Welcome to Creature future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and today on the show Crustacean News Station, all the crabby stories fit to print or pinch, lobsters not saying no to drugs, and crabs implicated in a famous disappearance. Discover this and more as we answer the age old
question can lobsters feel pain? Joining me today is friend of the show co host of the Just the Zoo of Us podcast, Ellen Weatherford.
Welcome, Thank you. It's always nice to talk to you. Katie, my favorite person.
I am so excited to have you on, specifically for this one. I couldn't imagine a better guest to have on to talk about, uh, lobsters getting hot boxed and crabs disappearing a lady.
It is incredibly on brand for me. I think of just crustaceans being menaces.
Yeah, of course you. I'm I know that you are already a fan of the concept of carsonization, that we all shall become crabs at some point, that crab crab form. Just so. The story behind that is that animals, especially crustaceans, but animals in general will often come to this evolutionary path and converge on the crab shape because the crab
shape is apparently really good. Scuttling is apparently just a really premium method of transportation, and so like you'll have spiders, arthropods, crustaceans all sort of independently evolving crab form.
It's it's funny that you bring this up now, because I just this week did a TikTok about carsonization, which I know, probably to a lot of people is like, Okay, a TikTok, that's not that big a deal. I put a lot of research intout it into my tiko talks, like I've prepped for a long time for these stupid little videos. I'm like, uh, and so.
I'm literally buying, like I had to buy a dongle for my phone to like I gotta, I guess I gotta start getting into TikTok and stuff. And so I'm like, all right, but I gotta buy a phone dongle before I get into TikTok. It's a whole process. Uh. You know, I I have much respect for people who actually managed to create TikTok videos. Hopefully I will join soon. I will keep everyone posted on that. How how I struggle with that back comes to fruition.
But struggle is the right word for it.
But Allen's already got those out, so check those out. Uh on on her TikTok. Is that just a zoo of us TikTok? Or is it under your names?
Yeah, it's just under my name. I've been kind of doing it because I like post stuff about multiple podcasts on there, so it's just kind of a catch all. Also, I just like goof on there sometimes too, so I don't I didn't want to feel like, oh, I post this because it's a podcast account and I have to stay relevant, and I'm like, no, I'm just gonna post whatever inane thoughts jump into my head.
I mean, it's funny that you say that you couldn't do that under the name of a podcast, but I feel like I speak any inane thoughts I have on my own podcast, So I'm not sure what you're talking about, But yes, do check out Ellen Weatherford's TikTok. I'm sure those are really fun. But yes, let's talk about lobsters getting high. Do you eat lobsters?
Ellen, I don't. I unfortunately as far as like culinary experience goes, I might be the worst guest you could have possibly picked to talk about. Like the enthusiasm and the love is there, but unfortunately I don't eat any seafood like fish, crustaceans, like shellfish, none of it. I don't like any of it.
All of our crustacean listeners are just so excited. They're clapping, they're pinching their claws, they're so happy. Gloriously, I've got bad news for my crustacean listeners. I do occasionally eat lobster. I'm actually not like a huge fan of lobster. I feel like it gets this Oh it's this fancy food that you should eat because you're a fancy person, and it's really great.
Has clout.
It's got clout. It's definitely got clout. But I think it's fine. It's just fine. Like I think it's it's only as good as sort of the butter or seasoning right you put on it.
It's merely a vessel for the butter.
It's butter.
It's like a little spoon that you use to get the butter into your mouth, because you can't just stick your spoon and butter I mean you.
Can't pretty much. You can't more spoon and butter. There's a certain amount of pride we have where we can't do that. Someday maybe I will lose that ego and be able to just to asto the butter.
But I had always heard that, even though now we associate lobster with like being a very sort of like upscale, bougie meal that originally and I don't know about originally, but at least, you know, to the tune of over one hundred years ago, lobster was like Sina's very sort of like low class, you know, like it was like the McDonald's of like seafood.
Weird sea bug. Yeah, I've heard that too, and I think it's based on sort of the availability of the lobster. So if you've got like a city next to you know, a port, and people can just kind of go out and grab some lobster and eat it because it's so.
It's that's free food, right, it's free food.
It's easily available. But then like when it when it's like a little bit trickier to like you know, get from point A to point B, then it becomes like a fancy food because it's like, oh, imported, and lobster also has to be kept alive before you consume it. So that is that is well, we'll hit on why in just a bit, But.
It seems like there are a lot of barriers between the lobster being alive in the water and being in your mouth. There are like it just seems like such a hassle.
It is a hassle. I always was fascinated when I was a kid by the live lobsters at Ralt's, the grocery store.
I don't think I was terrified of them. I would not walk anywhere near that lobster tank because they had lobster tanks in publics, which anybody listening from Florida is having a moment, because publics is a way of life. I miss it dearly. I just moved to Washington. We
don't have them up here, and I miss them. But they had a lobster tank that not only would I like not willingly walk through the section of the store it was in, but if we did have to walk past the lobster tank, I would hold my breath wow whole time until it was like out of eyesight. It was smelly. But also I had a weird thing about like not I don't know. It was like a weird superstition almost that I didn't want to like breathe the same air as the lobsters.
Could sims become a lobster yourself, No, I know, I know how that is.
Uh yeah, the spores will kind of like like parasitically, You'll, yeah, they'll get district Everyone knows about the spores.
Nobody wants to get district nined. So uh No, I love the lobsters. When I was a kid, I always like I would fantasize about like getting on. I probably asked my mom, like, can we keep one, like as a pet? She said no. I thought maybe I could keep it in the bathtub like in the Simpsons, you know, Homer's pet lobster. I wanted to do that as a kid, but that never came to fruition.
Like as a kid, in the United States, the only time you see a live animal being sold in a store is like a pet store, right, so when you see one in a grocery store, there's the connection. You're like, this is a pet.
I also like the idea of being the lobster's savior, of preventing them from becoming food.
Right, you want to have that Disney princess like for and Gully moment.
Yeah, it's why I used to buy feeder mice when I was a kid and keep them as pets, because, like I have saved you from the snake a terrible fate.
Feed and mice are so much cuter than lobster's Katie. You can't pretend like that's the same thing. Have you ever so cute?
Have you ever looked a lobster right into their rostrum and standing to their soul?
I can't say that.
I So there is this news story I think is both really funny but also thought provoking. It is about lobsters getting completely stoned before killing them in a pot of boiling water. So I've always thought it was strange that we don't just mercifully kill lobsters before boiling them. I understand that lobsters are not the most intelligent animals, but it is weird that like this assumption that it's like, well, let's just boil them alive. I'm sure nothing's gonna happen there.
It's like, right, like that can't be it, that can be the best way.
Right, Like I get they're not super smart. But I it's weird to me to assume like they don't feel pain, like I, I, you know, like I'll like eat fish, right, But my assumption is fish can feel pain, and I don't, you know, like I would not want them to suffer, right, I would want them to be quickly killed and not like you know, boiled alive.
And not like under the prolonged stress right, right, like the absolute terror of they clearly know something's wrong and that something bad is happening to them, even if they couldn't physically feel it, right, which I mean, I don't know. Maybe they can, maybe they can't, I don't know, but either way, they're gonna be, like, you know, under a period of extreme stress.
Yeah, no, I mean so there has been a debate over the years as to whether lobsters can feel pain. So tossing a lobster into boiling water can take up to three minutes to kill the lobster, So if they can feel pain and be consciously aware of that pain, that would be pretty horrifying. In two thousand and five, there was a Norwegian report to the Scientific Community for Food Safety. It was reported by news outlets as finding that quote lobsters don't feel pain and that their reaction
to painful stimuli are just reflexes. So I looked at the actual report itself, not just like the news report of the report, and so the scientific report was a review of existing studies and animatomical knowledge about various invertebrates. It does not actually come to the conclusion about lobsters not feeling pain. They're just very honest that they cannot
rule it out. They just say that there's no evidence that lobsters consciously experience pain, and that their reactions to boiling water like thrashing around could simply be unconscious reflexes. But it's not this is speculation, it's not conclusive. They're just saying there's no evidence that they do feel pain.
There's no evidence that they don't feel pain. They actually call for more research on the subject of lobsters and crabs feeling pain, concluding that it's unlikely that they feel pain, but something that's understudied.
So yeah, it makes me wonder if you put a human in a vat of boiling water and solve that so far panicking and thrashing on board, right, Like, you could also interpret that as like a reflex, right, But that doesn't mean that just because they're responding to the pain physically doesn't mean that it's not like accompanied by a sensation. And then at that point then the only way you'd know if it was accompanied by a sensation of pain, you'd have to talk to them.
Right the interview out of after the experience of like, so, how was it being boiled alive? Personally? No, not a fan. I didn't enjoy it.
Because like our responses to pain are also reflexes, yes, right, Like it's not that far removed from how we respond to pain, right.
I think the idea is that lobsters have such a simple kind of brain situation where it's not like really this like you know, it's got kind of this nervous system that is structurally so different from ours that maybe they don't have the same kind of consciousness that we do. Their brains are of a neural bulb kind of situation. But you're assuming a lot that they don't feel pain. So there was actually a more recent review of literature and report to the UK Government in twenty twenty one
which again looked at pain perception in invertebrates. They looked at a variety of invertebrates, and so they found the highest evidence of behavior that could be interpreted as responding to pain in octopuses. Not a lot of surprise there. Octopuses are clearly pretty intelligent. In a study, octopuses would avoid tank chambers filled with an irritating acid and would sink out chambers that contained an anesthetics. So octopuses showed
a very intelligent avoidance of pain. There was also a study on crayfish, which are not lobsters, but they are a crustacean, and they found that the crayfish would engage in a stress response of hiding in dark, shadowy places and would do this in response to pain stimuli. They would also stop hiding when given anti anxiety medication.
Oh yeah, okay, so this.
Was interesting because wild crayfish are not the same thing as lobsters. They are you know, similar, and they are crustaceans, they're invertebrates. So it's a you know that I think is the strongest evidence so far that lobsters may feel pain. And you know, personally, I don't have like a really strong opinion. I think that it's clear that lobsters and crustaceans have a pain response. I strongly believe octopuses are intelligent enough that they would feel pain and be consciously.
Awes Yeah, and octopuses also have the benefit of, I think, being able to behave in a way that humans are good at perceiving and understanding. Like we have a pretty easy time seeing what an octopus is doing and kind of getting it exactly sort of relate to I don't know if it's because octopuses have a sort of like I think maybe it's in the eyes. You can look an octopus in the eyes and kind of like you
know what they're doing. Some of their structures are a little more analogous to ours, so we can kind of like get it.
But likes their tentacles are so flexible, they can do such complicated things with them. We can see the complexity of their behavior and their actions.
Yeah, whereas like a crustacean, you know, they may be behaving in a way that like they know what they're doing, but we might just have no way of knowing, Like, oh, is that a response to pain? Is that just you know, seeking out a dark spot because that's what their instinct is, Like it's a little bit more difficult for us to
like parse what's going on in and crustacean behavior. Yeah, but octopuses are like really good at sort of like communicating, not intentionally, right, but like what they do is kind of easy to be understood by humans.
Yeah, No, I think that's absolutely true. And yeah, I mean, lobster and crab nerves systems are you know, very simple, They're very different from ours, and they are structurally very different in certain ways that I think they are able to do things that a human being could not do without like you know, completely breaking down, like tearing off
their own limbs to escape predators. So like the fact that their nervous system is so different, there's like it's possible, right that they have an evolutionary advantage to not being consciously aware of pain so that they can do this self amputation behavior. True. Yeah, and it's true that the thrashing around in water the lobster could be that could
just be a reflex of course. Also the screaming that people talk about hearing, you know, like when that like high pitched sort of wine when you put a lobster in the water, that is just s deemon escaping. It's not the lobster screaming but I also think that we really don't know that they can can't feel pain, and even biologists too seem to be less convinced that they can feel pain, typically point out that we don't have the capability to know, and that they're just kind of
making an assumption given what we do know. So I feel like ethically it's better to assume that they might be able to feel pain. Like, I'm not against eating lobster necessarily, I just think that like boiling them alive is messed up.
It feels that like it doesn't feel good.
Yeah, no, I think it's like, again, I'm not a vegetarian, but I think that there is a middle ground between like being a vegetarian, which is great. I think it's great to be a vegetarian. I'm not not at all against against being a vegetarian or just not caring about animals. I think that like you can both like you don't want to eat like lobster or fish or something, and then but also care about their treatment up until they're on your plate.
Yeah, you can want it to be done ethically, Yeah, sustainable exactly.
So I am very excited to talk about a chef who has thought about this problem, and her decision is to get her lobsters absolutely baked, and by baked, I mean high as heck. We're going to take a quick break and when we get back, we are going to talk about these super high lobsters. Excellent, all right, So we're going to talk about the chef who gets her lobster's absolutely displaze it.
You've heard of rock lobster, Now get ready for stoned lobster.
Nice. Nice. So this chef, chronicled in an article on National Geographic, really sympathizes with lobsters despite cooking and eating them, which I respect. Charlotte Gill, which is an amazing name for someone who is a chef who sympathizes with.
A quest seafood. Yes, that's amazing.
Charlotte Gill can't invent a better name. Wanted to come up with a technique to reduce the experience of pain for lobsters before checking them into boiling water, so she hot boxed her lobsters in a plastic box filled with pot smoke marijuana smoke, so then they seemed to relax. She claims that the lobster meat actually tasted better and
that after eating copious amounts of lobster. Drug tests revealed no marijuana in the human lobster eater's piece, so you can't get marijuana in your system from eating a high lobster. Apparently she tested this on her dad too, which is like that must have been one proud dad to be like, my daughter is giving me high lobsters.
Also like just to just like be a part of like your child's basically like grown up science fair experiment.
Where you get to get a lobster from a chef. Ye great. So the Health Department of Maine unfortunately did shut that down because I guess in main, hot boxing lobsters is not like an approved food additive.
There can't possibly already be a law about that. I mean like that this has to be like an air bud, like it's not technically in the rules situation.
I think it's that when it comes to the FDA and food additives, it has to be in the rules. You can't just discover a new food additive and start selling it before they can quickly like write up a
lot against it. It's like I just I just found some alien organism and I'm gonna put it in my fries, and it's like, no, you can't do that, unfortunately, So instead she uses valerian root, which is supposed to have a somewhat similar effect, which she mixes with water and soaks them in instead of like it being a hot boxing thing, it's like a valerian root bath.
Is that not some thing from Skyrim? That's a real plant? I thought that was playing Skyrim.
It does sound like it's from Skyrim, but it's a real plant. But yeah, apparently it has some kind of anti anxiety, pain soothing properties, and like, yeah, I but I am still I am still in favor of getting the lobster's high at eating them. So I hope that at some point we do make like getting high and a food additive that is approved by the FDA.
So I'm just wondering how the behavior of a lobster when high could differ at all from the behavior of just a regular lobster, because like, it can't be that.
Start talking incessantly about Martin Scorsese films and like you got to see him. It's like, no, I know, he's a good director. And then they're like, no, you don't understand. You have to see it. You have to watch all of these movies.
They listen to a lot of pink Floyd.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, But yeah, I I love this chef. This is very interesting and I'm definitely not gonna say no to getting lobsters high. But I think the obvious question is why don't we simply kill lobsters before boiling them? Right? Like, why don't we have like a little lobster guillotine and just you know, quickly kill them before boiling them so that you know, it seems like that would be the easiest solution.
I would think, So is there a reason why you don't? Is there a reason there is?
It's a little questionable though. So apparently when you kill a lobster, bacteria and their flesh can rapidly multiply, which are not killed in the boiling process. So this bacteria is apparently resilient enough to not die after being boiled. I am not a food scientist, so, but like, I don't see how killing them immediately before putting them in the boiling water, like seconds before would be much different in terms of backterial growth versus just like letting the
boiling water kill them. I wasn't really able to It.
Just has to be like the ussane bolt of bacterias.
Right right, exactly. I mean I wasn't this. I mean, someone, please, if you if you study lobsters, or you study food and bacteria, please send me if you have found a study that shows any difference in terms of bacterial growth of like killing the lobster first, or like boiling in alive. Don't do the study yourself, because I don't want to subject more lobsters to like pain. But if there is an existing study, I really want to see it. I don't see how such a study could like get past
the ethics board. But I mean, we also eat lobster all the time. Anyways, It's complicated.
Now. It seems like from some of the scientific studies I've read, the ethics Board seems surprisingly chill about torturing animals. Sometimes sometimes yeah, sometimes they're like that's fine, you could do a little torture.
I'm not gonna name any names, but I had a professor who had a student who did a study where they kept like drowning hamsters, and uh, it was like not intentional yet it was not. It was not like
she made no attempt to not drown the hamsters. It was it was the thing is like she was recreating a study that involved like it was a study that was originally done on rats, and she was tweaking the study, which is very common, right, you take a study design and you tweak it to try to get some new finding. But instead of using rats, she used hamsters. And hamsters are not good swimmers. Rats are much better swimmers, and so.
These hamsters are desert animals.
Yeah, so these poor hamsters kept drowning, and then like this professor like eventually stepped in was like, why is there a basketfull of dead wet hamsters and she's.
Not the hamsters.
And then she's like she had to shut that down because it's like, stop drowning the hamsters. What are you doing? Anyways?
So some people wonder why science has such a dark perception yea in the general pubblic.
I mean, this was this was definitely a horror story. This was it was meant as a cautionary tale of like, please respect the animals that you are studying and minimize any casualties or suffering. Uh, and like yeah, so it is not it's but unfortunately, yeah, sometimes that does happen. So, uh, I don't know who trusted a u A. I don't remember if she was like an undergrad or a grad student, but anyway, she should not have been trusted with so
many hamsters. You gotta start questioning when they keep like buying more hamsters, like why are you.
Buying I used to work at a pet store, and that was one of the things that we are like trained to refuse service, was that if someone kept repeatedly coming into the store and like buying a bunch of like, you know, hamsters or gerbils or something like that, there was a point where we were supposed to stop selling to that.
Clear, I think you've cutting you off of classical. But yeah, in terms of lobsters, there are chefs who kill lobsters before boiling them. They stick a sharp knife in their heads right before putting them in the water. I know that sounds brutal, but to me that is far more merciful.
Like it is I've seen like the I've seen the chefs that take the giant shears and cut the head off the craft. Yes, right, and like that doesn't seem that bad, right, If it's like a quick and simple little like you know, before they even know what's going on, that's got to be better than three minutes of boiling.
It's got to be better. I think I remember like a Hell's Kitchen or Top Chef at As where Gordon Ramsay is like yelling at someone because they were trying to boil their crab before killing it. Uh so you know, I mean, yeah, I think that like sharp knife right in sort of that neural bulb right before putting in the water, seems like that should be fine. In fact, in Switzerland, New Zealand and Reggio Emilia, Italy, you are required to knock out lobsters before boiling them, either with
an electric shock or knife in the brain. So there are places.
So they've already they've already done this work. It sounds like.
It sounds like and again I still I have not been able to find studies that like establish that somehow the bacteria is able to grow between that period and you know, the three minutes that it takes for them to boil.
Really they don't seem to be worried about it.
Seemed to be fine. So right, Look, if you.
Want to get a bacteria thing as a cover by big lobster.
Torture, big lobster torch, sure, Look if you want to get lobsters high. Like, I think that's great. I just think this much awesome.
Keep doing that.
That is so awesome. I approve of that regardless if you're gonna eat them or not.
Just do it for fun. Do it for fun, like live a little.
Go out to the ocean and start handed out spliffs by the seaside. But like, you know, I think that this is something that seems like we already have a good solution for. I'm not sure why we're not doing it again. If anyone has, like knows of any studies or research about bacterias somehow growing in a lobster that like minutes after you kill it, let me know it
seems fine, It seems fine. I'm but I'm again, I'm not a food scientist, so I'm not gonna tell you to like go out try try this at home, unless you're a chef. I would personally leave it to the trained chefs. And terms of.
Please don't ingest anything based on the recommendations of this.
Podcast exactly, Please please don't like yeah, just like you know, just keep them as pets. That's what I'm saying. That's the responsible.
Friend to do, and then you can smoke together that's right. You gotta smoking buddy stream joint rotation.
They can even clip it off for you. Really good at rolling.
Them, but you'd have to roll it for them because they get their pictures.
I don't know. I think have you ever seen how dexterous they can be with those little those little pictures and their little their little mandibles. I think they could do it anyways.
You couldn't. They couldn't use a bong though, because there they would break it.
I think there's probably a few more problems than that. But yes, that's right, lobsters can't.
I'm trying to imagine where you would hold it.
This is a good an tied drug message. Kids, lobsters can't use bongs? Why should you stay at school? All right, So we are gonna take a quick break, and when we get back, we're gonna talk about the crabs behind a famous disappearance. So since we've talked about eating crustaceans, I think it's only fair to talk about crustaceans eating us. You know, turn around, they're events there. It's fair play. Specifically, the question of what happened to Amelia Earhart? Did she
get eaten by coconut crabs? Question mark.
I don't know. This is one of those things that I've seen floating around on the internet for a while, and I initially just accepted it fully and completely uncritically in my brain. I was like, oh, yeah, that's definitely for sure true, and then haven't really looked any further into at all. So I'm very excited about whatever you're going to say next.
Yes, So, first, who was Amelia Earhart? I say to the zoomers who don't know anything about anything, I'm joking, zoomers, you're great, You're smart.
I never learned anything about Amelia Earhart in any class I ever took in my life.
I mean I learned that she flew planes, but not good enough apparently.
Because uh uh skill issue.
So Amelia Earhart famously went missing on a flight with her navigator, Fred Noonan. That's another thing I think most people imagine it is just Amelia Earhart going missing. Her navigator Fred Noonan, who was also her friend, also went missing on July second, nineteen thirty seven. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery or TIGHAR is a nonprofit full
of extreme aviation nerds or experts. If whatever you want to say obsessed with solving aviation mysteries, including the mystery of Earhart's disappearance, over many many years analysis and collecting evidence. Their current theory is this, so ear Heart and Noonan were unable to find their target, which was Howland Island in the South Pacific, they continued on their planned flight
trajectory and ended up landing or crashing on Nikumuroro Island. There, either ear Heart and Noonan lived as castaways or Nonan may have died, while Earhart lived as a castaway alone. She may have survived living on rain squalls for water and small fish, birds and clams for food. It's assumed
the plane floated off. This is based on things like finding clamshells and like there was some reports that they're like, so, like Navy search planes did actually fly over this island and they saw signs of recent habitation, but they assumed the islands were all inhabited. So they're like, oh, that's not news because like these islands are.
Inhabited, but this is sure just the people that live there.
Right exactly. But Niko Maruro hadn't been inhabited since eighteen ninety two, so that may have been Amelia Earhart, which is really tragic, right, like this near miss, they might they could have found her if they had been a little smarter about knowing which islands were inhabited.
And that was her target, right, like she was trying to get to that island.
No, they were trying to get to Howland island. Oh, that's not her target. Oh. It was only later in nineteen forty that the British found human bones. They only found about thirteen bones. So if that was that's not all of them, that's not all of them. We've got more than that. I forgot how many a human has, but it's much more than that.
It's more than thirteen, much sure, many more than thirteen.
So if that was Earhart or Noonans skeleton, what happened to the rest of the bones? Well, this island is uninhabited by humans, but guess who lives there.
Giant crab ubs A billion giant crabs.
So many giant crabs. So Coconut crabs are massive terrestrial crabs that can grow over ten pounds or four point five kilograms and are over three feet around a meter in diameter. They're big, their claws have an enormous amount of pinch potential. They are ten times that of a human's grip, and they can crush bones or crack open coconuts. They will pretty much eat anything they can get their claws on coconuts, other crabs, birds who are too slow,
and carrion. So say you have the body of a famous aviatrix on an island of unfussy power crabs who eat dead things and can crunch bones. Do I need to do the maths?
Open and shutcase?
Boys, So remember Tighar, the group of extreme aviation nerds who look into aviation mysteries and disappearances. Research by Tighar on coconut crabs and pig carcasses show that they are happy to drag bones off as a snack. Tig Car is very dedicated to solving this mystery. They went to this island brought a bunch of pig carcasses, so.
They're taking a misbuster's approach to the whole thing pretty much.
So, the theory is that your heart died either of the elements or some kind of injury. Probably she wasn't murdered by the crabs. Probably. I've never seen any evidence she was not murdered by the crabs, but I feel like, you've never.
Heard of these crabs attacking a person.
Don't think they would attack a live person. I think you'd have to either be dead or very close to being dead. It's immobile, it yeah, which is terrifying. I really doubt I think she would probably be dead. So now it is a scavenger hunt for crab burrows to see if they can find like a secret stash of Amelia your heart's bones. It's like the world's most gruesome to egg hunt, Like, hey, can we find a crab
burrow and find some bones in there? So, as far as I know, they are still on the hunt for a crab burrow with Amelia earharts the rest of the bones in it, So you know, I'll keep you updated.
I wonder is there like any particular way they would know if it was her bones specifically, or like, yeah, I'm just some bones.
I mean, I think it would basically be like, are these the bones of a woman? Of this? You know? Oh?
Sure?
It's also not necessarily super easy to like figure out whether bones are male or female, but you can usually like size the size of the person. I think is probably the best way to do the items.
I guess like how recent they'd be.
Yeah, that too, you could, like you could definitely date date the bones, not take the bones on the date, but date them.
Up for yourself.
I'm I'm a big fan of your uh your work. Amelia sitting across jaw.
Falls backs at.
Uh, poor poor Amelia Earhart. I I I joke because of course this is about crabs carrying bones, which is
inherently hard not to joke about. But it's just really sad because it's like, you know, it seems very likely that she uh spent some time on this island, probably alone, you know, and died in a way that is really no one deserves to have to go through that where it's just you know, the elements and you know, it's like, I think that's something that happened whenever you like investigate these mysteries, like once you get to the root of it, you're like, you know, this was like a real person,
and yeah, that that's really really upsetting, like you know, yeah, And then, not.
To disparage the air heart, the real die hard Earhart fans out there, the fandom community aheads, I think that it is.
I don't blame people for being intensely curious it's it's a very interesting mystery. I don't think there's anything like you know, I think that in this tig hard group, I think is very very respectful of the fact that this was a human being. But the crabs certainly are not respectful on that fact. They're carrying bones hiding them.
The crabs are like, oh, look, this giant bag of meat just yeah, showed up on our beach.
Like sounds great, crabs, I don't. I'm not saying we should be mean to crabs, but I'm saying if the shoe is on the other, pincer like crabs would not be getting us high before boiling us and eating us.
They might do us the decency of chopping our head off first. That's like a quick snap.
I don't think it'd be quick snap. I think it'd be a series of horrible pinches.
Based on what I know about arthropod like behavior, a lot of like insect like predatory insects and spiders and stuff. Uh, if they're up against something that is going to put up a fight, a lot of times they will go directly for like an immobilizing strike of some kind of first like they'll try to like rip off the head
or snip the neck or something like that. So if you're like able to fight back, they might at least try to like put you out of your misery first, just to make it easier for them to eat you, so that you're not like inconveniencing them while they're doing it.
Counterpoint, I don't recommend you look at a video of a coconut crab eating a bird.
I won't be doing that. I don't think I'm going to be.
Doing It's not great. Yeah, I mean, I think their their pinch strength is just so like good that they don't need to worry too much about something escaping, and thus they're not always the most merciful when it comes to eating birds.
Also, like they're not the they're not the villain in the story, right, Like it's it's unlikely that they like dealt the killing blow or anything like that. Probably didn't like kill her, no, But also like they were just doing their role as like scavengers. Yeah, of course, like their role is to like clean up the ecosystem by like picking up decaying material, so they were kind of doing what they were supposed to be doing. No, it's just a little gruesome.
It's a little gruesome. But I think you know again, they they're just doing They're just doing their stuff. The real villain is probably like Gang Green or bacteria. To be honest, Hubris, sure that too. Well, before we go, we've got to play a little game. Ellen, are you ready for the Mystery animal sound game? Guess who's squawking?
I'm so excited. That's my favorite part.
Every week I kick a mystery animal sound in. You the listener, and you, the guest, try to guess who is making that sound. It can be any animal in the world. So last week's Mystery Animals sound hint was this. She may seem to have a tough exterior, but Betsy here does not like to be bothered.
S hum. It sounds like a beetle of some kind, maybe with a small but like the it sounds like the stridulation of like a bug or like a beetle or something. Is it a beetle? You are absolutely I don't know how granular when you don't get you're right.
This is the stridulation of a beetle. This is a best beetle, aka a Betsy beetle. So congratulations to you and also to Auntie Bee who guessed correctly. There are actually many species of best beetle in North America. Best beetles are unusual among beetles in that they are relatively social and very vocal. So yeah, they will live in
groups in rotting wood. They care for their young. They also have to eat their on poop or the poop of other adult best beetles once it's been broken down by microscopic organisms to fully get the nutritional benefits of their meals. So that's fun. I always love a poop eater.
They're the drunk bachelorette party girls of the beetle world. Unusually social and very vocal. Unusually social and very vocal.
And eating crap. Yes. So they are remarkable because they have a large sound repertoire. Depending on the species, they can have around fourteen distinct type of calls used in various social contexts, from courtship to aggression to feeding. One species even has a post aggression call when they start doing little push ups to indicate that the fight is over, which is adorable. The sound that you just heard is likely a disturbance sound, the protests they make when disturbed.
Just being disturbed by the camera.
On Yeah, like like not not exactly happy to be disturbed so on.
That would be really funny if like every recording of this beetle was just the like basically like the get that microphone away from me sound for me.
Yeah, just just the way that the you know, the look that Ben Affleck has every time the paparazzi takes a photo of them.
Are He's just over it? This is that.
This is the sound fit Affleck make when the paparazzi is like annoying him. So onto this week's mystery animal sound. The hint is this, Please chew with your mouth closed, Bruce, all right? Can you get to you as making that sound?
Huh? That was There was like two components to that sound, and the squeak was a jump scare. It sounds like some kind of rodent to me. Uh, I'm assuming that the Bruce part is a part of the clue, but it's not whatever. It's not connecting any dots in my brain. So it sounds like some type of little squirrel maybe I'm saying, maybe like a ground squirrel.
Interesting, interesting guests, Well, we will find out next week who is making this sound. If you out there think you know, send me your guesses at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com. You can also send me your questions. I occasionally do a listener questions episode and so I love receiving questions from you guys. Ellen, Where can people find you?
I am on I'm most active on TikTok these days, and it's just my name Ellen doot Weather for with my hand on there, where I post a lot of tiktoks about, you know, animal facts and evolution and the fine things that I find interesting. I have two podcasts. One of them is Just the Zoo of Us. It is a podcast where we review animals. It's either me and my husband or Meat and a guest. Katie has been a guest on if you want to listen to us talk about cuckoo wasps. That was really really fun.
That's a great starting point there, and that one is family friendly, so anybody can listen any age. And I have another podcast that I haven't put out an episode on recently because I have been in the middle of moving across the country, but it's gonna start back up here really soon. It's called Spellbound and Gagged and it's about all things weird and gross and with bad vibes. That you still like morbidly want to learn about.
Like crabs eating Amelia at your Heart.
Yes, haven't dedicated a whole episode to that, but I'm sure we will at some point. But Katie's also been a guest on that where we talked about our favorite parasites. So if you wanted to check that out, that's on Spellbound and Gag. That one is not family friendly. We do say cussing.
We hate your families on that one.
No family family is allowed.
I highly recommend both of those podcasts, not just because I've been a guest on them, but because they're great. So do you check them out? And thank you guys so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you want to write a rating or review, I read every single written review and I deeply appreciate every rating. It really does help the podcast. It makes me feel good thanks to the space Cossics, where there's super awesome
song XO. Lumina Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, or guess what more of you listen to your favorite shows. I don't judge you do what you want, you know, carry off Amelia Earharts Films. That's all right, it's not, it's not. Don't do that bad hop box, bad draps, hot box a lobster. There you go. I'm not a lawyer, so don't. This is not legal.
Advice, all right. Definitely only hot box a lobster. If it's legal where you live.
You're right, exactly. Check your local laws. See if it's legal to hot box a lobster. All right, see you next Wednesday.