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 are back with
Speaker 3: the fourth and I think for now final part in
Speaker 3: our crab Bag series. We've been doing episodes on all
Speaker 3: things crab. No real organizing principle except I guess the
Speaker 3: decapod crustacean body plan. In the previous three episodes of
Speaker 3: this series, we have talked about a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 3: We got into the legend of a miracle crab connected
Speaker 3: with the Catholic missionary Saint Francis Xavier and how that
Speaker 3: story connects loosely to a real species known as the
Speaker 3: Crucifix crab, and we got into a bit about questions
Speaker 3: of object carrying behavior in crabs. We talked about the
Speaker 3: family of crabs known as Raninity or FROs, and they's
Speaker 3: somewhat uncrab like. Elongated body shape crabs have a very
Speaker 3: side to side kind of orientation. The Raninity have instead
Speaker 3: specialized for backwards burrowing by somewhat elongating their body front
Speaker 3: to back. We talked about a legendary type of monster
Speaker 3: crab from the traditions of the Lunda people of Zambia.
Speaker 3: A crab with two heads that attacks by eating your
Speaker 3: shadow had some interesting hippopotamus properties as well. We talked
Speaker 3: about the idea of seeing faces in the shells of crabs,
Speaker 3: and in the last episode we read a bizarre and
Speaker 3: interesting eighteen sixty four letter to Scientific American which argued
Speaker 3: that the US Navy should construct a giant biomimetic attack
Speaker 3: submarine based on the model of the Atlantic horseshoe crab.
Speaker 3: The letter writer called this the King Crab Warship, and
Speaker 3: this led into a general discussion about the sort of
Speaker 3: patent fever surrounding the US Civil War and Abraham Lincoln's
Speaker 3: surprising relationship with very eager inventors of every kind, and
Speaker 3: this ran the whole gamut from scammers and cranks to
Speaker 3: real innovators. And in that episode we also talked about
Speaker 3: the cultural significance of crabs in China, including getting into
Speaker 3: a short older report from Fujian of crabs being involved
Speaker 3: in exorcism and protective magic. And then we also talked
Speaker 3: about the more common association in China between crabs and
Speaker 3: good fortune, wealth and luck, and got into a few
Speaker 3: other stories there, like the story of Bajied, the first
Speaker 3: man to eat a crab, which is a great distinction.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, So a lot of discussion of
Speaker 2: crab iconography, with crabs clutching coins or setting on big
Speaker 2: piles of coins, almost like a Western dragon. So was
Speaker 2: really into that. One thing I wanted to mention You
Speaker 2: were talking about the proposal that the United States needed
Speaker 2: a large crab mech to do its bidding. This reminded
Speaker 2: me of something. I was like, what is it reminding
Speaker 2: me of? And it is the mobile Oppression Palace from Futurama.
Speaker 2: This is an episode in which titled a Taste of Freedom,
Speaker 2: one of my favorites, in which Zoidberg's people end up
Speaker 2: temporarily conquering the earth and they have this giant crab
Speaker 2: mech that also has a sand castle on top of
Speaker 2: it and these big claws for tearing things apart, and
Speaker 2: it is the mobile oppression Palace.
Speaker 3: Does it crawl front to back or side to side.
Speaker 2: A definite side to side movement as I recall, because
Speaker 2: of course Zoidberg does a lot of side to side
Speaker 2: movement from time to time, and the little crab dance. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so yeah, I'm excited to get into more crab topic.
Speaker 2: I was showing you this before him, but I even
Speaker 2: brought out my little crab mini here that I painted
Speaker 2: a while back. Crab folk from Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 3: Is this a playable people? Can you make crab folk characters?
Speaker 2: It's it's not one of like the given species that
Speaker 2: you can play, But I think ultimately you can play
Speaker 2: any species you want. There are rules for adapting it,
Speaker 2: and I think really we should all of all of
Speaker 2: all of my fellow Dungeons and Dragons players out there,
Speaker 2: go ahead and mix it up, and in your very
Speaker 2: next session insist that your dungeon master let you play
Speaker 2: a crab folk and insist on lateral movement only when
Speaker 2: you're on the battle map.
Speaker 3: Oh that's yeah, that's good. Uh okay, So are you
Speaker 3: good if I kick things off today with a discussion
Speaker 3: of claw fraud.
Speaker 2: Claw fraud sounds perfect for our crab bag series. Yes,
Speaker 2: let's do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. So this is a bit of funny biological
Speaker 3: research that I turned up when I was reading about
Speaker 3: our old friends, the Fiddler Crabs. So the term Fiddler
Speaker 3: crabs refers to any one of roughly one hundred species
Speaker 3: in the Brachiurin family, Occipoddy brachurins are the true crabs.
Speaker 3: So unlike some of the other examples we've been talking about,
Speaker 3: like you know, horseshoe crabs are not true crabs. In fact,
Speaker 3: they're not really crabs at all. They're just sort of
Speaker 3: crabs by common naming convention. These are true crabs. They're brachurins.
Speaker 3: The family again, is ossipodidy. Not all occipodity are fiddler crabs,
Speaker 3: but all fiddler crabs are occipodity, and they are known
Speaker 3: for their sexually dimorphic trait of extreme claw asymmetry. So
Speaker 3: even if you've never read much about fiddler crabs before,
Speaker 3: you've probably seen a picture of one of these at
Speaker 3: some point. Among male fiddler crabs, one claw is way
Speaker 3: bigger than the other. It's not just bigger, it is
Speaker 3: often absurdly comically bigger than the other. In extreme cases,
Speaker 3: the bigger claw is up to half of the male's
Speaker 3: total body weight. So for a rough analogy, imagine you
Speaker 3: know an average adult human male and one of his
Speaker 3: hands is normal, but the other hand is about four
Speaker 3: feet wide and weighs like eighty to one hundred pounds.
Speaker 2: Right right oversized and as we'll get into expensive.
Speaker 3: Yes, we explored the biology of the fiddler crab in
Speaker 3: a good bit of detail in a series we did
Speaker 3: a few years back called The Lesser of Two Crab Claws.
Speaker 3: I think that was the title we went with. Those
Speaker 3: episodes were generally about asymmetry in nature, but the male
Speaker 3: fiddler crab is one of the most amazing and bizarre
Speaker 3: examples in the animal kingdom, so it had a kind
Speaker 3: of central place in that series. I guess I'll start
Speaker 3: off by mentioning a few general observations about fiddler crabs
Speaker 3: before we get into the main claw research I wanted
Speaker 3: to talk about today. As I already mentioned, this huge
Speaker 3: asymmetrical claw is a sexually dimorphic trait, so you only
Speaker 3: see it in males. Female fiddler crabs have two smaller,
Speaker 3: matched regular size claws. Fiddler crabs are burrowing crabs, so
Speaker 3: they nest in these little tunnels that they dig in
Speaker 3: the mudflats or in the sandy intertidal areas where they live.
Speaker 3: And exactly how the burrows are used varies between species,
Speaker 3: but usually they're involved in say brooding, you know, laying
Speaker 3: eggs or reproduction in some way, and the quality of
Speaker 3: the burrow defended by a male contributes to the male's
Speaker 3: success in mating. Fiddler crabs have a very interesting way
Speaker 3: of eating. They use their front claws to shovel lumps
Speaker 3: of sand or mud into their mouthparts, and then their
Speaker 3: mouthparts rapidly dig around in this glob of sand or
Speaker 3: mud to find clean and extract any edible material like
Speaker 3: algae or bacteria or bits of dead other detrit us.
Speaker 3: This feeding process creates a very cute waste product. Actually,
Speaker 3: in a couple of sources I was seeing refer to
Speaker 3: this as pseudo feces. I don't know if this technically
Speaker 3: counts as pseudo feces to a zoologist or not, but
Speaker 3: they're little leftover pellets of mud or sand that pile
Speaker 3: up around the fiddler crab's burrow. These are the pellets
Speaker 3: the crab has spit out after extracting food from them,
Speaker 3: to the extent that they are called pseudo feces there.
Speaker 3: This would be because they're not real feces that you know,
Speaker 3: they haven't passed through the animal's whole digestive system. They're
Speaker 3: sort of what gets rejected by the bouncer at the
Speaker 3: entrance of the digestive system rather than what comes out
Speaker 3: at the end, though they do look like and are
Speaker 3: often mistaken for droppings, Hence they would be kind of
Speaker 3: false feces. Rob I've got a picture for you to
Speaker 3: look at in the outline here. I don't know why
Speaker 3: these these little diesel balls are cute to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And it really speaks to the metics nature
Speaker 2: of crab consumption in general, and we as humans we
Speaker 2: might think, oh, gross, you're producing pseudo feces. I think
Speaker 2: the crabs, if they were capable of judging us back,
Speaker 2: would say, it is disgusting that you are not producing
Speaker 2: pseudo feces. You're just saying let it all in, we'll
Speaker 2: work it all out in the truth feces at the end.
Speaker 2: They would probably say disgusting. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love thinking about their feeding method and trying to
Speaker 3: imagine the human analogy. So it would be like if
Speaker 3: you ate by running around in the yard and scooping
Speaker 3: up handfuls of dirt from the ground, and then you
Speaker 3: put the clod of dirt in your mouth and you
Speaker 3: swish it around until you extract and swallow any earthworms,
Speaker 3: edible roots termite larva like old dorrito as somebody dropped.
Speaker 3: You get all that out of there, you swallow it,
Speaker 3: and then you spit out a tidy little clod of
Speaker 3: soil that is left over, and then you just keep
Speaker 3: doing this over and over all day until you have
Speaker 3: a little mountain of spherical dirt clods piled up around
Speaker 3: your front door.
Speaker 2: I love it. I celebrate it.
Speaker 3: So this actually, this feeding method actually brings us back
Speaker 3: to some interesting things about the claw asymmetry in male
Speaker 3: fiddler crabs. As you might imagine, sifting balls of sand
Speaker 3: and mud through your mouthparts is not the most efficient
Speaker 3: way to find high quality nutrition, so you have to
Speaker 3: do a lot of it. So eating mud is kind
Speaker 3: of a It's a job that requires long hours, it
Speaker 3: takes persistence, and for males it is even worse because
Speaker 3: it turns out that one giant monster claw is pretty
Speaker 3: much completely useless for feeding. So if you watch female
Speaker 3: fiddler crabs eat, they will rapidly shovel mud and sand
Speaker 3: into their mouthparts with both claws in a continuous back
Speaker 3: and forth cycling motion. But because males only have the
Speaker 3: one normal sized claw, their ability to feed themselves is
Speaker 3: basically cut in half. It's like I've just got my
Speaker 3: one good eaten hand and then I've got this big hand,
Speaker 3: but I can't really use it.
Speaker 2: It's like if you went to an Ethiopian restaurant with
Speaker 2: Freddy Krueger, Like, what's he gonna do? The claws just
Speaker 2: got a set there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah with the with the knives, you can't
Speaker 3: really scoop up with, you know, the delicious food. You've
Speaker 3: only got the one hand to use. So, because they
Speaker 3: only have the one claw that is useful for feeding,
Speaker 3: male fiddler crabs have much lower foraging efficiency than females.
Speaker 3: They might need to spend nearly twice as much time
Speaker 3: eating to extract the same number of calories, so that
Speaker 3: in itself is interesting. You might look at a male
Speaker 3: fiddler crab with this one giant superclaw and you think
Speaker 3: this is a mighty weapon. You know, it makes the
Speaker 3: male that wields it incredibly hardy and healthy and fit.
Speaker 3: And while a big claw might often be a sign
Speaker 3: of underlying fitness, is not the cause of underlying fitness.
Speaker 3: It mainly comes with downsides to the crab's ability to
Speaker 3: survive the daily struggle for food. So not only does
Speaker 3: the claw greatly hamper the mail crab's ability to eat.
Speaker 3: It hugely increases the mail crab's food energy needs. So
Speaker 3: you've got this big old claw. It's a heavy piece
Speaker 3: of tissue, so it increases the crab's based metabolism, and
Speaker 3: it also makes it more energetically expensive for the crab
Speaker 3: to move, to run around and move because it's carrying
Speaker 3: this thing. So you imagine if you had to live
Speaker 3: your life with an eighty pound suitcase surgically attached to
Speaker 3: your hand, that would kind of you would need to
Speaker 3: eat more food. It would just you know, cause a
Speaker 3: lot of trouble for everything else you needed to do well.
Speaker 2: It makes me think too of examples of humans who cultivate,
Speaker 2: say an extreme bodybuilder physique that then comes with its
Speaker 2: own drawbacks, including perhaps having to eat like multiple boiled
Speaker 2: chickens per day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good thing. This is a funny thing. Actually, if
Speaker 3: you read about like serious bodybuilders, we're trying to maintain
Speaker 3: huge amounts of muscle mass. A hilarious problem they talk
Speaker 3: about is like difficulty eating as much as they need
Speaker 3: to eat. Is like, ah, I got to eat you know,
Speaker 3: fourteen chicken breasts today. I can't eat that much.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. You hear stories about like pro wrestlers on
Speaker 2: the road and trying to keep up with that kind
Speaker 2: of thing, and it's like, oh, I'm in you know,
Speaker 2: small town Minnesota, and I need to acquire this many
Speaker 2: boiled chickens at the local waffle house.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyway, you might think, well, okay, so this
Speaker 3: big crab claw, it comes at a metabolic cost. I
Speaker 3: understand that it's heavy, it's hard to move around, it
Speaker 3: increases your metabolism, but at least it's a big weapon
Speaker 3: and it provides a defense against predators. So you know,
Speaker 3: like something comes to eat you and you can use
Speaker 3: the big claw to fight back. That is not necessarily true.
Speaker 3: It might deter some predators, but research has found that
Speaker 3: birds like grackles, which prey on fiddler crabs, are actually
Speaker 3: more likely to target and attack males with big claws
Speaker 3: than they are to attack females or males with smaller claws.
Speaker 3: So a big claw means you're number one, easier for
Speaker 3: the predators to see, and also you are a more
Speaker 3: valuable prize because there's more meat inside you.
Speaker 2: Hmm yeah. Yeah, So the birds recognize the claw meat
Speaker 2: is good and the claw meat is big in these specimens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you're just you're easier to pick out. You know,
Speaker 3: the birds flying above hunting for crabs. You like it
Speaker 3: sees the one with waving the big claw around. So
Speaker 3: if one giant claw comes with all of these tremendous
Speaker 3: downsides to fitness, what is it for? It seems to
Speaker 3: serve a major purpose related to reproduction, and then possibly
Speaker 3: a couple of minor practical purposes. To start with the
Speaker 3: minor practical purposes, I've read that males sometimes use the
Speaker 3: large claw to kind of cover and shield the entrances
Speaker 3: of their burrows, so a large claw may provide extra
Speaker 3: defense in some situations there but by far the most
Speaker 3: widely recognized purpose of the large claw is in sexual
Speaker 3: competition and sexual signaling to appeal to female fiddler crabs
Speaker 3: and to intimidate and fight off rival males, especially in
Speaker 3: competition for access to burrows and the quality of burrows
Speaker 3: is in part what appeals to females who are looking
Speaker 3: to mate. So when it comes time for mating, male
Speaker 3: fiddler crabs engage in a ritualized behavior known as waving,
Speaker 3: where they stake out territory in front of their burrows
Speaker 3: and they wave their big claw up in the air
Speaker 3: for all to see. Each fiddler species has its own
Speaker 3: specific waving pattern, and this waving behavior serves to intimidate
Speaker 3: rival males and drive them away from the area of
Speaker 3: the crabs borough. A big claw so helps with this
Speaker 3: as well, you got a big claw, so it's like,
Speaker 3: oh wow, you know, don't want to mess with that guy.
Speaker 3: And as for appealing to females, the results are in
Speaker 3: and it turns out female fiddler crabs do like big claws,
Speaker 3: that's what they're into. Big claws are often taken as
Speaker 3: an honest signal of genetic fitness, for one thing, because
Speaker 3: they take a lot of energy to grow and sustain,
Speaker 3: so they are evidence that this crab must be eating well,
Speaker 3: it's doing well, it's probably a good mate. And then
Speaker 3: also crabs continue to grow throughout their lives, so that
Speaker 3: means that bigger crabs tend to be older crabs. So
Speaker 3: a bigger claw usually functions as a somewhat honest indication
Speaker 3: that a particular crab is a survivor across many seasons.
Speaker 2: All right, so some good genes there.
Speaker 3: But there is an exception to this honest signaling principle,
Speaker 3: and that's what got me interested in coming back to
Speaker 3: the fiddler crab today. So, as I said earlier, I
Speaker 3: want to talk about claw fraud, and this has to
Speaker 3: do with regenerated limbs, an interesting topic unto itself. My
Speaker 3: main source here is a Royal Society Biological Sciences paper
Speaker 3: from the year two thousand by Patricia Backwell and co
Speaker 3: authors called Dishonest Signaling in a Fiddler Crab. The authors
Speaker 3: of this paper start off by talking about how when
Speaker 3: animals exchange information with one another in situations in all
Speaker 3: kinds of situations like predator prey interactions, make choice and
Speaker 3: competition for resources, you would naturally expect to find some
Speaker 3: evolutionary attempts at dishonest communication. So like, if we're always
Speaker 3: going to compare shoe sizes to decide who gets to
Speaker 3: eat this animal carcass, we both found it would pay
Speaker 3: biologically for me to find a way to make my
Speaker 3: feet seem bigger than they actually are. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: there are some theories in biology that say, you know,
Speaker 3: you can't have too much cheating or dishonesty in information
Speaker 3: exchanges in nature, or the information exchange becomes unstable and
Speaker 3: it just like doesn't really work for this, Like if
Speaker 3: everybody's lying, then the signal just becomes unreliable and it's
Speaker 3: it's no longer useful biologically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: So the authors say, even though you would expect to
Speaker 3: find some animals trying to cheat at trying to lie
Speaker 3: at information exchange, they say that at the time of
Speaker 3: this study in the year two thousand, empirical research had
Speaker 3: not found many examples of cheating in sexually selected signals
Speaker 3: in nature. The author is right quote this is not
Speaker 3: so prizing since there are logistic and conceptual problems in
Speaker 3: demonstrating cheating. Cheats are designed to go unnoticed. Even if
Speaker 3: you identify an individual with a disproportionately large signal for
Speaker 3: its underlying quality, it is unclear how you can differentiate
Speaker 3: this from natural variation in the relationship between signal size
Speaker 3: and male quality. However, in the fiddler crab species that
Speaker 3: they call Uca and ulypis now known as Ostrica and Ulypus,
Speaker 3: they argue that it is possible to identify a clear
Speaker 3: example of a dishonest sexually selected signal, and it goes
Speaker 3: like this. When crabs lose a limb, they can often
Speaker 3: grow it back. You know, this is one of the
Speaker 3: advantages of being something like a crab. Mammals or not
Speaker 3: like this. We can regenerate some types of tissue, but
Speaker 3: if we lose a whole limb, it's gone. You know,
Speaker 3: it's not growing back. But crabs frequently lose limp due
Speaker 3: to attacks by predators or fights with rival males, and
Speaker 3: grow new limbs in their place. So, according to the authors,
Speaker 3: when most filler crab species lose a claw, they regenerate
Speaker 3: one that is pretty similar to the original in form,
Speaker 3: But in a few species, including Ostrica and Alypus quote,
Speaker 3: males instead regenerate claws that are lighter, more slender, and
Speaker 3: less robust, which they call leptokilus than the original claus,
Speaker 3: which are called brachikilus. So again, Brachychelus means it's the
Speaker 3: strong claw that the crab had originally. The leptokilis claw
Speaker 3: is the weaker, less muscled regenerated claw, they continue quote.
Speaker 3: For a given claw length, leptokilis claws have a smaller
Speaker 3: muscle mass than do brachykilis claws, and they may thus
Speaker 3: be weaker and less effective weapons. So these regenera did
Speaker 3: leptokilis clause match the original big claw in some ways.
Speaker 3: For example, they sometimes match it in length, but are
Speaker 3: reduced in terms of strength and internal muscle mass. So
Speaker 3: they regrow a claw that looks big, but it is
Speaker 3: literally partially hollow, like, it does have muscles inside, but
Speaker 3: it's got less muscle mass inside than the original claw did.
Speaker 3: So if it actually came down to a real fight,
Speaker 3: this regenerated claw would usually lose. And the authors did
Speaker 3: test this out. They staged some fiddler crab fights to
Speaker 3: make sure, and they indeed found that the Leptokilis males
Speaker 3: were significantly worse at fighting and lost in battle against
Speaker 3: Brackykilis males.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like imagine a bodybuilder who has
Speaker 2: not maintained the same physique that they previously had, but
Speaker 2: then for their dating profile photo they use some alchemy
Speaker 2: of dishonest photoshoppery or generative AI to make their current
Speaker 2: physique look like their previous physique. So on one level,
Speaker 2: they're saying this is accurate because this is what I
Speaker 2: once had, but in reality it is not packed the
Speaker 2: same strength and it is there is a dishonesty to
Speaker 2: the signal.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, maybe they're like stuffing fake muscles under their
Speaker 3: shirt or something so like, look, I look pretty big,
Speaker 3: but I don't I can't actually lift as much weight
Speaker 3: as I as I once could.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: However, crab competition often does not come down to real fighting,
Speaker 3: and intimidation displays can drive away rivals before a fight begins.
Speaker 3: We've talked about this a lot on the show before.
Speaker 3: This is the case with tons of animal species that
Speaker 3: have aggressive competition for mates. It is in everybody's interest
Speaker 3: to avoid a fight whenever possible, because even if you
Speaker 3: win the fight, actually fighting cost energy, it is risky
Speaker 3: and could lead to injuries which reduce fitness and could
Speaker 3: later kill you. So fighting is just something you want
Speaker 3: to avoid, even if you're probably going to win. So
Speaker 3: it's better for everybody involved if the competing males have
Speaker 3: a way of sizing each other up and deciding who
Speaker 3: would probably win the fight, allowing them to skip the
Speaker 3: fight altogether, so you know the likely loser, they have
Speaker 3: some kind of piece of evidence, you know, maybe horn
Speaker 3: size or in the case of crabs, probably claw size,
Speaker 3: They see the evidence of the likely winner's fitness, and
Speaker 3: the likely loser just retreats before combat starts. Previous research
Speaker 3: in fiddler crabs has found that the main criterion that
Speaker 3: males use to assess each other's fighting ability is big
Speaker 3: claw length, which is not necessarily reduced to the same
Speaker 3: degree in the regenerated claw. The way that other measures
Speaker 3: like strength and internal muscle mass are also appeal to
Speaker 3: females seems related to assessments of claw length. Females of
Speaker 3: this fiddler crab species are looking for males with a
Speaker 3: long claw, so how does this relate to regeneration. The
Speaker 3: authors of the paper set out to investigate whether in
Speaker 3: this species the weaker, partially hollow regenerated clause would serve
Speaker 3: as a dishonest but effective signal to win mating opportunities.
Speaker 3: Could males with these weaker claws bluff their way into
Speaker 3: competitive victory, control of burrows and into sects And the
Speaker 3: answer is basically yes, the bluffing works. So one way
Speaker 3: of assessing the question is if males with strong original
Speaker 3: clause usually win fights against males with the regenerated clause,
Speaker 3: do the males with strong original clause seek out males
Speaker 3: with regenerated clause to dominate in bully or are they
Speaker 3: more likely to aggressively escalate to real fighting against males
Speaker 3: with regenerated claus. In this study, the answer was no.
Speaker 3: It really just doesn't affect choices about whether to fight
Speaker 3: or who to fight.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: Males with original clause do not differentially fight males with
Speaker 3: regenerated claws, even though they're likely to win. Regenerated clause
Speaker 3: effectively bluff fighting ability and deter potential opponents before they fight.
Speaker 3: So the partially hollow claws, the weaker, less muscled claus
Speaker 3: are an effective bluff against rival males, and again, do
Speaker 3: they convince females Yes? Quote During mate searching, females do
Speaker 3: not discriminate against males with low mass regenerated claws, indicating
Speaker 3: that they are deceived as to the true cost males
Speaker 3: pay to produce sexual signals. So it really seems like
Speaker 3: the the you know, the weaker claw is a very
Speaker 3: smart gamble. It is true, it's not as good at fighting,
Speaker 3: but at least within the species, it gets the important
Speaker 3: jobs of bluffing rival males and impressing females done quite well.
Speaker 2: And this is the primary These are the primary spaces
Speaker 2: where the crab claw is useful.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Yeah, I mean, sometimes it does come down to
Speaker 3: a fight. But you want to avoid fighting anywhere, right,
Speaker 3: So sometimes you'll have to fight and you're kind of
Speaker 3: out of luck there, but most of the time you're
Speaker 3: just trying to get by without fighting. So the authors
Speaker 3: note that in natural populations of this species, up to
Speaker 3: forty four percent of males are leptokuilas they have the
Speaker 3: regenerated weaker claw, and it's kind of like, why not
Speaker 3: the author's right quote. Since Leptokilis claws have a lower
Speaker 3: mass than brachikilis clauseleptekilis males use less energy to wave
Speaker 3: at a given rate. Remember, the sexual display is waving
Speaker 3: the big claw in the air, so if you've got
Speaker 3: a claw with less muscle mass in it, it's easier
Speaker 3: to wave around, so you can actually show off more
Speaker 3: with a weaker claw. Quote. Thus, even when in relatively
Speaker 3: poor condition compared with Brakikilas males, Leptokulis males can wave
Speaker 3: at the same rate. In biological terms, it's cheaper to
Speaker 3: make and maintain, and it's easier to use for their
Speaker 3: primary purpose, and it works just as well for most things,
Speaker 3: it seems like, so the real question kind of turns
Speaker 3: into why do the male fiddler crabs produce the original
Speaker 3: stronger claw in the first place, Like, why hasn't evolution
Speaker 3: just completely gotten rid of the strong claw and you know,
Speaker 3: just started making these weaker, more hollow claws because the
Speaker 3: strong claw is very costly. It's a great burden to
Speaker 3: the crab. One thing that again is worth noting, is
Speaker 3: that if there is too much cheating or dishonest signaling
Speaker 3: within a population of animals, of course the signal loses
Speaker 3: its value, right, So that can be you know that
Speaker 3: the whole system can be destabilized by excessive deception or cheating.
Speaker 3: But that doesn't necessarily explain like why the individual will
Speaker 3: you know, what would be against the individual crab evolving
Speaker 3: in that direction to just have the weaker hollow clause
Speaker 3: from the beginning. And so the authors do explore this
Speaker 3: a little bit. They say one difference is that since
Speaker 3: the leptokilis males are worse at actually fighting, they are
Speaker 3: somewhat more likely to lose their burrows in fights to
Speaker 3: be driven away by stronger males. The authors tracked this
Speaker 3: behavior as well. They were like, what happens after this?
Speaker 3: What happens to both leptokilis and Brachikilus crabs after they're
Speaker 3: driven from their burrows and have to find a new one.
Speaker 3: The authors discovered that there was no major difference in
Speaker 3: how long it took them to find new boroughs, nor
Speaker 3: in the distance they had to travel, nor in the
Speaker 3: number of fights initiated in competition for burroughs. There was
Speaker 3: a difference in how the crabs got new burroughs. So
Speaker 3: Brachikilus males more often got their new borough by fighting
Speaker 3: and driving out an occupant. Leptochilus males more often found
Speaker 3: empty burrows and moved in. But then again, does this
Speaker 3: really make a difference. The authors looked into it, and
Speaker 3: they found that the empty burrows that were occupied by
Speaker 3: the lighter clawed males were just as attractive to females
Speaker 3: and thus were no lower in quality than the occupied
Speaker 3: burrows that were seized by fighting. Quote Hence, neither the
Speaker 3: process nor the outcome of searching for new burroughs seems
Speaker 3: to be more costly for Leptokilis than Brachykilus males. A
Speaker 3: higher frequency of borrow loss for Leptochilus males is the
Speaker 3: only cost that seems to favor the Brachykilis claw form,
Speaker 3: So the only difference they're finding is that when you
Speaker 3: have the weaker claw, you're more likely to lose your
Speaker 3: burrow to be driven out. They say. Quote, small males
Speaker 3: are on average more often involved in fights since there
Speaker 3: are more males in the population that are slightly large
Speaker 3: than them. The increased benefits of having a brachykili's claw
Speaker 3: when small may therefore select for the initial production of
Speaker 3: this robust claw form. As males grow, the relative frequency
Speaker 3: of fighting decreases, and brachikille may be less advantageous. Moreover,
Speaker 3: larger males spend more time waving. Something feels almost metaphorically
Speaker 3: interesting about this, So like, when you're young, you are
Speaker 3: more likely to have to fight for what you get
Speaker 3: or have to fight to defend what you've got, so
Speaker 3: it pays to have the actual muscle inside. Because you're smaller,
Speaker 3: you look like a softer target, so you're to be
Speaker 3: you're going to be escalating to actual fights more often
Speaker 3: when you're younger, But as you get older and bigger
Speaker 3: and scarier, you can more often bluff your way out
Speaker 3: of fights. Thus the advantage of having a real fighting
Speaker 3: claw is reduced and starts to pay more and more
Speaker 3: to bluff and cheat with with with this weaker claw
Speaker 3: that is easy to wave around in the air.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is fascinating, And yeah, we can think of
Speaker 2: various various human analogies for that. I'm sure you know
Speaker 2: in you know, in the fighting base, but also you know,
Speaker 2: in other aspects of life as well. Well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is not a perfect analogy, but it kind
Speaker 3: of reminds me of adages, like, you know, give someone
Speaker 3: a reputation as an early riser and they can sleep
Speaker 3: till noon. There's there's sort of a principle that once
Speaker 3: you your reputation is already established, or you have some
Speaker 3: kind of you have some kind of appearance of prestige
Speaker 3: or having been established, you have to do less actual
Speaker 3: work or it will less often come down to you
Speaker 3: really proving your ability, and more often you can kind
Speaker 3: of bluff and cheat your way through situations because people
Speaker 3: are you know, you seem to be established, you are
Speaker 3: more intimidating, andeople are less likely to question you, and
Speaker 3: so real ability to compete at whatever, real ability to
Speaker 3: do the thing tends to be much more important when
Speaker 3: you have less of a reputation already. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 3: also really interesting to come back to the idea of
Speaker 3: how of course, you know, systems of information exchange are
Speaker 3: always destabilized and eventually destroyed if there is enough lying
Speaker 3: within the system, Like information exchange doesn't work if everybody's lying.
Speaker 3: So it is kind of surprising to me that there
Speaker 3: could still remain this type of sexual signaling, this type
Speaker 3: of information exchange based on claw size in populations that
Speaker 3: have rates this high of deception in them. That might
Speaker 3: you know, in some cases up to forty you know,
Speaker 3: nearly half of males are using a claw that misrepresents
Speaker 3: their ability to fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is fascinating, Like the signal has somehow not
Speaker 2: become completely useless, and it hasn't begin to unravel as
Speaker 2: far as we can tell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't look into the like the math of
Speaker 3: what are thought to be the limits on you know,
Speaker 3: the theoretical limits of ratios within a population of deception,
Speaker 3: But that would just intuitively seem to me to be
Speaker 3: near the edge, Like that's goin to be about as
Speaker 3: high as you can get. I don't know, yeah, especially,
Speaker 3: I mean you can. I guess it's a bit more
Speaker 3: complicated in human scenarios because human cultures involve so many
Speaker 3: other factors and there's so many different ways we're communicating
Speaker 3: to each other. We're not just waving our claw around
Speaker 3: in the air and so forth. That's certainly true, though
Speaker 3: I would say I'm I'm always cautious on the show
Speaker 3: to draw too many direct analogies from animal behavior to
Speaker 3: lessons in human life, because not just any animals. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I think it's absolutely true that that our lives
Speaker 3: are sustained by tons of systems that rely on honest communication,
Speaker 3: and that when you reach certain thresholds of lying within
Speaker 3: those systems, the systems do break down, and that can
Speaker 3: have devastating consequences. Like our lives are sustained by webs
Speaker 3: of trust, and you know, enough violations of that trust
Speaker 3: pile up, and like there are devastating consequences for the species.
Speaker 2: Absolutely all right, For the remainder of the episode, here,
Speaker 2: we're going to turn back to the world of Yes,
Speaker 2: there's going to be more crab demons and more crab spirits,
Speaker 2: mostly diving into more really back into the world of
Speaker 2: crabs from Japanese folklore and in a little bit from
Speaker 2: pop culture as well.
Speaker 3: I'm very excited for this.
Speaker 2: So we've already covered the samurai crabs of Haika, and
Speaker 2: of course, as we mentioned, this was something we talked
Speaker 2: about in a much older episode of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind you can find in our audio archives wherever
Speaker 2: you get your podcasts. But Japanese culture is much amused
Speaker 2: by crabs, which makes sense. Crabs are endlessly amusing, and
Speaker 2: so there are so many other examples to draw from.
Speaker 2: We briefly mention the late Japanese pro wrestler of Grand
Speaker 2: Naniwa and the two thousand and six comedy crab Goalkeeper,
Speaker 2: but there are of course numerous other monster crabs and
Speaker 2: kaiju crabs to reference. There's one in the nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: Toho film Space Amiba, and then there is of course
Speaker 2: Ibira Horror of the Deep from the nineteen sixty six
Speaker 2: Godzilla movie of the same name. I think the US
Speaker 2: name for this is what Godzilla versus the crab monster.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, are these crabs? I don't know. I feel
Speaker 3: like both of them are a little more lobstery. Don't
Speaker 3: they feel kind of elongated? Am I wrong about that? Well?
Speaker 2: You know, if a horseshoe crab is a crab, and
Speaker 2: these crab monsters can be crabs, nobody's calling it Godzilla
Speaker 2: versus the lobster. So I'm giving them crabdom status.
Speaker 3: God Zilla versus the shrimp.
Speaker 2: It could be yeah, yeah, Prong Kaiju giant mantis shrimp.
Speaker 2: Yeah that'd be yeah, yeah, absolutely quite a punch. Let's
Speaker 2: see another. Really, I was looking around for Okay, what
Speaker 2: are some that I'm not familiar with, some that I've
Speaker 2: never seen. And there's a really fun sounding example in
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixty nine anime film Flying Phantom Ship, which
Speaker 2: features some early Miyazaki designs and animation. This is a
Speaker 2: movie that has some sort of a pirate ship, a
Speaker 2: flying pirate ship sort of. There's a giant robot, and
Speaker 2: then there is also a giant crab. And I included
Speaker 2: images of this crab for you here, Joe.
Speaker 3: And this is weird. I thought I had tracked down
Speaker 3: all giant crab movies before, but I didn't know about
Speaker 3: this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one is new to me as well, you know,
Speaker 2: certainly familiar with some of the the the Western examples
Speaker 2: of giant crab movies. Yeah, let's see, there's a these
Speaker 2: are not giant crabs. But I found a tantalizing example
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighty two American Japanese horror film The
Speaker 2: House where Evil Dwells. This is a ghost movie, but
Speaker 2: there's a scene where the ghosts either take the form
Speaker 2: of a swarm of spider crabs or they kind of
Speaker 2: like dredge up a swarm of spider crabs and they
Speaker 2: attack one of the human characters. Okay, There of course
Speaker 2: plenty more recent examples of crab related beings in Japanese
Speaker 2: pop culture. There is, I believe if I'm pronouncing this correctly,
Speaker 2: there is crab Lante from One punch Man. This is
Speaker 2: not a show. I'm really familiar with it all. It's
Speaker 2: based on Amonga. A twenty sixteen episode featured this crab
Speaker 2: based human who kind of looks like a muscly man
Speaker 2: in a pair of tidy whitey underwear, but his torso
Speaker 2: and head they're all like crab based.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So he's got, you know, based, a human shaped
Speaker 3: arm with a bend at the elbow. But then the forearm,
Speaker 3: instead of a human forearm, is a big crab claw.
Speaker 3: In that respect, he resembles Popeye with the big forearms
Speaker 3: except their claws.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And if I'm to trust the subtitles on the screencap,
Speaker 2: I grabbed here he was transformed into a crab because
Speaker 2: he ate too much crab, which that checks.
Speaker 3: Out, that does happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I decided to dig more into some crab
Speaker 2: folklore and sort of like the folkloric types you can
Speaker 2: find in Japanese folklore. And I was looking at a book.
Speaker 2: This is from nineteen sixty six by Kego Seki, and
Speaker 2: it is types of Japanese folk tales. And some of
Speaker 2: these are very simple, like some of them are basically
Speaker 2: like a crab saves a girl from a snake, a
Speaker 2: man punishes his wife for killing and eating his favorite crab.
Speaker 2: And as general types, these are going to be more
Speaker 2: embellished in the actual telling, you know.
Speaker 3: So there's kind of a skeleton of the story that
Speaker 3: remains the same and people add their own embellishments and
Speaker 3: details to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, If any any of you out there have
Speaker 2: dug around too much in folklore academic work, you'll know
Speaker 2: that you have the different numbers as well, the numbering
Speaker 2: system of the tail types and so forth, and people
Speaker 2: can be like, ah, this is a sixty six. It's
Speaker 2: a good one right there. But yeah, so I do
Speaker 2: want to point out though, the basic one here about
Speaker 2: a crab saving a girl from a snake. This one,
Speaker 2: this particular trope of a crab protector factors into a
Speaker 2: key early Japanese animated film, nineteen twenty five's Crab Temple
Speaker 2: omen and in fact, future big time Japanese director Tamu
Speaker 2: Ocheedah worked on this one. He's a guy who's really
Speaker 2: not otherwise known for animation, most famous for such Japanese
Speaker 2: films as fifty five's Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji. Sixty
Speaker 2: two is the Mad Fox and sixty five is the
Speaker 2: Fugitive from the past, but he was involved in this
Speaker 2: bit of animation, and the style is that of silhouette animation.
Speaker 2: Joe quoted screenshot here. I think this will remind you
Speaker 2: of something.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, like Ashen Puddle, which we talked about on
Speaker 3: Weird House Cinema by the German animator Alata Reininger.
Speaker 2: Correct. Yeah, they were active during the same decade, and
Speaker 2: it was a little uncertain. Based on some of the sources,
Speaker 2: it sounds like there was some amount of inspiration going
Speaker 2: back and forth between these two. So I think I
Speaker 2: think maybe the Japanese animators were inspired by her work,
Speaker 2: but could have gone both ways, as creative inspiration all
Speaker 2: often does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, ashen Puddle was silhouette animated adaptation of the Cinderella story,
Speaker 3: which actually had some hilarious animations in it and the
Speaker 3: art where like the sisters keep trying to cut parts
Speaker 3: off of their feet to fit them in the shoe.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, recommend going back and listening to
Speaker 2: that Weird House episode. We did a couple of silent
Speaker 2: films and that was one of them. Call correctly, but
Speaker 2: this film too, Crab Temple Omen. You can find this
Speaker 2: online in various places of streaming. I don't know that
Speaker 2: it's the title cards have actually been translated into English.
Speaker 2: I think you have to find like a separate translation
Speaker 2: for them. But this is not a story that depends
Speaker 2: too much on that sort of thing. You can enjoy
Speaker 2: it without being able to read Japanese or know the
Speaker 2: translation of the text. But yeah, you have these great
Speaker 2: scenes where a woman saves a crab and is later
Speaker 2: saved from a snake by swarming crabs.
Speaker 3: M beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So moving on to a few other tale types
Speaker 2: that Sika points out in this book, I think they're
Speaker 2: pretty amusing and they nicely demonstrate the sort of attributed
Speaker 2: crab personality that we're often dealing with, and then they
Speaker 2: also factor in some other examples. I'm going to bring
Speaker 2: up Crab, Yo Kai and the like. So a couple
Speaker 2: of stories here for you. First, I'm going to read
Speaker 2: quotes from the text here. The first is going to
Speaker 2: be the story of the Toad and the Crab. Bearing
Speaker 2: in mind again, this is a tail type summary and
Speaker 2: it is in translation, so if it feels a little choppy,
Speaker 2: that's why. Okay, all right, So this is the first story.
Speaker 2: Toad and Crab were friends. Once Toad does not listen
Speaker 2: to Crab's advice, and in consequence, Toad is trodden on
Speaker 2: by a horse, his tongue is pressed out or his
Speaker 2: eyes stick out. Crab mocks Toad. Toad says that a
Speaker 2: his tongue is out because he is pretending to eat mochi,
Speaker 2: or his eyes stick out because he is staring. So okay,
Speaker 2: I love what we're beginning to learn here about certainly
Speaker 2: about Toad, but also about Crab. Crab is not going
Speaker 2: to suffer foolishness and let it go unrecognized, and Toad
Speaker 2: is going to lie his face off to save face,
Speaker 2: even after being stepped on by a horse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I wanted to look like this.
Speaker 2: Yes, my tongue is out because I'm pretending to eat mochi.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. This just connects to a book that we
Speaker 3: read in our house for our daughter, the Frog and
Speaker 3: Toad books. Oh yes, yes, Frog and Toad our friends.
Speaker 3: But those are much sweeter than this. There's no face
Speaker 3: mashing out in.
Speaker 2: The All right, well there's here's another one. And this
Speaker 2: one also concerns concerns mochi, not just pretend mochi, but
Speaker 2: actual mochi. So this is the monkey and the crab
Speaker 2: make mochi together. All right, So this is how it's
Speaker 2: summarized in the text. Monkey and crab make mochi together.
Speaker 2: Monkey climbs up a tree, taking all the mochi and
Speaker 2: does not share it with crab. Crab says to Monkey
Speaker 2: that mochi will taste better if he puts it on
Speaker 2: a dead branch and shakes the branch. Monkey does so,
Speaker 2: The branch breaks and mochi falls to the ground. Crab
Speaker 2: carries it into his hole. Crab does not give mochi
Speaker 2: to Monkey, who in return drops dung into the mouth
Speaker 2: of crab hole. Wow, I'm to assume this means like,
Speaker 2: the monkey goes up to the crab hole, positions butt
Speaker 2: over the crab hole, and begins to defecate. But I
Speaker 2: think you can all see where this is going. His
Speaker 2: bottom is pinched by crab. Monkey gets himself released from
Speaker 2: the pinch in exchange for giving his hair to crab.
Speaker 2: For this reason, Monkey's face is red and crab has
Speaker 2: hair on his legs. Wow.
Speaker 3: So just so, I didn't expect it to become like
Speaker 3: a natural ideological tale, but this is one of these
Speaker 3: tales that explains how animals got their characteristics. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It also reminds basically an animal duel. That makes
Speaker 2: me think of the wizarding duel from Disney's The Sword
Speaker 2: in the Stone.
Speaker 3: One of them turns into a crab at some point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the wizard does. He turns into a crab. It's
Speaker 2: like crab versus snake or worm, and then it's crab
Speaker 2: versus rhinoceros and so forth.
Speaker 3: So let's see, I'm trying to assess in the first tail,
Speaker 3: the crab was the wise one. The crab had good
Speaker 3: advice and was not heated by toad. In this case,
Speaker 3: it seems kind of balanced, like they both are kind
Speaker 3: of selfish and greedy, and they get revenge on each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the crab is provoked. Yeah, crab does not
Speaker 2: initiate this, this battle between the two and ultimately gets
Speaker 2: the upper hand. Yeah, all right, and then there here's
Speaker 2: another one that he mentions. This one I'm going to
Speaker 2: be able to expand on more. Traveler stops at a
Speaker 2: hut in the wood. A ghost appears and says, eight
Speaker 2: little legs, two big legs, both eyes sparkling toward Heaven,
Speaker 2: walks sideways. Traveler answers crab. Then the ghost disappears.
Speaker 3: So it's a riddle. It's a riddle, but that doesn't
Speaker 3: seem like a very hard riddle. That's like a very
Speaker 3: straightforward description.
Speaker 2: Of a Yeah, this one does make me wonder if
Speaker 2: in the original Japanese this is a little more clever,
Speaker 2: because I mean, but then again, we're in a podcast
Speaker 2: talking all about crabs, and we know what the answer is.
Speaker 3: Going to be, right exactly. Yeah, So I'm wondering if
Speaker 3: there's something about the original framing that just wouldn't make
Speaker 3: you think of sea animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I also love the idea that both eyes
Speaker 2: are sparkling toward heaven. There's a divine aspect to the crab.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so this is all very spooky anytime a
Speaker 2: ghost as you a riddle, But it leads to the
Speaker 2: next example. I want to discuss a crab spirit or
Speaker 2: yokai known as Connie Bozu the Crab Priest, and I
Speaker 2: was reading about this one. This one's not referenced in
Speaker 2: one of the main yochai books that I often turned to,
Speaker 2: but it is in Zach Davison's Ultimate Guides Japanese Yokai,
Speaker 2: and it's also listed on Matthew Meyer's yokai dot com website.
Speaker 2: It involves crabs and riddles and does seem directly connected
Speaker 2: to the aforementioned tale type. So the creature here, I'm
Speaker 2: going to and spoil what the yokai is. It is
Speaker 2: a giant crab that takes on the disguise of a
Speaker 2: wandering priest who apparently asks riddles of people he runs into,
Speaker 2: or it runs into, and the main story seemingly becomes
Speaker 2: popular is part of a Caujun comedic play. According to Meyer,
Speaker 2: and then Davison references an eighteen eighty five written record.
Speaker 2: It seems to be a recording of a story that
Speaker 2: was told at some point after seventeen twenty six, given
Speaker 2: a reference to a renamed mountain in the work. So
Speaker 2: in the version that Meyer relates and Davison also essentially
Speaker 2: relates the same story, so I think they're in agreeance
Speaker 2: for the most part. Here you have a wandering priest
Speaker 2: and he arrives at a temple that seems cursed to
Speaker 2: lose a new head priest anytime one is assigned to it.
Speaker 2: So there's a rural temple every time I'm a new
Speaker 2: priest is sent out there to take care of it.
Speaker 2: They disappear after a single night, and the local villagers
Speaker 2: just assume the place is haunted. There's some sort of
Speaker 2: vengeful ghost here killing every priest that shows up. The
Speaker 2: wandering priest that has arrived in our story, however, doesn't
Speaker 2: know anything about this. He's going door to door in
Speaker 2: the village looking for a place to sleep, and the
Speaker 2: villagers are like, hey, why don't you go check out
Speaker 2: that ruined temple? Wow? Cold, Yeah, I mean I don't
Speaker 2: know how we're supposed to I was supposed to take that,
Speaker 2: but yeah, He's like, okay, sounds good to me. He
Speaker 2: goes there, goes inside, falls asleep, and then when he
Speaker 2: wakes up, there's a priest standing or squatting beside him,
Speaker 2: kind of hovering over him, and this stranger priest asks
Speaker 2: him that very crab riddle, what has eight small legs
Speaker 2: two large legs, walk sideways and his eyes pointing straight
Speaker 2: upwards towards heaven. And the wandering priest not only solves
Speaker 2: the riddle, but in solving it, sees through the disguise
Speaker 2: and he declared he either says you were a crab
Speaker 2: or says the answer is crab, that's what you are,
Speaker 2: something to that effect, and then he picks up his
Speaker 2: priest's staff. He strikes the crab and this causes the
Speaker 2: disguise to fall away from the monster crab the crab
Speaker 2: since the gig is up, the monster crab scuttles sideways
Speaker 2: out of the way. The priest throws his staff at
Speaker 2: the monster and it cracks the creature's shell, but the
Speaker 2: crab still escapes. The villagers show up shortly after this,
Speaker 2: and they're like, hey, what's going on. We heard some ruckus.
Speaker 2: We can see you're not dead. That's good, And the
Speaker 2: priest says, all right, everybody, we're going to drain the
Speaker 2: pond behind the temple. They do so, and they uncovered
Speaker 2: the numerous skeletons of all the dead priests that had
Speaker 2: been assigned to the ruined temple over the years, the
Speaker 2: ones that had never survived a single night. And they
Speaker 2: also find the body of a giant dead crab with
Speaker 2: a cracked shell.
Speaker 3: So the implication is all of the previous priests did
Speaker 3: not answer the riddle correctly and were killed by the crab.
Speaker 2: I assume, So yeah, yeah, And so the wandering priest
Speaker 2: then becomes the new head priest. He gets to take
Speaker 2: over this temple and nothing bad happens afterwards.
Speaker 3: They all lived happily ever after.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the Davison version is very very similar, with
Speaker 2: the key difference being that the hero's name is given
Speaker 2: as Honan, and the crab priest asked the riddle of
Speaker 2: every priest he encounters and beats them to death with
Speaker 2: a staff if they can't answer. So yeah, it's it's
Speaker 2: a fun little story and I think has some legitimate
Speaker 2: creepiness to it. It made me wonder if, presumably it
Speaker 2: has been reproduced on the stage in some of these
Speaker 2: comedic plays, but it seems like this one would be
Speaker 2: a great one for adaptation into animation or even live action.
Speaker 3: I feel like you would have to spin it out
Speaker 3: a little bit more. You'd need to show some earlier
Speaker 3: encounters or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or you know, if it was an anthology format,
Speaker 2: you might be able to get by its very quick
Speaker 2: and an easy adup take of it. But anything to
Speaker 2: get this monster crab on the screen, let's see. Davison
Speaker 2: also alludes to other crab tales. He mentions this this
Speaker 2: comedic play from the sixteenth century, that it also involves,
Speaker 2: you know, a priest and acolyte in a crab, and
Speaker 2: I think this would be the popularizing prey play that
Speaker 2: Maya refers to. Davison also mentions that the travel guide
Speaker 2: Hiram may Show junra Zua from eighteen oh four has
Speaker 2: grant giant crabs in it the torment people, and he
Speaker 2: also writes quote the great monk Kobo Dashi banished the
Speaker 2: crab and the slope where it lived is called Kanakazaka,
Speaker 2: a crab slope to this day. So there are some
Speaker 2: other tales out there floating around of monks holy men
Speaker 2: engaging in battles against the crab.
Speaker 3: So if it's mentioned in a travel guide. The idea
Speaker 3: is like that this was a local hazard in a place.
Speaker 2: I guess so, or you know this is this place
Speaker 2: is called such and such. This is good. You know
Speaker 2: it's named after a crab because of this story.
Speaker 3: That's sort of Yeah, was once a hazard, now is
Speaker 3: just the namesake.
Speaker 2: Yeah now. Meyer also lists a creature called Connie one
Speaker 2: or demon crab, and this one is featured in the
Speaker 2: famous monster scroll Bakumono zukushi Imaki from the eighteenth and
Speaker 2: nineteenth centuries. You can look up an image of this,
Speaker 2: you might have to. I had to poke around a
Speaker 2: little bit before I could find the picture from this
Speaker 2: scroll all this demon crab, but I have it here
Speaker 2: for you, Joe.
Speaker 3: Googly eyes and human.
Speaker 2: Teeth, yes, and they are stained black. Apparently this is
Speaker 2: in reference to Oha guru, the aristocratic and sometimes samurai
Speaker 2: practice of staining one's teeth black cee tooth staining traditions
Speaker 2: in various cultures. But yeah, any else that has whiskers
Speaker 2: the googly eyes very much an one's kind of demonic expression. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I loved this guy. This guy's got great demon
Speaker 2: crab energy. And Meyer presents the possible connection to a
Speaker 2: Kim ingani or demon mass crab. I think the the
Speaker 2: species on this is is drippy Senika. I included some
Speaker 2: images of this particular crab for you, Joe, and yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean looks like a demon face. This is a
Speaker 2: very very similar situation to the samurai crabs that we
Speaker 2: were discussing earlier.
Speaker 3: Coming back to I guess we got into this in
Speaker 3: part two about the how easy it is to see
Speaker 3: faces in the shells of crabs just for anatomical reasons
Speaker 3: related to bilateral symmetry and our natural paradolia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there you have it. It's clearly the face
Speaker 2: of an one on the back of this crab.
Speaker 3: I guess the level of threat implied hinges on? Does
Speaker 3: it ask a riddle? And how hard is the riddle?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know that this guy has a riddle.
Speaker 2: I don't know. He looks he's up to some business,
Speaker 2: but I don't think it's riddle related, but that he's
Speaker 2: he's not to be trusted, that's to be sure.
Speaker 3: I wonder if there is a demon crab behind this
Speaker 3: new variety of I think actually this is often AI
Speaker 3: behind this variety variety of posts on social media that
Speaker 3: that offer a riddle that doesn't actually have an answer
Speaker 3: and it's just rage engagement farming.
Speaker 2: Oh, I haven't encountered this before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's common on a lot of platforms.
Speaker 3: You know, it will be kind of like a provocative
Speaker 3: post of some kind that seems to be a puzzle,
Speaker 3: Like it's an image that says, like, you know when
Speaker 3: you see it, about this image, but there's actually there's nothing,
Speaker 3: So it just gets people arguing in the comments in
Speaker 3: order to farm engagement, or a riddle that has no
Speaker 3: clear answer, just to get people arguing.
Speaker 2: Like why is a raven like a writing desk? Maybe
Speaker 2: that woe has an answer, but I it's my understand
Speaker 2: I have long believed that one doesn't have an answer,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of infuriating.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I've heard of that one. What
Speaker 3: does that mean?
Speaker 2: It's a riddle that's asked in Peter Beegle's The Last
Speaker 2: Unicorn and also in the adaptation. But yeah, it's my understanding.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have an answer, but maybe it does have
Speaker 2: an answer, and if listeners know it, they should write
Speaker 2: in and let me know, and that'll that'll close a
Speaker 2: chapter in my life right there. If I knew why
Speaker 2: a raven is like writing desk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that one's got me stumped to but but to
Speaker 3: reiterate my point, yes, something does feel like there's a
Speaker 3: very crab like mentality, something like in the decapod predatory behavior,
Speaker 3: in the farming of engagement through riddles with no answers.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, yeah, I could see something. I could see monster
Speaker 2: crabs being very into that.
Speaker 3: I think it's really just probably machines doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again we come back to crab machine comparisons. Right, listeners,
Speaker 2: I would love to hear from you if you have
Speaker 2: your own favorite monster or demon crabs, either from folklore
Speaker 2: and legend or from pop culture, certainly from you know,
Speaker 2: any examples from anime, comic books, and b movies right
Speaker 2: in We would love to hear from you. They don't
Speaker 2: all necessarily bear mentioning in this podcast because a lot
Speaker 2: of times it's just like what if a crab was big?
Speaker 2: What would he do? And you know, it can be
Speaker 2: endlessly amusing in the picture, but it's not necessarily not
Speaker 2: necessarily much to talk about regarding it.
Speaker 3: Did you realize that while we have discussed it in
Speaker 3: depth on Core episodes before, we've never done a weird
Speaker 3: House Cinema on Attack of the Crab monsteris Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've thought about that, yeah, quite a bit. It's a
Speaker 2: film we reference all the time, but we've never specifically
Speaker 2: covered it, so we we should probably come back to
Speaker 2: it at some point. It's kind of a foundational text
Speaker 2: for us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly for me. It means a lot to me,
Speaker 3: coming back to the idea of claw regeneration.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: You might recall there's a part in the movie where
Speaker 3: the humans are able to wound the giant psychic crab
Speaker 3: with explosives. I think they blow off its arm, one
Speaker 3: of its arms or claws or something, and it speaks
Speaker 3: to them. It says, so you have wounded me, I
Speaker 3: can grow a new one, But will you grow new
Speaker 3: lives when I have taken yours from you?
Speaker 2: That makes you think that's some good crab arrogance right there.
Speaker 2: All right, we're gonna go ahead and close the crab
Speaker 2: bag at least for now. But there are so many
Speaker 2: crabs out there we did not cover them all, and
Speaker 2: they may swarm for us in the night and ask
Speaker 2: us riddles. So we may well come back in the
Speaker 2: future and discuss more crab matters, But for now, we're
Speaker 2: going to call it an episode again, write in. We
Speaker 2: would love to hear from everyone out there. Just a
Speaker 2: reminder first of all, yes, Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: has been around as a podcast for quite a while,
Speaker 2: and if you would like to dig into the audio
Speaker 2: archives of the show, you can find us wherever you
Speaker 2: get your audio podcasts. It goes back years and years.
Speaker 2: Let's see. We'll remind you that we're primarily a science
Speaker 2: and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday,
Speaker 2: short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film on Weird House Cinema. Those sometimes those selections do
Speaker 2: factor in to our discussions on core episodes.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact a, Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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