Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from House stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lam and my name
Speaker 1: is Christian Sager. Which would preferred melee weapons in combat? Well, um,
Speaker 1: if I'm just around the house, I guess it would
Speaker 1: be to grab like a stick or something, so I
Speaker 1: would be falling into like like pool fighting. Yeah you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a glave fan. Yeah, like glaves. I
Speaker 1: don't own one. I probably should get on that. But
Speaker 1: today's episode is about a very strange melee weapon, one
Speaker 1: that humans don't wield yet. There's still time, but that
Speaker 1: apparently crabs. You not only use tools, but use weapons,
Speaker 1: and they're alive. Yeah. The idea of crabs, specifically varieties
Speaker 1: of that are known as boxing crabs or pom pom
Speaker 1: crabs that not only the tool users, but they will
Speaker 1: grab an enemy, particular types of s enemies, and wield
Speaker 1: them as weapons, hold them like little cudgels, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: showing them off, letting everybody know that they're armed to
Speaker 1: the teeth, using them to hunt food, using them to
Speaker 1: defend themselves like little bioweapons, stinging clubs, that are alive
Speaker 1: that they have this mutualistic relationship with It's pretty clever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I posted a chart from one of those studies we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about today to our Facebook and Twitter feeds
Speaker 1: and asked people said, hey, this is a hint as
Speaker 1: to what we're studying, and most people said they thought
Speaker 1: it was crab cheerleading, which is about right since they're
Speaker 1: called the pompomp Crab. Well, they are making a show
Speaker 1: of things here, and they they do look like pom
Speaker 1: bombs too many people. But I think the I think
Speaker 1: nun chucks would be a more appropriate uh scenario if
Speaker 1: your nun chuck was a says and it could bite people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like really. To get into um parallels to this, we
Speaker 1: really have to look to science fiction and fantasy, where
Speaker 1: I think we see some some wonderful examples of one
Speaker 1: fictional species using another fictional species are using some sort
Speaker 1: of living weapon, uh to defend themselves or to attack
Speaker 1: their adversaries. So one example that comes to my mind
Speaker 1: are the Tyrannids of the Warhammer forty thousand universe. I'm
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with us. Well, if you're familiar with with aliens
Speaker 1: or basically any property that has a a biological hive
Speaker 1: mind species. Then you basically have the gist of the Tanage,
Speaker 1: so they come from another galaxy. They're all flesh, their
Speaker 1: spaceships are flesh, and they also they also have all
Speaker 1: these various forms, different morphological variants of the tyrannids depending
Speaker 1: on you know, basically every level of an infantry army
Speaker 1: that you would have in your tabletop game. But they
Speaker 1: utilize a number of what are called weapon biomorphs to
Speaker 1: gun down their adversaries. So these are living weapons, living
Speaker 1: things that include bioplasma canons. Uh. And another example would
Speaker 1: be the Impaler canon. It fires bony spines that are
Speaker 1: as long as a man doesn't Halo have something like that,
Speaker 1: the Needler Probabler. Maybe the Needler isn't alive though, Like
Speaker 1: I feel like there's some version of this in most
Speaker 1: science fiction properties, like the Necromorphs and Dead Space. You're
Speaker 1: kind of similar. You have, of course, the creatures in
Speaker 1: um in the novel and subsequent film Starship Troopers. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Again, Aliens, anytime there is like an
Speaker 1: all flesh adversary, you encounter this type of thing, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they have spaceships and weapons the one that comes
Speaker 1: to mind for me. And I'm not a big expert
Speaker 1: on this. Our our colleague Holly Fry might destroy me
Speaker 1: if I pronounced this wrong. But those in the expanded
Speaker 1: noncnon called Star Wars universe, there's this species called I
Speaker 1: think it's the Yusen Vong. I've only read it. Um.
Speaker 1: And they utilize biotechnology for everything, including their weapons and
Speaker 1: armor and ships, so all their stuff is alive. They
Speaker 1: actually have like total disdain for any kind of mechanical technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these guys. Had remember seeing lots of art depicting
Speaker 1: these guys, and they they're kind of like white skinned,
Speaker 1: cling on type creatures thinks. So yeah, and they wore
Speaker 1: like like chitten for armor, and their weapons were like
Speaker 1: similar to the race you were just describing, like sort
Speaker 1: of bioplasma and stuff. Like. They're really cool looking. I
Speaker 1: always love the idea of them. Yeah. Um, and you've
Speaker 1: got here labyrinth. I forgot about this. So there's a
Speaker 1: wonderful moment in Jim Hinson's Labyrinth where you have some
Speaker 1: of the goblins that are tormenting Ludo and if you remember,
Speaker 1: they're running around, they had these these long poles, these
Speaker 1: long sticks, and on the end they have these biting creatures.
Speaker 1: They look kind of like an embryonic chicken, like they
Speaker 1: look kind of blind, and they have enormous teeth in
Speaker 1: their little mouth, and they just go and they'll take
Speaker 1: the stick with the biter on it and hold it
Speaker 1: up to Ludo so that they could bite him. And
Speaker 1: this really reminds me a lot of the crabs scenario
Speaker 1: we're talking about here, where one little creature is using
Speaker 1: another little creature as a as a as a cudgel,
Speaker 1: as a as a as a melee weapon against another being.
Speaker 1: Every time Labyrinth comes up or I rewatch it, I
Speaker 1: just I always think to myself, like, no, like you
Speaker 1: would want to stay there and hang out with the
Speaker 1: goblins and David Bowie, Like that is way more fun
Speaker 1: than running away. I don't know why. I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like if I was the baby, I would want to say,
Speaker 1: if I was what's her face, Sarah? The name of
Speaker 1: the character? What region of the labyrinth would you like
Speaker 1: to put down roots in? Oh? Just the dance party one,
Speaker 1: the dance Magic dance one, of course. Um. But this
Speaker 1: also reminded me of two comic books which I brought
Speaker 1: in and I let you borrow um. James Stoko does
Speaker 1: a book called orc Stain, and Brandon Graham used to
Speaker 1: do a book called King's City. And these guys are
Speaker 1: buddies actually, so it makes sense that both their sort
Speaker 1: of fantasy worlds will it involve using animals as weapons.
Speaker 1: In King's City, cats are used as weapons, and I
Speaker 1: think they're like called cat masters or something like that.
Speaker 1: And if you're if you're trained in such a way
Speaker 1: you have a cat that's like you're familiar and you
Speaker 1: can use it as a weapon. You can and it
Speaker 1: and it works together with you. So these people like
Speaker 1: use them as melee weapons or they throw them up
Speaker 1: in the air and the cat like throws shrunkin's or
Speaker 1: something or sharkns sorry uh. And what's the other things?
Speaker 1: Like sometimes the cat can like bend its tail to
Speaker 1: pick locks and stuff like that. So so there's that,
Speaker 1: But in orc Stain, it's very much like what we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about today, where they have actual living but
Speaker 1: more like kind of anemony type things that function as weapons,
Speaker 1: like their axes have like eyes and mouths or or um.
Speaker 1: Like there's a pacific creature that's called the zazoo. That
Speaker 1: they one person wears as like a cloak and it
Speaker 1: has eyeballs and like you can just take zazoo often
Speaker 1: throw it at people and it'll attack them. I glanced
Speaker 1: at this book and I think I'll probably give it
Speaker 1: a read. It has a very visceral art style like it.
Speaker 1: It looks like it's just like NonStop blood and perhaps
Speaker 1: like work. Scrotums. Work, scrotum and genitalia are very important
Speaker 1: to orc Stain. In fact, their entire economy revolves around
Speaker 1: dried and cut up orc reproductive organ Yes, yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: Uh they're called chits, but it also last one. Do
Speaker 1: you remember Cronenberg's Existence? Did you ever watch that movie?
Speaker 1: There's that scene where Jude Laws like eating soup and
Speaker 1: he just keeps pulling organic pieces out of the soup
Speaker 1: and like gnawing on them a little bit and then
Speaker 1: like putting them all together until he has a gun
Speaker 1: that's made out of the organic like I don't know
Speaker 1: what it's supposed to be, like an amphibian or a
Speaker 1: fish or something. And then for bullets, he yanks his
Speaker 1: teeth out of his mouth and he slopped those into
Speaker 1: this gun thing. I forgot about that part of it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that. Those are just a few of our
Speaker 1: examples of what's going on with the boxer crab. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will get into the boxer crab, this fabulous real
Speaker 1: world organism that employs some of these, uh, some of
Speaker 1: these ideas about how to weaponize your fellow creature. All right,
Speaker 1: so we're back, and yeah, you have this genus of
Speaker 1: small crabs known as Libya l y b I A.
Speaker 1: And this is in the family Zanti Day. So again
Speaker 1: you might know them as boxer crabs, boxing crabs, pom
Speaker 1: pom crabs. They these are small little guys. They tend
Speaker 1: to be barely two centimeters wide, and there there are
Speaker 1: several different varieties of them, some of which are very
Speaker 1: popular in aquarium So some of you listening out there
Speaker 1: right now might be in a room with a boxer crab.
Speaker 1: And yes, we do want to hear your take on
Speaker 1: everything involved here and for the purposes of the research
Speaker 1: that we're looking at today. I'm pretty sure most of
Speaker 1: these specific specimens were drawn somewhere near Israel, right Yeah,
Speaker 1: in particularly that the ones that we looked at in
Speaker 1: these studies were from the south shore of the Red
Speaker 1: Sea in Elt, so there are a few different varieties.
Speaker 1: This is the one that we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: more today. And this one in particular is interesting because
Speaker 1: from the pictures I looked at it, it has a
Speaker 1: skin that looks like tempura, or the texture of on
Speaker 1: the shell looks like tempura. So they look delicious. They
Speaker 1: already look like they've been fried. They've been battered and
Speaker 1: fried for you're eating pledge before you even get to them.
Speaker 1: They look like they're and there's they're small, but they
Speaker 1: have these little sea an enemies. Now, the big question
Speaker 1: and when the we're gonna talk about, especially in the
Speaker 1: second study, is where do they get them? Where do
Speaker 1: they come from? How does the crab go about obtaining
Speaker 1: little sea an enemies to run around with and use
Speaker 1: as weapons, to use as a means to to feed. Um,
Speaker 1: we'll get into that. It's it's important to to drive
Speaker 1: home here for everyone that sea an enemies are predatory
Speaker 1: animals of the order acting area. So they may look
Speaker 1: like weirdly animated flowers. The name even alludes to terrestrial flowers,
Speaker 1: but they are not plants. They are predatory animals. So
Speaker 1: you have a predator utilizing predators as tools. And I
Speaker 1: think they're sometimes referred to as bonds eyes, right, because
Speaker 1: the idea is that the crabs cultivate them the same
Speaker 1: way people cultivate bond's eye trees. Now, I do want
Speaker 1: to note too, that the boxer crab isn't the only
Speaker 1: crab to have a mutualistic relationship with sea enemies. Certain
Speaker 1: larger hermit crabs tend to have one or two on
Speaker 1: their shell which benefit from the crabs table scraps of
Speaker 1: the crabs tearing apart some sort of organism that it's
Speaker 1: found and that's eating them. Some of that drifts back
Speaker 1: and this snemies get to feast, and then then enemies
Speaker 1: serve as protection for the crab. So this, this hermit
Speaker 1: crab would be kind of like one of these World
Speaker 1: War One tanks. We have a couple of cannons on
Speaker 1: the side. The enemies are its cannons. They're providing support
Speaker 1: and both organisms benefit from this relationship. But yes, you
Speaker 1: mentioned the bonds Ie tree. Yeah, so this is uh,
Speaker 1: this is studied in particular by these these these two
Speaker 1: bar Alon University graduate students in Israel, there's j Israel
Speaker 1: Schneitzer and Yon iv Demon and uh. They have conducted
Speaker 1: at least two studies here that we're gonna look at
Speaker 1: where they've looked at this at a particular variety of
Speaker 1: boxing crab and tried to get down to exactly what
Speaker 1: they're doing, how they're working. So they previously worked on
Speaker 1: a two thousand thirteen study published in the journal Experimental
Speaker 1: Marine Biology and Ecology, and here they revealed the boxer
Speaker 1: crabs bonds I like treatment of the bond of they're bioweapons,
Speaker 1: so they use them to catch food and defend themselves,
Speaker 1: but they also essentially starve the and its star of
Speaker 1: the anemony or regulate their they're diet enough to keep
Speaker 1: them a small size. Yeah, this alone is fascinating, but
Speaker 1: it gets even weirder. Okay, So the study identifies that
Speaker 1: boxer crabs they not only commit what's referred to as
Speaker 1: klepto parasitism to steal food from these anemonies, but they
Speaker 1: also regulate the anemone's size through this process. So if
Speaker 1: you take the anemone away from the boxer crab and
Speaker 1: it's allowed to grow, they have a totally different morphology
Speaker 1: color and size. In fact, they grow up to two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty larger in size. They're actually larger than
Speaker 1: the crabs at that point from which they're taken. So
Speaker 1: these crabs are just like basically keeping these like poor
Speaker 1: starved enemies, uh, but using them as weapons in a
Speaker 1: sort of clever way. The free anemonies that were studied
Speaker 1: assume eight times more food than their captive counterparts, So
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to assume that the crabs are
Speaker 1: scarfing most of that stuff down now. Klepto parasitism. This
Speaker 1: happens in all different kinds of animals. We see it
Speaker 1: in birds and fish, mammals, a wide range of invertebrates.
Speaker 1: I mean, technically, this is what we're doing when we
Speaker 1: take milk from cows, right Like it gets back to
Speaker 1: our episode on butter. We're we're stealing the food source
Speaker 1: from another animal. But in the animal kingdom, it's more
Speaker 1: advantageous than foraging or predation, and so you find this
Speaker 1: in some snails and some spiders. It's the practice that's
Speaker 1: known to affect the growth of the hosts that they're
Speaker 1: stealing from. The closest example that these researchers site in
Speaker 1: their study. There's a type of snail called the trick
Speaker 1: o Tropis cancelata that eats the food of a worm
Speaker 1: host and they steal up to a hundred percent of
Speaker 1: its food. So presumably these worms die from starve and
Speaker 1: I guess. Uh. The other one is the orb weaving spider,
Speaker 1: which is Nephelia plum apez and that steals fifty percent
Speaker 1: of its food from another spider called the Argo Rhodes
Speaker 1: antipodeanist spider. You know, there's also the human equivalent of
Speaker 1: of stealing part of alliance kill that I believe is
Speaker 1: still practiced among like you know, very one or two
Speaker 1: tribes in Africa. But this having been that this would
Speaker 1: have been like an older practice where if you wanted
Speaker 1: to get the meat of a kill, while all you
Speaker 1: have to do is have the the bravery and and
Speaker 1: or desperation to run in after lions have made their kill,
Speaker 1: cut away some of the meat and get out of
Speaker 1: there before the lions can really regroup. That sounds a
Speaker 1: bit like scavenging um, And so yeah, I wonder like
Speaker 1: how close scavenging falls under kleptoparasitism. Well, when a vulture
Speaker 1: eats like I don't know road kill. Well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the thing is with all these different modes of
Speaker 1: obtaining the sustenance, you do see that gray area of
Speaker 1: one meets the other. When like where symbia meets parasite,
Speaker 1: you know, there's often that gray area like or or
Speaker 1: for instance. So I think we've talked about this before
Speaker 1: when you have certain birds that are feeding on on
Speaker 1: ticks not an animal, Like, at what point then is
Speaker 1: it not you're eating the tick that has the blood
Speaker 1: of the animal, and in some cases you cross that
Speaker 1: line and you're actually drinking the blood from the animal,
Speaker 1: so you're you're close proximity to this other mode of behavior.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, but we should make no mistake about these anemones.
Speaker 1: They're not parasites that are living off of the crabs.
Speaker 1: The crabs are using them symbiotically and they specifically do
Speaker 1: it to release the toxin nemoto assists that are part
Speaker 1: of the anemonies. They use these as a living deterrent
Speaker 1: for predators as well as a tool for hating food.
Speaker 1: So we we often talk about like, oh, tool use
Speaker 1: among animals, that's like a really significant thing, right, Like
Speaker 1: we humans are one of the few that actually use tools.
Speaker 1: But these crabs are using other living beings as tools. Uh.
Speaker 1: When the anemony itself is presented with food, the crab
Speaker 1: literally robs it from the enemite's mouth. Uh. And but
Speaker 1: what does the enemity get out of all of this, Well,
Speaker 1: it actually gets access to oxygen and it's transported around
Speaker 1: to more food sources, so it is slightly beneficial. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the crab is kind of a mobile platform for the anenemy. Subsequently,
Speaker 1: the anemony has no resemblance to its free living form.
Speaker 1: That's the fascinating thing. Now the crabs claws. This is
Speaker 1: crazy too. The crabs don't have what we think of
Speaker 1: as normally functioning claws. They're totally ill suited for defense.
Speaker 1: So they're not like pincers, right, They've they've evolved so
Speaker 1: that they're mainly used for holding these anemonies. And there's
Speaker 1: no known instances of these crabs without a pair of
Speaker 1: anemones in their claws in nature. We're gonna get to
Speaker 1: it in a minute, what happens when you take them away.
Speaker 1: As part of this study, the researchers used a control
Speaker 1: group of starved anemonies to see how much nutrition the
Speaker 1: anemonies themselves were deriving in turn from algae that's on
Speaker 1: them that they're using symbiotically, possibly through photosynthesis. So think
Speaker 1: of it this way, like the algae is getting energy
Speaker 1: from photosynthesis, and then the anemone is taking energy away
Speaker 1: from these algae, and then the crabs are holding on
Speaker 1: the to the anemone and they're using them to gather
Speaker 1: up bits of food nuts. It is also noted in
Speaker 1: this first paper the crabs use the anemonies in what
Speaker 1: they call a mopping action, uh. And this is how
Speaker 1: they gather food. So they basically kind of swing them
Speaker 1: around and mop up food in the sticky endrolls of
Speaker 1: the anemones, and then they let them grasp it, and
Speaker 1: then they bring the anemony up to their mouth and
Speaker 1: they remove it themselves. The anemonies are also used as
Speaker 1: a weapon, uh, and it's mainly to deflect attacks, so
Speaker 1: hence crab boxing. Alright, we're gonna take another quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're gonna get into the
Speaker 1: second study that was connected by this this pair of
Speaker 1: Israeli researchers, and it's gonna it's gonna get into the
Speaker 1: idea they're not only using weapons they're using clone weapons.
Speaker 1: All right, so we're back. Uh. So that was the
Speaker 1: first study. The latest study to come out from Schnitzer
Speaker 1: and Gamon came out just this week. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: should say, as we're recording this, Robert has just published
Speaker 1: an article on how Stuff Works about this very topic.
Speaker 1: This podcast is our extension of that. So if you
Speaker 1: want to read it, we can go find it there.
Speaker 1: It will obviously be in our show notes. But also
Speaker 1: we're going to embed the podcast in that article. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the article didn't allow us to do like fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: of talk about tyrannids and so so Schnitzer in Gamon
Speaker 1: had some some basic questions about this, and this new
Speaker 1: study was published in the journal Pure j Uh looks
Speaker 1: into specifically where do they get these sea an enemy
Speaker 1: and and how do they what happens if they're missing one.
Speaker 1: So this is what they did. They went back, they
Speaker 1: went out to the Red Sea again, this area in Eliott, Israel,
Speaker 1: and they identified the weaponized an enemies of this particular
Speaker 1: variety of boxer crab as belonging to the genus Elysia.
Speaker 1: And this was likely a newly recorded species of an enemy.
Speaker 1: So bonus there. But when they looked around for wild
Speaker 1: examples of Alicia's see an Enemy, nothing turned up. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to say that this is not a situation
Speaker 1: with all varieties of boxer crabs. There are others spe
Speaker 1: seas that have been shown to utilize an enemies that
Speaker 1: also exist in a wild state. But since they in
Speaker 1: this experiment, since they couldn't find any wild examples, it
Speaker 1: did raise some interesting questions. Are there are there wild
Speaker 1: and enemies anymore? Is it possible that and these are
Speaker 1: the two sort of outside possibilities here that the researchers present.
Speaker 1: One possibility being that these things are extinct in the wild,
Speaker 1: that these crabs have been passing them back and forth
Speaker 1: so long that they are only available on crabs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've basically just completely enslaved this race of anemones. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the other idea is that they do exist, they
Speaker 1: exist far away and there was like a like a
Speaker 1: grandfather crab that brought these things into the area. And
Speaker 1: so in this area of the Red Sea, the an
Speaker 1: enemy only exist in an enslaved state. Now this gets
Speaker 1: down to the question, Well, you're saying, well, well, it's
Speaker 1: not like they how they passed them back and forth
Speaker 1: if you're a crab without a sea an enemy, how
Speaker 1: do you even get one to begin with? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was my big question is like, how do newborn crabs
Speaker 1: get their anemonies right? If there's if they're nowhere to
Speaker 1: be found except for what these other crabs, how do
Speaker 1: they get them? Well, I would ask you this counter question,
Speaker 1: what does Bruce Lee do when he has no weapons
Speaker 1: and a bunch of nun chuck armed individuals are attacking him? Well,
Speaker 1: first he breaks a chair and he uses that chair
Speaker 1: to beat them up, and then he takes their nunchuck exactly,
Speaker 1: And that's what happens here, they take the nun chucks.
Speaker 1: So uh, Schnitzer and Gimon discovered in a pair of
Speaker 1: experiments that if you have you have a one weapon
Speaker 1: boxer crab. Okay, so this boxer crab only has the
Speaker 1: one an enemy. What they'll do is they will split
Speaker 1: it into two pieces, and these two remaining fragments will
Speaker 1: then regenerate over a couple of days into two distinct clones.
Speaker 1: And if they have no anenemies all, then they will
Speaker 1: go and wrestle with another boxer crab and steal one
Speaker 1: of theirs, and then each one is left with one,
Speaker 1: and they do the splits, the splitting maneuver, and then
Speaker 1: they each have too. So maybe it's like a rite
Speaker 1: of passage. Uh, that's the article itself says. It's presumed
Speaker 1: that they acquire them sometime after their larval stage. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's like, you know, like a a
Speaker 1: daddy crab hands his child crab one of his anemonies
Speaker 1: and then rips it in half. Right, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's what happens. It sounds like once you pass the
Speaker 1: larval stage, you gotta go find somebody to fight and
Speaker 1: take one of their anemonies. It's interesting. This reminds me
Speaker 1: of some studies that have looked into the economics of
Speaker 1: hermit crabs and their shells. Just to remind everyone, hermit
Speaker 1: ship crab, of course, lives in the shell of another creature.
Speaker 1: But as a hermit crab grows, it has to abandon
Speaker 1: ill fitting shells and and acquire new shells. And Uh.
Speaker 1: Some researchers have done like really fascinating economic spins on
Speaker 1: this that tie up nicely with with human economics, with
Speaker 1: with particularly as it as it relates to home ownership.
Speaker 1: And you see a similar thing with crabs abandoning, stealing shells.
Speaker 1: This constant musical chairs. So I wonder if there's a
Speaker 1: similar scenario going on here with this constant tussle among
Speaker 1: the crabs for their weapons, and then of course they're
Speaker 1: using these weapons to defend themselves into acquire food. Well,
Speaker 1: this is specifically crazy because when the scientists analyze the
Speaker 1: pair of anemones for any given crab, they found that
Speaker 1: they're genetically identical, so they are literal clones. This is
Speaker 1: an attack of the clones in the purest sense, even
Speaker 1: when they've been ripped in half. Uh. And this is
Speaker 1: unique in that one animal is inducing a sexual reproduction
Speaker 1: in another animal and that's affecting its genetic diversity. So
Speaker 1: that could be why we're not finding these anemones in
Speaker 1: the wild either. That's right now. I had to reach
Speaker 1: out to Schnitzer on this one because just it was
Speaker 1: just too fascinating a question. I wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that I wasn't jumped to conclusions, uh, you know, as
Speaker 1: sometimes one does. And I said, well, does this mean
Speaker 1: there they might be extinct in the wild? And he said, yes,
Speaker 1: there's one outside possibility. And then there's the uh, the
Speaker 1: founding father crab outside possibility, but he told me the following.
Speaker 1: He said, quote bottom line, my guess is they exist,
Speaker 1: but are probably very rare. I think this because one
Speaker 1: of the findings in our current paper was that every
Speaker 1: crab found in the wild is holding clones supporting the
Speaker 1: theft and splitting behavior we saw in the lab, and
Speaker 1: that there are a very limited number of holotypes, especially
Speaker 1: with genetic fingerprinting analysis, thus giving credence to the assumption
Speaker 1: that most of the an enemy reproduction going on is
Speaker 1: a sexual from the crabs of splitting them in half,
Speaker 1: but not all of it. Yeah, this is important to note.
Speaker 1: So these cnmons in general, well just cn M, it
Speaker 1: is not these specific ones. In general, they can reproduce
Speaker 1: either sexually or a sexually, and in the a sexual
Speaker 1: cases it can be through butting, it can be through fission.
Speaker 1: It can three be through something called pedal laceration or
Speaker 1: something called a pop mictic parthenogenesis. Okay, so there's all
Speaker 1: kinds of ways that these things can reproduce, but in
Speaker 1: this case it's forced there being forced to reproduce. When
Speaker 1: this team analyzed the anemone's genetics, they use something called
Speaker 1: amplified fragment length polymorphism or a f l P for short.
Speaker 1: And this is an efficient, fast and low cost DNA
Speaker 1: fingerprinting method. So that's how they figured out, Oh wow,
Speaker 1: these are all clones, right, This is what I immediately
Speaker 1: thought of. You remember our Hydra episode. I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's a similar kind of thing, because the hydro was
Speaker 1: sort of splitting itself as well. Yeah, and hydra is
Speaker 1: also a creature that can reproduce sexually or a sexually,
Speaker 1: depending on what the environmental constraints are. But no one's
Speaker 1: coming along and holding onto a hydra for its entire
Speaker 1: life and then saying, you know what, I need another
Speaker 1: one of you strip. It is such a crazy scenario,
Speaker 1: the idea that this creature exists, It lives its life
Speaker 1: in the claw of another creature, in the hand of
Speaker 1: another creature. It's like King Kong holding Jessica Lane. And
Speaker 1: on top of that, if King Kong can say, actually
Speaker 1: I need to Jessica langs and you just rich and
Speaker 1: then he uses Jessica Lank to hit plane to do
Speaker 1: you have to hit planes and like beat Godzilla with
Speaker 1: I like it. Huh. Now I know what some of
Speaker 1: you might be wondering, well, this idea of one creature
Speaker 1: just enslaving another to the point that it goes extinct
Speaker 1: in the wild, do we see any examples of that
Speaker 1: happening elsewhere? Well, mean, certainly you can look at some
Speaker 1: human varieties, you know, animals that we've completely domesticated, be
Speaker 1: it um, you know, be at a you know, a cow,
Speaker 1: or even like a silkworm. Right. But one of the
Speaker 1: more curious examples we see in the animal world, in
Speaker 1: the invertebrate world as well, is that a various leaf
Speaker 1: counter cutter ant species in the Americas. So they cut
Speaker 1: leaves and drag them to an underground growth chamber, and
Speaker 1: they keep it moist enough there to cultivate fungi on
Speaker 1: the leaves. Uh. And this is a fascinating process. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to walk you through every step of it,
Speaker 1: but essentially they have a little farm down there to
Speaker 1: grow this for this fungus, and the ants themselves gave
Speaker 1: up hunting and gathering fifty million years ago, everyone believes,
Speaker 1: for them, so they could become farmers essentially. But this,
Speaker 1: this precious fungus crop that they grow is uh, apparently
Speaker 1: a million years extinct in the natural world. They've completely domesticated.
Speaker 1: So this would be an actual example of an invertebrate
Speaker 1: species that's taken another species as its own and in
Speaker 1: doing so completely domesticated it. Now, granted, in this scenario,
Speaker 1: the ants are eating the creature that they have domesticated,
Speaker 1: the boxing crab even more elaborate because they're not eating
Speaker 1: they're using them as as weapons. I wonder if it's
Speaker 1: like they think of this is silly. This is like
Speaker 1: some Disney animation movie thinking right here that like the
Speaker 1: crab like thinks of its anemonies. It's like it's pets
Speaker 1: and gives the little names. This is like, this is exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I would like to see that little Mermaid character
Speaker 1: if we had, that would be great. Sebastian Sebastian the crab,
Speaker 1: except he's a boxing crab. Well, you know, the thing
Speaker 1: is is that this is they're not the only crabs
Speaker 1: that use anemonies like this, but these associations almost always
Speaker 1: it's a smaller crab and they're using larger anemonies. But
Speaker 1: in this case that's why they're called pom poms, because
Speaker 1: they're smaller, and it's specifically because this crab is stealing
Speaker 1: all the food away from these anemones. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: fantastic example of mutualism. Mutualism was the term that was
Speaker 1: first introduced in eighteen seventy six, by the way, from
Speaker 1: Pierre Joseph of van Beneden. And but again, the crazy
Speaker 1: thing is that we have many examples of mutualism, but
Speaker 1: most of them are significantly less hands on or claws on. Literally,
Speaker 1: that's where we encounter here. Well, the crabs themselves, like
Speaker 1: if you take their anemony is away from them, they
Speaker 1: can still eat, but they don't use their little baby
Speaker 1: claws because they're too delicate. What they do is they
Speaker 1: use their walking legs, and they start with their first
Speaker 1: walking legs and they use them to like pin things
Speaker 1: down and then kind of bring it up to their mouths.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they end up using their second and third walking legs.
Speaker 1: During this study, they also found that following the theft
Speaker 1: of a cnemony or an attempt, the fight between the
Speaker 1: different crabs was followed by mating if they were different sex.
Speaker 1: So if there was a male and a female crab
Speaker 1: and one of them took the other ones c an emmy,
Speaker 1: then they had sex. Wow, it's even more like an
Speaker 1: eighties action films. Yeah, it's so bizarre. So when they
Speaker 1: did this study, they had to break them up by
Speaker 1: gender because they were like, we can't we can't figure
Speaker 1: out what actually happens. We've got to keep them. Have
Speaker 1: the males fight the males, and the females fight the females,
Speaker 1: and they did. Um. They also found that seventeen out
Speaker 1: of twenty two crabs with only one anemone will split
Speaker 1: it within six days. So they don't wait around. They
Speaker 1: need to. They have their their dual weapon fighters. That's right.
Speaker 1: That their their entire martial art is built upon having
Speaker 1: having a double attack. Yeah, and it's referred to the
Speaker 1: splitting is referred to as a surgical tear uh, and
Speaker 1: it lasts between one minute and two hours. The average
Speaker 1: time is twenty minutes. But they very precisely take the
Speaker 1: anemone and just slowly rip it in half and then
Speaker 1: they've got to uh. And what's really interesting is when
Speaker 1: the crabs fight over the anemone is sometimes little fragments
Speaker 1: will get stolen, like maybe a crab will lose, but
Speaker 1: it's got like a chunk of anemone and claw. Uh.
Speaker 1: That does not result in splitting or cloning, So they
Speaker 1: have to very specifically tear these anemonies in half. You
Speaker 1: can't just take a chunk of anemone and it grows
Speaker 1: into another anemone. That really it sheds more light on
Speaker 1: it because in the same way that their their claws
Speaker 1: have evolved just for the specific handling of these these specimens,
Speaker 1: then they've also clearly evolved to for the conduct this
Speaker 1: specialized surgery. It is not just oh, rip a piece
Speaker 1: off of this and use it as a weapon, but
Speaker 1: you have to rip it just right. How do you
Speaker 1: learn that? Must is a sense memory? Or is it?
Speaker 1: Daddy Crab? Okay, so again I'm going with like the
Speaker 1: Disney version of this. Right, it's like the Daddy Crab
Speaker 1: and he's got his two and he's like, okay, it's
Speaker 1: time for you to learn how the style of crab boxing,
Speaker 1: and like he takes one of his anemonies, gives it
Speaker 1: to his younger crab and then teaches him very slowly
Speaker 1: how to rip them in a half so that they
Speaker 1: both have too. M it's strange. Yeah, I guess it's,
Speaker 1: you know, the dark gift of strange crab. And then
Speaker 1: what do you name the clones? Uh, Thrashi and bashi
Speaker 1: I think I think that's trashy too. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: each one as you split them off, they get a
Speaker 1: different number. Uh. Well, it's uh. I think it's one
Speaker 1: of the more we get. We get press releases all
Speaker 1: the time about various cool biological scenarios that that researchers
Speaker 1: are studying, and this one, this one really caught my
Speaker 1: attention just because it's it was it's just a little
Speaker 1: different from everything else. So I was originally just gonna
Speaker 1: write it up for for now, and then I thought, well,
Speaker 1: this is I think this is stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind worthy content here certainly. Yeah. Now I want to
Speaker 1: see crab wheel the hydra like like use they use
Speaker 1: like various animals as the different fighting styles. Bring a crab,
Speaker 1: I mean no, bring a hydra to uh an an
Speaker 1: enemy find exactly there he go. Now, as we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: these are popular aquarium crabs, so I know some of
Speaker 1: you out there have some boxing crabs, so I would
Speaker 1: love to hear your thoughts on their behavior. Uh And
Speaker 1: also when you get them at the pet store or
Speaker 1: through the mail, do they come with little sea enemies
Speaker 1: or do you end up raising them sands An enemy. Huh,
Speaker 1: I would I would love to hear about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wonder if they get like depressed if they don't
Speaker 1: have the anemony because they have to use their legs
Speaker 1: to eat everything. I don't know. I don't know I've
Speaker 1: ever seen a depressed crab or tasted one. More research
Speaker 1: is required. I actually let my son watch the video
Speaker 1: that came with the press release. You get super excited
Speaker 1: about so he keeps talking about, I think we need
Speaker 1: to get boxing crabs for our quick we do. We
Speaker 1: do not have a saltwater aquary. I wonder if they'll
Speaker 1: fight each other. Well, it depends on if it take
Speaker 1: pemony away, yeah, yeah, or if they're male female? Right,
Speaker 1: So hey, let us know if you were out there,
Speaker 1: if you were a boxing boxing crab owner, we would
Speaker 1: love to hear your thoughts on this. You can find
Speaker 1: this podcast all the other podcasts links out to some
Speaker 1: of the material we discussed here at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find the podcast,
Speaker 1: the blog, the videos, and links out to our various
Speaker 1: social media accounts. And maybe you know about some other
Speaker 1: bio weapons that are used in the natural animal kingdom
Speaker 1: that we're unaware of Let us know about those on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
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Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
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