live in the water, making them a kind of
Speaker 3: I don't know, in between type creature, and these in
Speaker 3: between creatures in our environments are often thought of to
Speaker 3: have kind of special or magical properties because they span
Speaker 3: the division between worlds.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and this does seem like a world rim
Speaker 2: walker for sure. So yeah, like I said, I wish
Speaker 2: there were more sources on this particular folk tradition, but
Speaker 2: what I was able to find sounded really really interesting.
Speaker 3: That is really cool. All right, are you ready to
Speaker 3: do a bit of follow up on the Francis Xavier crab?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, the crab with a cross? Yeah, what do
Speaker 2: we have this time?
Speaker 3: Well, in the last episode when we talked about it,
Speaker 3: we said we might come back to the idea of
Speaker 3: how plausible it is that a crab would carry a
Speaker 3: cross a crucifix dropped in the ocean around in its
Speaker 3: claws over its head like it's described in the story.
Speaker 3: So maybe we should actually start a brief refresher on
Speaker 3: the story. So the story is a legend of the
Speaker 3: Catholic missionary and co founder of the Jesuits, Saint Francis Xavier,
Speaker 3: and a crab. There are different versions of this story,
Speaker 3: but the best known goes like this, Xavier and his
Speaker 3: companions are sailing in the Molucca Islands when a terrible
Speaker 3: storm comes on and threatens direct the ship. Xavier prays
Speaker 3: for deliverance, and while doing so, he dips his crucifix
Speaker 3: over the side of the boat into the waves. In
Speaker 3: some versions of the story, he accidentally loses it it
Speaker 3: slips from his hand into the stormy see. In later
Speaker 3: versions of the story, he sort of like throws the
Speaker 3: crucifix into the sea as a weather control bomb to
Speaker 3: still the waves. Whichever version you get, the crucifix is
Speaker 3: lost in the water. The ship survives the storm and
Speaker 3: reaches shore many miles away. And then the legend goes
Speaker 3: that while Xavier and his party are walking on the beach,
Speaker 3: a crab comes out of the water and approaches them,
Speaker 3: and when it draws near, they see something amazing. Gripped
Speaker 3: tight in the crab's two claws, held aloft over its
Speaker 3: body is Xavier's crucifix, the one he lost in the storm.
Speaker 3: And then Xavier takes the crucifix and prays, and the
Speaker 3: crab goes back home scuttles into the waves. So, based
Speaker 3: on what we covered last time about the development in
Speaker 3: general of the Xavier miracle stories, I don't think there's
Speaker 3: a strong reason to believe this anecdote actually happened, And
Speaker 3: there's also a chance, based on some scholarship we talked about,
Speaker 3: that it was inspired by a Buddhist legend, an older
Speaker 3: Buddhist legend of a ninth century Buddhist priest named Jakaku
Speaker 3: who uses an icon of a god of wisdom to
Speaker 3: calm the waves and then gets that icon returned to
Speaker 3: him three years later by an octopus. We actually did
Speaker 3: discuss the relative likelihood of an octopus versus a crab
Speaker 3: bringing a trink it back to you from the water.
Speaker 3: I guess we still can't fully rule on which ones
Speaker 3: more likely, but I was leaning toward the octopus. However,
Speaker 3: I was wondering, would a crab potentially do something like this?
Speaker 3: So we're not asking is the story true. I think
Speaker 3: there are just outside of the coreplausibility of the miracle,
Speaker 3: there are things about the story that make it unlikely
Speaker 3: to be true. But would a crab potentially do something
Speaker 3: like this, i e. Find a discarded crucifix on the
Speaker 3: ocean floor and carry it around overhead in its claws.
Speaker 3: So to answer this, I was like, well, what kinds
Speaker 3: of object manipulation and carrying do we see among crabs?
Speaker 3: So I went digging into the scientific literature on different
Speaker 3: types of carrying behaviors, and I absolutely cannot provide an
Speaker 3: exhaustive list of every crab that's ever picked up and
Speaker 3: carried an object. But on the whole, I think you
Speaker 3: get a few major categories, and I'm going to run
Speaker 3: through them here. So one is decorator crabs. We've talked
Speaker 3: about these on the show before. This category includes several
Speaker 3: different species of crabs, all belonging to the superfamily Majoitia.
Speaker 3: They pick up and carry thing. They pick up objects
Speaker 3: and carry them around, and these objects are not food,
Speaker 3: but they don't carry these objects in their claws. Decorator
Speaker 3: crabs mount objects to their backs, to their carapaces, often
Speaker 3: living sedentary organisms, though sometimes inanimate objects as well. So
Speaker 3: they decorate their carapaces with things like algae and soft
Speaker 3: coral anemonies and sponges, and they carry these things around.
Speaker 3: Those things, again, most often are living organisms, but they
Speaker 3: don't carry them in their claws. So I think this
Speaker 3: is not really a relevant example.
Speaker 2: Did we I'm trying to remember if we were talking
Speaker 2: about these crabs and discussed how in artificial laboratory environments
Speaker 2: they will end up picking things that don't make it
Speaker 2: seem to make less sense, like hamburger meat whatnot putting
Speaker 2: that on there.
Speaker 3: Yet I think we did we maybe talked about that
Speaker 3: in our Bone Collector's episode, that they were they were
Speaker 3: just putting dead, dead stuff on their backs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that would seem to me. This is not
Speaker 2: a not backing this up with any research, but based
Speaker 2: on what we've covered in the past, you could imagine
Speaker 2: an artificial scenario in which a crab, one of these crabs,
Speaker 2: is put in an aquarium without access to its preferred
Speaker 2: decorator selections, and instead is given various religious iconography. It
Speaker 2: might conceivably decorate itself with at least one of those
Speaker 2: icons possibly.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, there are cases where these will they
Speaker 3: will put inanimate objects on their backs, like maybe shells
Speaker 3: or things like that. Yeah, so it's possible. Yeah, might
Speaker 3: might try to mount a crucifix on there. Now, the
Speaker 3: decorator crabs require they've got these almost velcrow like kind
Speaker 3: of hooks on there that are called I think ct
Speaker 3: on their carapaces, which are what they used to fix
Speaker 3: objects to them. I have questions about whether that would
Speaker 3: actually attach correctly to whatever material the crucifix was made of.
Speaker 3: I think the story doesn't say what the crucifix was
Speaker 3: made of, but we had been assuming metal because if
Speaker 3: it was wooden, I like, would it sink? Though I guess. Also,
Speaker 3: I guess the story doesn't require that it sinks, just
Speaker 3: that it gets lost. So maybe it's a wooden crucifix
Speaker 3: that gets lost and then floats away, or maybe it's
Speaker 3: a metal one that sinks and then a.
Speaker 2: Beef jerky or bacon strips.
Speaker 3: I guess unlikely there, but attach the story doesn't say.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I had been I'd been thinking metal because
Speaker 3: I'd been picturing its sinking, but the story doesn't actually
Speaker 3: say it sames.
Speaker 2: Well, and also there's the iconography where we see it
Speaker 2: metal like silvery, so that kind of forces you to
Speaker 2: think about the story like that as well.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, So later they would make silver crosses of
Speaker 3: Saint Xavier Francis Xavior, where a crab is holding the
Speaker 3: silver cross in its claws, which is beautiful, holding it
Speaker 3: like Luke Skywalker holds the lightsaber. So okay, so you've
Speaker 3: got decorator crabs that doesn't really fit doesn't exactly fit
Speaker 3: the legend. You've got palm palm or boxer crabs. We've
Speaker 3: also talked about these on the show in the past.
Speaker 3: So crabs in the genus Libya do hold something other
Speaker 3: than food in their claws, but in this case it
Speaker 3: is another living organism. This is another example of crabs symbiosis.
Speaker 3: The boxer crabs will hold usually stinging invertebrates like cea anemones,
Speaker 3: in their claws, and they use these for fence, for fighting,
Speaker 3: and sometimes for feeding. So they're sort of weapons. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they've got weapons of stinging stinging invertebrates on their claws.
Speaker 3: Then you've got the carrier type crabs. These exist in
Speaker 3: at least four families I was reading about. A big
Speaker 3: example is the family Deripidy. These carrier crabs exhibit a
Speaker 3: behavior known as carrying. I was reading about it in
Speaker 3: a paper from nineteen eighty six published in the Journal
Speaker 3: of Crustacean Biology by Mary Kay Wixton called carrying behavior
Speaker 3: in brachiurine crabs. In this paper, Wixton documents crabs carrying
Speaker 3: objects around actually holding them up over their backs, but
Speaker 3: it's kind of the wrong orientation. So these objects include
Speaker 3: quote shells, pieces of sponge, tunicates, algae, branches of Gorgonians
Speaker 3: or antipathians, or chips of rock. So we're starting to
Speaker 3: get closed. This is some times picking up inanimate objects
Speaker 3: like shells or rocks, holding them up over their backs.
Speaker 3: But it's a little bit different than the imagery we
Speaker 3: see in the paintings and as described in the story,
Speaker 3: because again the Francis Xavier one it says it's got
Speaker 3: the cross in its claws, the clause meaning the killy
Speaker 3: the front claws. These carrier crabs do not use their
Speaker 3: claws the front claws as wixton documents. They carry things
Speaker 3: with their back legs, so like the fifth or fourth periopods,
Speaker 3: the furthest back legs which tend to be modified and
Speaker 3: specialized for this job. And it's worth noting the biological
Speaker 3: function of this, both in the decorator crabs and the
Speaker 3: carrier crabs. The most supported explanation for why the crabs
Speaker 3: do this is for camouflage and defense. So they're basically
Speaker 3: hiding under these external objects and this may help them
Speaker 3: lend in with the environment. It might camouflage them, but
Speaker 3: it also sometimes provides protection because they can take advantage
Speaker 3: of the defenses of a living animal mounted above like
Speaker 3: a stinging invertebrate again and then finally, Another possibly relevant
Speaker 3: example is crabs that build nests. There are various types
Speaker 3: of crabs that do this. Fiddler crabs, I think ghost
Speaker 3: crabs build nests in the mud or in the sand,
Speaker 3: and as such they might sometimes carry or push, at
Speaker 3: least push around materials used in the construction of nests.
Speaker 3: This would be maybe things like mud balls or clumps
Speaker 3: of sand, though there's some blurring into the food manipulation
Speaker 3: category here because fiddler crabs will also use their front
Speaker 3: claws for when they're dealing with mud. That is sometimes
Speaker 3: a feeding behavior, but none of the sources I was
Speaker 3: looking at described behaviors like clutching an inanimate object with
Speaker 3: both claws and holding it a So when thinking about
Speaker 3: crab behavior, we may be led astray by unconsciously comparing
Speaker 3: crab kili or crab claws to human hands, because we
Speaker 3: use our hands to carry objects all the time, but
Speaker 3: for crabs the claws are mostly used as tools, weapons,
Speaker 3: and for display, not for carrying objects from one place
Speaker 3: to another, and most species of crab that carry objects
Speaker 3: do not use their claws to do it. So the
Speaker 3: closest I could get that really seems plausible to me
Speaker 3: is actually is some kind of carrier crab actually, but
Speaker 3: it would not be like the pictures we see where
Speaker 3: it's up in the front claws. It would be holding
Speaker 3: the crucifix over the back of its carapace with its
Speaker 3: back legs, and that is kind of an interesting image
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: Possibly blasphemous though, holding the crucifer picks up with your feet. Well,
Speaker 2: I guess it's fine if a crab does it, it's
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 3: Have we issued a Papa bull on this yet? Like?
Speaker 3: Are the are crabs holy? Or are they? Are they unholy?
Speaker 2: I think crabs are absolutely holy, Okay, I think pretty
Speaker 2: much anyway you you take it apart, crabs are the
Speaker 2: children of God or the gods, and they do important
Speaker 2: work out there. I think the exception would be any
Speaker 2: kind of say black magic crab, demon or spirit that's
Speaker 2: summoned to, you know, for nefarious purposes. That I think
Speaker 2: would be more clearly some sort of artificial being.
Speaker 3: The crabs, in attack of the crab monsters, are not holy.
Speaker 3: They have been rendered unholy by radioactive contamination and by
Speaker 3: becoming psychic mind stealers that eat you and steal your thoughts, right,
Speaker 3: so that it's hard to say that they're holy, but
Speaker 3: just regular crabs in the environment. Yeah, that's about that's
Speaker 3: got to be whole, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Likewise, alien crabs or alien crab like beings from
Speaker 2: another world, well that's a whole theological discussion. To planets
Speaker 2: have individual gods or is there like one god that
Speaker 2: rules over all the planets? You know, that's not for
Speaker 2: us to decide. That's a much larger question.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, I think we need to call it
Speaker 3: there for part two of our crab Bag series, but
Speaker 3: there will be more. We will be back with a
Speaker 3: crab Bag Part three at least on the following Tuesday.
Speaker 3: Is this going to be on a Thursday?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, so look forward to more crab based action. Again,
Speaker 2: there's no shortage of crabs out there, real or imagined. Well,
Speaker 2: at this point, we just want to remind everyone. Stuff
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