WEBVTT - From the Vault: Crab Content is King 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:08.280 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:08.360 --> 0:00:11.160 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we've 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:15.760 got an episode from the vault. This is another crab episode. Uh, Rob, 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:18.040 you have titled it Crab content is king. I don't 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:20.360 even remember what this was, but it had to be good. 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:22.880 This was from last year where we had just done 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:25.439 a two parter on crabs eating things. And when we said, 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:28.360 you know what, let's have more crabs. Crabs are still 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:31.400 eating things or doing other crab like things. Let's honor 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:34.519 the crabs with a third episode. That's right, we did 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:39.640 as we should have. So this originally published November. Here 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:45.760 it is Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:55.080 of My Heart Radio. Hey welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:58.480 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:00.760 and we're back from the break. We thought the best 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:02.880 way to jump right back in would be to do 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:06.479 more crabs. That's right. We had we'd just recently done 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:10.600 a couple of episodes about crabs eating strange things, and 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:13.480 we had some we had some crab run over anyway, 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:16.680 so we thought, well, what what's what better than to 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:19.440 go ahead and just jump right back in two more crabs. 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:23.039 Crab overflow. Did you happen to eat any crab over 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:26.800 the break rub? I went crabbing with my son and 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:30.360 my and my brother in law, um, and they did 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:33.360 catch crabs and they were excited about them. I ended 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:36.640 up not eating any of the crabs, just because I 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:38.360 don't know, I just wasn't feeling it. It's a lot 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:42.280 of work. Uh, you gotta be you gotta want it 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:45.560 so um. So I abstained from the consumption of crabs, 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:48.280 but I did get to observe some crabs. In my experience, 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:50.560 I feel like it's always kind of embarrassing to eat 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:53.080 a crab. You're just sitting there working on it, you know. 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:55.720 I guess it's all of the the intense concentration it 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:57.960 takes to like crack the pieces and stuff. You're not 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:00.920 really following the conversation of the tap able very well. 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:04.560 It's you're in your own world. Yeah, I mean, it 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:08.160 definitely is one of those activities that that puts you 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:10.080 in the It feels like you put you in an 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:13.480 archaic mindset. You know, you can imagine yourself, you know, 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:17.760 you know, picking apart a carcass on some sort of 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:21.440 primordial shore. Uh sort of a situation, and and therefore 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:23.080 you do get in the zone. You get in the 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:26.520 crab zone, right. Um, But I don't know that. This 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:28.880 this year, I wasn't feeling it, so I did not 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:31.600 have any crab but I was. I was in New Orleans, uh, 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:34.560 and I did enjoy some some very nice food, uh, 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:37.800 some very nice drinks. I made it over to Latitude 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:41.200 once more and had some some drinks at beach bum Berries. 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:44.440 Oh do they do anything with tiki turkey puns for 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:47.000 for this time of year? Well, no, they get into 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:50.040 the sip in Santa things. So there were some Christmas ones. 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:55.440 I had a Christmas Eve of Destruction, which was very nice. Okay, okay, 0:02:55.480 --> 0:02:57.960 but we gotta talk crabs. That people want crabs. Yeah, 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:00.400 let's get into crabs. So um, you know, in our 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:02.639 in our most recent episodes on Crabs, I did dish 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:04.680 out a little bit of crab mythology, and I mentioned 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:08.239 how crabs don't often seem to have central rolls and 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:12.400 myths and folklores for various reasons. But but that doesn't 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:15.200 mean they don't have some very fun cameos. And of 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:17.760 course I do hold out hope that there are some 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:20.040 some other crab myths and legends out there that I 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:22.720 just don't know about. And so as always, if I'm 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:25.840 missing something, right in and let us know now. In 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:30.040 The Eight Immortals cross the Sea, an important Chinese work 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:33.280 of the Ming dynasty, you basically have the story of 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:37.520 these eight powerful humanoid beings using their various powers to 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:40.440 cross the ocean and kind of show off as they're 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:44.000 doing it. Okay, I'm trying to is this something we've 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:46.360 talked about on the show before or similar to it, 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:48.400 or or a lot of these beings sort of uh, 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:52.840 overlapping with the animals of the Chinese zodiac. I believe 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:55.200 we've talked about the immortals before, but I don't think 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:59.000 we've really looked at this particular work, okay, uh. And 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:03.080 you might be thinking of the Chinese zodiac origin story 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:06.240 about the the animal race where they have to cross 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:08.760 a great river, so so this is different than that. 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:13.640 But basically these are these are super beings. They have superpowers, 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:15.840 and so they're showing off as they crossed the ocean, 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:20.159 and crossing the ocean also entails outsmarting and overpowering the 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:23.880 Dragon king. As this is his domain. And we have 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:27.080 mentioned the Dragon King on the show before, but it's 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:30.240 said that the Dragon King is served by quote, shrimp 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:35.520 soldiers and crab generals, as this is the sea after all, 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:38.560 And and I believe these these these sort of shrimp 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.120 soldiers and crab generals also show up in tales of 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:45.120 the Monkey King when when he encounters the Dragon King 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:49.080 or the Dragon king soldiers. What is it about crabs 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:52.200 that puts them in commander rolls? Don't? I mean, you're 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:53.960 gonna put the shrimp in the commander roll? I mean 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:56.920 it seems like a no brainer, right, But the thing 0:04:57.080 --> 0:05:00.719 is that in these stories the shrimp and the crabs 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:04.640 are generally seen as ineffectual. So you have this saying 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:08.159 that emerges from these tales. Any you have references to 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:11.560 shrimp soldiers and crab generals. This has just become become 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:15.920 a way of referring to ineffective soldiers. Uh so I 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:18.800 kind of like that phrase. Okay, So would this be 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:21.880 kind of similar to when people say tin soldiers like 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:24.279 t I N I think so, yeah, I think this 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:27.240 would be this would be a version of that in Mandarin. 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:31.000 Now there's another Chinese crab myth that I was reading 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:33.400 about that that was really fascinating me, and I wasn't 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:35.120 really able to get quite to the bottom of it. 0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:39.120 But it pops up in yang and and Turner's Handbook 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:42.920 of Chinese Mythology. It concerns the Yellow Emperor, and there 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:45.000 are a lot of stories about the Yellow Emper and 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:47.839 this one just happens to involve crabs. A lot of 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:51.760 these emerge from from zin Jung in the Non province, 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:54.760 and this one seems to have as well. And in 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:58.520 this particular tale, the Yellow Emperor's attendants find a nice 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:00.520 cave for him to visit in the owners So this 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:03.320 is just just a really nice cave. It's cool, uh, 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:06.960 you know some water there. You can rest very comfortable. 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:10.960 Except they're way too many mosquitoes and other unwanted vermin 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.360 living in the cave. So the Yellow Emperor just kind 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:17.360 of casually mentions like, geez, I wish someone would drive 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:19.760 these creatures away. Whish somebody would wipe these creatures out 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:21.800 so I could enjoy this cave, because otherwise it's a 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:25.120 great place to spend the summer. So what happens when 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:29.120 an individual of great power casually mentions the desire well, 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:33.160 oftentimes U uh, somebody will see an opportunity, and that's 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:35.719 what the crabs living in the cave do. They hear 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.800 this and they decide, well, let's do it. So they 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.159 drive all the unwanted creatures out of this wondrous cave, 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:45.440 and as a reward, the Yellow Emperor is said to 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:51.080 have given these crabs an extra set of legs. Quote. Thereafter, 0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:55.599 only the crabs in the local pond have tin legs. Wait, 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:59.760 I'm confused. Okay, so do you know anything about how 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:03.120 this connects to to biology, because so crabs are decapods 0:07:03.160 --> 0:07:06.240 that should have ten legs, right right right? Yeah, this 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:08.440 is where I really started scratching my head a bit, 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:12.840 because yeah, that decapod crabs are quite literally ten legged crabs. 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:16.120 So what would these other crabs have been? Well, I 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:19.600 guess it seems to get complicated because technically decapods can 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:23.120 have as many as thirty eight appendages, and generally the 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:27.280 pereiopods are walking appendages or what we very loosely refer 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:30.720 to as legs, and there are five pairs of those. 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:34.000 But at the same time, many common crabs, such as 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:37.240 ghost grabs, they do run around on four pairs of 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:41.480 legs and sometimes actually only employ three pairs in running, 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:44.239 and the fifth pair of legs or the claws, which 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:47.080 we humans often go ahead and at least think of 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:49.480 as hands, right, because we can make we can make 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:51.560 a little crab claws with our hands, and so we 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:54.480 kind of feel like those are the crabs hands, right, Yeah, 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:56.120 And if you want to get really technical, I mean, 0:07:56.280 --> 0:08:00.400 crabs have all kinds of bilaterally symmetrical pen dig is 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:03.200 that you could imagine our legs or have evolved from 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:05.320 legs at some point. So you know, crabs have jaw 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:09.080 legs in their mouths, the uh, the maxilla peds that 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:12.560 help them eat and uh and yeah, so so yeah, 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:15.840 it's true. Even though they will typically have ten legs 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:18.880 or leg like appendages, some of those could be seen 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:21.920 as other things. Like you're saying, you know, a person 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:24.360 looking at a crab's claws as well, those aren't legs, 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:27.080 those are hands, or looking at maybe the swimmer legs 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:30.360 says those aren't legs, those are fins. Yeah. Yeah, because 0:08:30.400 --> 0:08:33.680 some crabs have paddles for their their hindmost pair of legs, 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:37.280 so you can at least imagine a scenario in which 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:40.440 someone might not count those as being part of the 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:43.440 leg count. But um, but yeah, I'm not really sure 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:46.240 how to exactly interpret this story that maybe there's something 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:50.720 missing in translation. Um, you know, I looked around at 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:54.600 a few papers about extra leg genetic abnormalities and some crabs, 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:57.680 so maybe that's not out of the question either. Uh, 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:01.360 maybe there's just something particular about the crabs in this 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:05.360 cave environment or or even you know, is it sometimes 0:09:05.360 --> 0:09:07.640 the case and accounts like this in legends. Maybe it's 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:10.640 not even describing a crab, it's something else, and the 0:09:10.880 --> 0:09:13.240 legend comes down to, you know, describing why does this 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:15.840 thing look a little different than what we're used to? Well, 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:20.600 because it did something wonderful and therefore was gifted extra appendages. Okay, 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:24.040 what number of appendages? Does it become not that useful 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:26.200 to have more of them? You know, if you've got 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:28.680 if you've got two arms, having two more arms, that 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:31.240 seems like a real upgrade, right, like Goro has got 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:35.200 a real advantage over a regular human. But once let's 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:39.400 say you already have uh ten bilaterally symmetrical appendages, if 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:42.320 you get two more, is I mean, is that really 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:43.920 an upgrade or do they just get in the way 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:46.400 at that point, Yeah, I guess this is usually a 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:50.040 question that that evolution natural selection solves over time. Right 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:53.440 if if if appendages are not needed, well then they're 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:55.640 just a drain on the the economy of the body, 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:59.599 and therefore there's a there's a possibility they're going to 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:01.960 disappear year over time, that they're gonna a trophy. So 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:04.839 I don't know. But anyway, coming back to the story 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:08.520 you were telling, I love that detail about the Yellow 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:12.320 Emperor just sort of idly saying, oh, I wish someone 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:14.320 would get rid of all these mosquitoes, because it kind 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:17.080 of reminds me of the Actually don't know if this 0:10:17.160 --> 0:10:21.240 is historically solid, but the at least the at least 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:24.720 legendary tale of the death of Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:28.800 of Canterbury, who when Henry the second supposedly said he 0:10:28.880 --> 0:10:30.760 was like mad at him, I guess, and said, you know, 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:34.440 won't someone rid me of this meddlesome priest? And uh, 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:37.000 it wasn't given as an order. He was just kind 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.120 of musing about how mad he was. But some nights 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:42.040 happened to over hear him and they're like, well, okay, 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:44.440 I guess we gotta go kill this guy and they did. Yeah, 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:49.000 basically seems to be the same situation here. Now I'm 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:51.319 out of my depth on this, but I also can't 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:53.240 help but wonder maybe part of the idea of the 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:56.840 story is the crab has so many legs anyway, and 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:00.959 therefore it's not much of a reward. I don't know. 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:04.800 It makes me wonder, but I couldn't find out. I 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:07.800 looked around. I couldn't find any other strong sources, you know, 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:10.920 in in English on this. But if anyone out there 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:15.199 has any details about strange crabs in a non province, 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:18.880 crabs from the caves, and crabs with extra limbs right in, 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:21.120 I would love to love to have more clarity on this. 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:23.600 While you were telling the story, I was hit with 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:26.320 a with a tremendously bad pun. Should I say it? 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:27.960 Should I not say it? I don't know. It was 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:34.880 little pinchers have big ears. That's good now, Uh, yeah, 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:37.080 it's good now. There are there are other crab tales 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.240 to be found in Chinese mythology. For instance, they are 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:43.480 fairy old myths to be found throughout various myth cycles 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:46.600 of China among different ethnic groups about the separation of 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:49.040 heaven and Earth. Uh. This is of course something you 0:11:49.080 --> 0:11:52.200 see in in other myth cycles as well. Uh. And 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:55.560 in Chinese traditions, sometimes there is a sky tower or 0:11:55.640 --> 0:12:00.160 sky pillar connecting the two, and sometimes an an moll 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:03.080 is to blame for severing this tower or pillar. And 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:06.240 apparently in some tellings it is a crab that does 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:08.880 the snippet. Ah. Well, that would make sense. Yet again, 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.320 when there's something to be snipped in a myth, sometimes 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:15.280 the crab will fill that gap. Yeah. Now another one 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:18.280 that I was reading about. This one. This is another 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:22.440 you know, very old mythological tale, and it's the story 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:26.199 of of woman Cho, of whom there are I think 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:29.840 three narratives in the Classic of Mountain, Mountains and Seas, 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:34.320 and as Zann Barrel explains in Chinese mythology in an introduction, 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:37.760 the written versions of these tales UH date from the 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:40.400 first century b c. E. And the first century see 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:43.360 and they tell of a time during which quote, there 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:46.120 are two people in the sea, but we only meet 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:50.000 one woman Cho, who is strongly linked with the crab. 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:52.400 And it seems like she may either take on the 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:54.880 form of a crab or she has a crab that 0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:57.480 is her attendant, and it seems like this might be 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:01.320 a crab of unusual size. And the reasons for this 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:04.040 seemed to include the idea that okay, you've got the 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:06.600 land and the and you got the sea, and you 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:09.000 have the crab, which kind of has a dual nature. 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:12.840 Like the crab lives on both. It can scamper on 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:15.199 the beach, but then it can scamper beneath the waves, 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:17.640 it can swim in the water, and so forth. Yeah, 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:19.720 the dual nature is right there in its body. It's 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:23.200 it lives in the ocean, but it walks on its legs. 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:26.600 But then the crab also does another interesting thing. It molts, 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:29.800 It sheds it's it's old shell and grows a new one. 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:32.840 And this was seen as a kind of regeneration that 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:35.679 might allow the crab to live forever. And it was 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:38.960 also associated with cycles of the moon, and of course 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.520 the moon has strong connections to the idea of immortality 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:46.560 and Chinese mythology as well. Oh, that's very interesting, and 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:50.800 it makes me wonder why we have commonly adopted the 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:54.600 metaphor of the butterfly as the you know, the the 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:58.400 important image from nature of something going through a transformation 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.640 and then uh, and then coming out something new. I mean, 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:03.959 I guess the difference there is that a butterfly looks 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:07.640 very different than the than the larval stage that went 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:10.760 into the pupa. But uh, but when a crab comes 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:14.520 out is just bigger. So maybe that is a better metaphor. 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:17.160 I don't know now. Woman Chow is also known as 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:22.520 Woman Cho corpse, corpse deity and Uh. This is connected 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:25.200 to drought and the time of the Ten Sons, the 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:28.200 time in Chinese mythology we've mentioned on the show before, Uh, 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:30.920 when there are tens sons in the sky and they 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:34.400 are burning up the earth, as related in the Shanghai 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:37.600 Shan quote. Woman child corpse was born, but the Tin 0:14:37.760 --> 0:14:40.680 sons scorched her to death. That was north of the 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.680 land of Men. She screened her face with her right 0:14:43.760 --> 0:14:46.920 hand where the Tin sons are up above. Woman Cho 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:50.760 lived there on top of the mountain, so she's she's 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:55.040 scorched and burned by the surplus suns, perhaps seemingly especially 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:57.640 her hand because she's shielding her eyes with that hand. 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:01.480 But then she is later reborn in brilliant green, so 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:05.200 she has renewal, she has drought survival, but she has 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:08.040 also connected to these observations of the crab and the 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:12.200 idea that the crab experiences this sort of periodic renewal 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:21.520 as well. Now, another area concerning crabs that I was 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:24.040 looking at kind of comes back to stuff we've talked 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:26.000 about already about the you know, the idea that the 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:29.680 crab design is a winning design, that it's emerged independently 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:34.400 multiple times, and that according to some eventually everything will 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:37.320 become a crab. Right, that's kind of the meme. Yeah, 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:40.720 I think the more modest phrasing is that other crustaceans 0:15:40.800 --> 0:15:45.880 that are not necessarily crablike inform have repeatedly evolved into 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:49.800 crab like forms multiple times in the history of life. Yeah. 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:53.800 So earlier this year, Doug Johnson wrote a fun article 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:57.000 for Ours Technica titled on Earth things evolve into crabs? 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:00.840 Could the same be true in space? Uh? And so 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:04.080 that part of this article is the author's generally summing 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:06.920 up some of these ideas we've we've discussed already, But 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:09.560 then he gets into this this issue of alien life 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:12.880 because if we follow the logic that aliens might be humanoid, 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.720 because that's what we see emerge as a dominant intelligent 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:19.040 life form on our own world, then we might go 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:21.520 as far as to wonder, well, if crabs are a 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:24.600 popular form on this planet, wouldn't it make sense to 0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:28.920 see crab or crab like bodies crab morphs if you 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:34.520 will on alien worlds as well. I want to believe so. 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:37.280 Um Johnson reached out to one of the authors of 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:40.680 the paper I referenced in our previous crab episode, Joe 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:45.280 wool for researcher at Harvard University's Department of Organismic and 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:49.080 Evolutionary Biology. The article was how does a crab become 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:52.200 a crustacean? And I have to say absolutely love this 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:55.520 quote from her. This is something she told to ours 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:58.760 technical and in the the the interview quote there is 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.760 no clear cut reason why being a crab is better 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:05.479 than not being a crab. But if you say that 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:07.639 too loud, the crabs in the cable here you and 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:12.160 then they'll turn into something else. True. But I love 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:14.880 this this quote because there's an absurdity to it, obviously, 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:17.760 but it also does ring absolutely true and betrays a 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:20.600 deeper understanding. You know, we don't have an answer in 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:24.479 human reason and human language to the question here, but 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:27.800 evolution provides its own answer, and the answer seems to 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:33.200 be the crab form itself um in various examples. However, 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:36.399 Johnson talks to Charles Marshall, director of the University of 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:41.240 California Museum of Paleontology, and Marshall points out that all 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:44.720 in all, it's a fairly narrow group of species that 0:17:44.800 --> 0:17:48.520 have become crab morphs on our planet. Um that you 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:51.000 know that we shouldn't we shouldn't get too excited about this, 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:53.080 this idea. It's like, well, crabs are everywhere, so they 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:56.520 must be in space. Like there's like, ultimately, it's still 0:17:56.560 --> 0:18:00.719 a situation where the crab form has evolved as an 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:05.439 answer to specific questions posed by our natural environment, and 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:09.000 not say universal questions, right, And I think the other 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:12.040 half of that, uh, The other important point highlighted by 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:15.919 by Marshall's observation here is that it's not just that 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:20.880 the natural environment creates some pressure that encourages crab like forms, 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:24.919 but that it's also certain morphological starting places that if 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:28.399 you're starting with a genome that codes for a certain 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:31.960 kind of body plan, it's easy to get from there 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:34.760 into a crab like form, and that body plan is 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:38.480 like other certain types of especially marine arthropods, you know, 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:42.159 certain crustacean types, right, I mean, like, for example, you 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:46.320 can you can look at that the hands of various organisms, right, 0:18:46.400 --> 0:18:49.679 Like to get something like an extra finger or an 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:52.840 extra thumb, it has to come from somewhere. You know, 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:54.840 there has to be a starting point. It's not just 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:58.080 you know, suddenly thumb sort of a situation exactly so. 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:00.760 And maybe you know, another billion years, we could find 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:03.600 that all kinds of mammals on Earth have evolved thumbs, 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:06.000 because it turns out it's really useful for all kinds 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:09.080 of animals. But you're not going to really find uh, say, 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:11.639 crabs with thumbs, right, because they don't really have the 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:15.720 morphological building blocks to start with to make thumbs, right, 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:18.359 But I mean they do, they do sometimes have access 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:21.320 to thumbs, because we do mention that they will show 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:24.560 down on a cadaver. Yeah. Um, then again I want 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:26.520 just to doubt what I just said. I mean, I 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:29.439 guess depending on how expansive your definition of thumb is, 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:32.439 you could say that a crabs claws, the pinching motion 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:36.239 provides some of what a thumb is good for, right, 0:19:36.320 --> 0:19:38.360 That a thumb can help you you know, close your 0:19:38.359 --> 0:19:41.400 hand over an object in order to manipulate it, obviously 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:44.199 with much more dexterity than usually a crab can. But 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:46.520 I can see why we might look at the crab 0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:49.560 body and think, well, this might be good in in 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:52.800 space because we look at the way the crab moves 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:57.440 on land and through water, and it's easy to extracolate 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:03.440 that toum like a micro gravity situation. Right. So, in 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:05.400 the same way that you have some crabs on Earth 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:08.560 who's whose rear most pair of legs has turned into 0:20:08.600 --> 0:20:10.640 swimmer legs, a little paddle legs to help them move 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:13.720 through the water, you could imagine a crab whose final 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:18.199 pair of legs has turned into ion thrusters. Well, I 0:20:18.200 --> 0:20:22.000 wouldn't go that far, but um I will say add that. 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:25.920 I think another aspect of all of this is that, 0:20:26.840 --> 0:20:29.679 you know, we we tend to think of like crab 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:31.919 more of popping up everywhere and imagine them in the 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:34.600 future and another planets, because we do take a lot 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:37.600 of delight in these organisms. I mean, they're weird, they're stealthy, 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:40.760 they're efficient, they're kind of funny to look at. Uh, 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:43.080 they're amusing to watch in the wild, and of course 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:45.840 we like to eat some of them. Uh, so we 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:48.840 have a vested interest in their existence, and that's always 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:50.600 a great way to wind up as a noted animal 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:53.520 for humans. Is it something that we eat or is 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:56.600 it something that can eat us? And uh, you know 0:20:56.680 --> 0:21:00.000 that the crab kind of checks off both boxes, Uh, 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:03.160 with some caveats on the the consumption of humans. That's 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:05.640 a very well observed But I want to come back 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:10.160 to crabs eating strange things, were being attracted to eat 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:13.600 strange things at least, uh, And I wanted to do 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:16.400 that by looking at a study I came across from 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:20.159 just this year, looking at hermit crabs. Now we've mentioned 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:23.400 hermit crabs a number of times in this series. Now, 0:21:23.640 --> 0:21:27.439 hermit crabs are decapod crustaceans. They're not considered to quote 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:30.040 true crabs. I can't remember if we've said that already, 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:33.520 but they belonged to the group and Amura meaning the 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:37.960 false crabs, rather than bracky Era, which are supposedly true crabs. 0:21:38.040 --> 0:21:40.760 But hey, you know they're they're close enough there crabs. 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:43.320 And so the study that I was reading about that 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:46.080 I wanted to talk about was actually just published earlier 0:21:46.119 --> 0:21:52.119 this year. So in and It was by Jack Greenshields, Paula. Shermocker, 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:57.720 and your Hartigaie in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin. The 0:21:57.800 --> 0:22:01.480