Oh hey, it's your favorite thermiss rusting in an airport, Austin found again, Ali Ward and welcome. You've managed part two of Crabs. You're here. If you've skipped part one, what the fuck are you doing here? Go to part one?
Part one? Go to part one. This is part two. Okay, there's a reason we put these in order, and in part one you're going to learn how a brach urine true crab differs from an animurine non true crab, how some crabs hangout in pods, speculations about Amelia Earhart's fate, the weird history behind Old Bay seasoning, if you should eat the guts of a crab, huge land dwelling hermit crabs that could crush a skull, and what cancers and
cancers have in common, and so much more. So we're now back with part two to address questions from listeners who signed up at patreon dot com slash ologies. It costs one American dollar a month to belong, and you can submit questions before we record, and I might say your name. So thanks patrons, as well as everyone strutting around in your ologies T shirts and such fromologiesmerch dot com, and of course Thank you to everyone who who leaves, reviews,
and subscribes and rates the show. That helps genuinely so much, and it's free to do. Plus I read every single review, so I can read one, and here's one from JGO three four nine, who wrote that, whether driving or dozing off before bed, this podcast has saved my last fighting brain cells from spontaneous combustion. If you read this, understand that all of your blood, sweat and tears do not go unnoticed. I feel very noticed and thank you for that review this week, JG three four nine. My two
brain cells salute yours. Okay, onto Carcinology Part two, So let's crack into all of your questions with a very dedicated, dry wise and wonderful crab expert. Does he hate me? Does he like being interviewed? Listen to the end for his honest assessment of hanging out with me on a Sunday morning at his workplace, the beloved Natural histor Museum of Valley Counties Dungeon of Dungeness and other crabs with researcher, taxonomist,
crustacean husiast, and carcinologist Adam Waller. Okay, let's creep out of our shells with this first one from patron Ali Brown and Ali Myers. Do they have dicks crabs?
Yeah? Did you pluralize it on purpose because they had? Yeah?
Do they have more than one dick?
Yeah? So this is a this is like a thing. Crustaceans in general tend to have paired reproductive structures. So their male crabs have giano pods. And these are a thing that you could think of as fulfilling the same purpose as a penis. They are actually modified pleopods, two of them, and they transfer sperm from the male into the female's gana pores. The female has these two pores where she can receive sperm. And yeah, if you want to imagine, yes, Just for.
The record, Adam did not say that crabs have dicks, because they don't have dicks, but he said, if we want to imagine gona pods as a pair of penises, you're incorrect, but you may do so for the sake of simplicity or just for your own amusement. Also, if you wish that we just had a whole episode about Dix, we do. And philology is linked in the show notes. It's a real study. Okay, onward, upward. Let's move on to some more serious questions. Earl of Gramlekin wants to
know do they have a butthole? As long as we're in that region of the crab, I mean, what does crabpoo look like?
Uh? Crab poo can be a you liquidy, That's what I would say. Yeah, a lot of that. It depends on the crab's diet. Okay, all replace, Olivia, are all your patreons going to be asking?
No?
Okay, this is.
Just up top.
Okay, sorry, you know you just we need to know.
Olivia Alasin wants to know why is their tooth in their stomach? Is that flim flame? Is there a tooth in their stomach? This is a question I never would have thought to ask, because stomach and teeth is just a pair of nightmare words. But patron Alia Meyer's boyfriend, paper Wasp enthusiast and Earl of gramble can have questions about crabs and their salty pie holes and then what lies beyond.
I have a gastric mill. It's not because they need to chew things up, Okay, they need to break things down mechanically.
Yeah, does their mouth collect things? It gets shoved in there and then is it kind of like a crop and a.
Bird similar type of function, but yeah, very different structures.
But yeah, okay, if you need to just know more about this asap, you can see the twenty eleven paper characterization of cellulose and hemicellulose digestion in land crabs with special reference to Chicarsoitia natalis, which explains that the ossicles that form in the gastric mill extend into the lumen of the stomach and are formed into three calcified kiten covered teeth. And I know you're hungry for more on
crab stomach teeth and gastric mills. So, according to the twenty nineteen paper growling from the gut co option of the gastric mill for acoustic communication in ghost crabs. So ghost grabs clatter their little stomach teeth in this growling sound to scare things away ghost crabs. I'm sorry, but that is haunting. But now on the upside, the words decapod, gastric mill have meaning to you, and now you can begin dates with crabs kind of have stomach teeth. How
about that janetosaur? How soft are soft shell crabs? Are they leathery like a leatherback turtle.
So soft shell crabs are I would say softer than a lover back turtle because those have levers pretty tough, right, A molted crab is pretty fragile. It's very fragile. Nowhere near as tough as leather, but maybe a similar type of texture kind of thing going on.
Is a soft shell crab just a recently molted one or is it a completely it's a soft shell all the time.
Oh yeah, so this is this is fun? How how?
Yeah?
Not a different species. Soft shell crabs are just crabs that they are serving to you right after it's molted. Now you're going to ask the question, how do you have soft shell crabs? Because things only molt periodically and it ye's really difficult to catch a crab because we essentially all the crabs that we are caught, right. Yeah, So they do this thing where they catch crabs and they put them into cages and they keep them until
it's time to prevent the molt. Then they molt and then they get turned into shop sheell crabs.
What kind of species are they?
There's several species. I think one of the more popular ones is actually a swimming crab, so something like the blue crab.
I had no idea. I had no idea. So yes, if like me, you've often enjoyed like a spider roll with that crunch and chew of kind of like a bug like texture, you now are burdened with the knowledge that that crab was harvested at its most vulnerable within hours of molting. Are they like the veal of the crab world? That's for you to grapple with philosophically. I get it, I'm right there with you. But what about
crabs with steamy kind of shells? Patrons Merry Long's two year old and first question askers Lizzie R. And John wanted to know about crustacean color schemes. Why do their shells change color when they are when they come in contact with very hot.
Water denaturing of proteins I imagine. Okay, so a lot of the coloration of crustaceans are these pigments that are probably getting denatured as broken apart and may stop being the thing that they are at these higher temperatures, and their colors will change.
So yeah, when a pigment is exposed to heat, the pigment gets separated from a membrane and a bright color can shine through. And for more on the shellfish particular, so you can see the twenty twenty two paper in the journal Physics Today titled why do lobsters change color when cooked? Innovative crystallographic techniques help solve an intriguing scientific
and culinary puzzle. Also speaking of visual feasts, patrons Olivia Eliason, Kate Monker, Naomi Jane, Matt herschel Pi Cameron, and emilyp want to know what they can see through their cute be little peepers. In their words, a lot of people want to know about eyes, what's going on? What do they see with those stock eyes? Kate Tims wants to know why do they look so cute when they're cleaning their little eyestalks? Real question? Are they cleaning or are
they just eating the stuff growing on them? Just nomin on it?
Why can't one thing be two things it?
I'm sure it can be both.
Yeah, I think it can be both. There are definitely situations where I think they're eating it, and there's probably definitely situations where they're much more just concerned with getting it off of their eyes. Visual systems in animals in general are absolutely amazing.
This is adam excited and I love it.
They're complex, or these multifaceted eyes. They don't resolve things the same way that human eyes do for sure.
Yeah, what are they looking at? How do they see it?
I don't think they resolve images as well as we. So it's going to be like a lot of light not light.
Let's take a sideway stroll through a nineteen eighty six Journal of Comparative Physiology article titled Eyes, Eyestalks and the Visual World of semi terrestrial Crabs, which wants you to know that narrow fronted species have their eyes close together on these elongated, vertically oriented eyestalks, and they see in a narrow vertical band. But broad fronted species have their eyes far apart on short eyestalks, and they don't have
this better band of vertical resolution. So the narrow fronted crab folks with the taller eyestalks are known to live in relatively flat terrains, and it may help the critters get better info as to depth with just a single eye at a time. And I also figured i'd just take a trip through the twenty nineteen study Parallel processing of polarization and intensity information in fiddler crab vision from
the Journal of Scientific Advances. Okay, in this set, so yeah, fiddler crabs process polarization and intensity information independently and in parallel and this uses what's called a dipolatic system with two channels of foot of receptors like some insects and
cephalopods have. And this works really well for fiddler crabs because of their mud flat environment where things are like pretty goopy and brown, but polarization information can tell them a lot about the sky and reflections on the mud flat, much more than just contrast. Also, in looking this up, Google kept correcting over and over dipolatic vision and taking me straight to pages about diplomatic missions. And I'm like, yo, i am not here to learn about molotov cocktails, fire bombing,
and embassy Thank you. That's for another day, but right now I need to understand crab is stalks. Can we move on? Is it appropriate to ask? In Nova's words, is eating crab sustainable? Alexander wanted to know if invasive king crabs were a thing.
Could they find the invasive king crabs and make it ethically better for eating them?
Yeah?
That would be lovely one in it is it sustainable to eat crabs? So Monterey Bay Aquarium has a really nice list for sustainable fish options, so that would be a good resource.
I think so many people obviously are like, how do I eat them? So I asked the Monterey Bay Aquarium I via just a search bar on their website, and currently the best buys for sustainability are blue crab from Chesapeake Bay, blue king crab from the Bearing Sea, Golden king crab from the Bearing Sea, and dungeness from the Pacific is a good alternative buy. But just be aware of seasonal concerns and these harmful algal blooms they can happen. But of course I don't know if you're headed to
Russia or Norway or I guess even the UK. Now, help eat all those invasive spiderwalk and king crabs that were introduced in the nineteen sixties that we talked about in part one. Also send me a gee count invite I just I want to help out. Or maybe maybe you could not eat the crabs, you could adopt one of them, kind of like a feral chihuahua. Name it Roger, fall in love with it. Red cedar and ten Bowen's
want to no thoughts on keeping crabs as pets. Hermit crabs are often kept in bad conditions, but the idea of a pet crab is whimsical. They say, you mentioned coconut crabs being kept as pets.
Mm hmm. So the coconut crabs that I'm aware of that are being kept as pets or like they're like just running around the island and oh they're freeways.
They're like outdoor cocina grabs kind.
Of basically, yeah, they're being fed and basing to be happy type of thing. My research focuses on crabs in the wild. We do very minimal work with live specimens to do our research. Yeah, and it's when we do something with them, they're in a nice habitat and they're just there for a little bit. Like, we're not keeping specimens in crabs in cactivity for a very long time.
You're not putting little hats on them and celebrating their birthdays.
Me personally, how do you know those people you know crab parents? Yeah, I know people who have done similar things like that.
Yeah, and you're like to each their own kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, and patrons Olivia Ellison, John McHugh Lovely Bones, Sarah King, Isabelle Newman, twenty three Skiddo and Jude Scout Campbell wanted to know about hermit crab instincts and if you've ever seen the David Attenborough BBC clip of hermit crabs, you will think about it at least once a week for
the rest of your life. And in it, Sir Edinburgh narrates footage of hermit crabs lining up by size and waiting for just the right grouping and moment for a simultaneous shell swap.
They arrange themselves into an orderly queue, the biggest of the front, smallest at the back. They're lining up with one aim to exchange properties.
And that leaves each one with a bigger show to grow into, and though for a moment it leaves their soft little bit vulnerable to the roasting sun and hungry birds. It's better than nine percent interest rates over thirty years in a precarious job market, But how are they better at finding a home without a landlord or a mortgage than we are? So, according to the nineteen ninety study shell exchange in Hawaiian hermit crabs, prior to a shell exchange.
One hermit crab will approach and then wrap on the shell of another like you knock knock, and then the crabs size each other up to see if their shells are a better fit for the other one. And this is called the negotiations model of behavior, as opposed to the aggressor model, in which one crab is forcibly shell jacked.
Now you may be at ease, though I know I was to learn that the negotiations model is more successful than the aggressor model and it all just takes place because one brave initiator approaches and drums on another shell. And speaking of just music to your so listener, Caitlin Morrison shares that their mom taught them that wild hermit crabs will emerge when you humm to them, So I guess use that hot tip. But in terms of having
hermit crabs as pets, it's pretty specific. Their enclosure should be between seventy two and eighty two degrees with a relative humidity between sixty and eighty percent. And hermit crabs in the wild they have lifespans to over a decade, but on average they survive in captivity just a few months. Like my childhood hermit crab rip and I'm sorry, but where do they come from? In case you meet one
and you want to strike up a conversation. So most hermit crabs are sourced from the Caribbean or the Florida Keys or South America, and bad news, they are not farmed. They're usually just captured. They're forced into not happy crabby conditions, and if they don't get sent to pet stores across the world, their shells might just be spray painted very tacky colors and then hawked like souvenirs to some local
tourists with sunburns and beach braids. So if you really want a hermit crab, you can rescue one from Craigslist from people who are like, I'm so over this. Why did I get the cerma crab? I have so many regrets in life like the cermat crab. And you can also find groups like the Hermit Crab Association dot com. They're crab swappers and rescuers, so they match people looking for crabs with people who are looking to get rid of crabs. But what if you encounter any kind of
crab and it tries to shank you? What does one do? So patron j Ramsbald wants to know about the epically relatable crab with a knife jiff, which originated with this twenty fourteen YouTube clip titled Gangster Crab with Knife starring a real life medium sized crab which is backing away from the camera and it's clutching a steak knife, and it sparked this meme called you mess with Crabo, you get a stabo. And I wish I could tell you. I wish I could tell you that knife fielding crabs
are rare, but kind of not. They're kind of around. There was this June twenty twenty two New York Post headline that warned camper awakes to knife carrying killer crab a tent. Lucky to be alive, he says, And the guy said that not the crab. But this article detailed how this man was staying on the uninhabited Comoca Island in Okinawa, Japan, and was woken at two am by a scratching sound outside his tent, and he investigated to discover that his adversary was, yes, a giant crab and yes,
with a knife. Somethings out there.
Hey, bro, hey, bro, hey, bro, I need that knife I'm really curious what you think you're going to do with that.
So it's got to be the shininess, right, the metal knives, I'm thinking No, I looked it up, and crabs have pretty good snooters or rather these chemosensory abilities, and there are weapons that they picked up likelih had residue of meat or rather crabby favorites. So if you're on an uninhabited island, get to wash your knives, watch out for
crab ostabos. But what if you are the crab? This next question was asked by so many people, over fifty people, so I'm just going to shout out the first time question askers like Sam Gretz, Hannahbale, Mariah Shemel, Viauchavores, and in Jenet Moss mccurty's words, will Earth one day just be a big crab party with human crabs and all the other life forms as crabs waving our big claws around? And in first time question asker klin Iglesias words crabification
question mark, let's talk about carsonization. Okay, Adam Weaver wants to know will I too, one day become a crab? So many people want to know evolutionarily if it's flim flam that everything evolves toward crabs. Is this an appropriate question?
It's just a really difficult question, Okay, So I intellectually have a really hard time engage on this as someone who studies crustaceans overall that crabs are towards the end of the evolutionary tree of crustacea. So it's they are of a form that has required the most number of changes to get there, a lot of changes to become more crab like. There are a lot of species that have branched into different ecological niches and do really cool
things where they just eat completely different things. So there's a lot of separation of resources that there can be a lot of species like in the same area. So I know this is probably the question that the Internet wants to know the most about, because I have people ask this question to me in my personal life and I'm just like, h problematic.
So we're not necessarily all turning into crabs. It's just a later form of evolution because it's very specialized. Or rather it's.
No, your listeners really need to be able to see my face right.
Now, I know you look horrified.
Yeah, no one should worry about our evolutionary trajectory. It would require a lot of really difficult changes for us to become crab.
Like okay man as a bummer.
One of the reasons why crabs are so special is that it is really easy for crustaceans in general. Arthropods in general, and crustaceans have done a really amazing job of it is very small evolutionary tweaks can result in very different morphologies and sizes and functionalities in crabs, Like very subtle mutations will make a claw much bigger and have a slightly better shape for eating a particular type
of animal, right, And that's a good evolutionary accident. That makes an advantage, and that's great, and that makes for a new species very quickly. So other things evolving into crabs that aren't like arphopods totally doesn't seem like what's going to happen. Could other arphopods converge on a crab form, Yeah, that could make sense.
So for more on this, you can see the nineteen ninety seven article carconization in the Animura factor fiction Evidence from Adult Morphology and that was published in Contributions to Zoology, and this paper looks at the idea put forward by early nineteen hundreds carcinologist Lancelot Alexander Boradale, who coined the
term carsonization to describe what is essentially convergent evolution. So that's when a strategy for survival is so fitting to an environment that many species just mutations persist into these similar forms. They're like, that works. Every animal that has that mutation seems to do pretty well. And this includes the king crab's evolution to appear more like a bracky urine than its animurine wonky tailed relatives, or the coconut crab losing that hermity need to live inside a snailshell
and just coming on land. And Lancelot Alexander Barndale described this as quote the many attempts of nature to evolve a crab. I have more terrible news though. In order to become crabs as humans, we'd first have to move our skeleton to the out side, and then we'd have to grow one hundred and fifty percent more appendages than what we got. We got to redevelop tails, and then
we got to gradually lose them. Our belly would have to nest touching our stdum, which is honestly a feat only attainable by like a few circosolate performers and maybe some dare devils who have survived motocross accidents. Also, you'd have to pee out of your face. So it's a lot of evolutionary work to become a crab. You could split the diff though, and you could just crab your legs into a big paper mache snailshell, and but even then you'd just be an animuran rather than a true crab.
So you know, I'm not going to judge you, but do what you want. Oh, you need claws, which a lot of patrons are really curious about, such as Lauren Siebert genettasaur Emily Hebert Lovely Bites Hope paper wasp enthusiast about to change their whole self image, and Clark Bennett, who asked, why do some of them have one really
beefy giant claw and then one really tiny claw? And we will address that right after the break, But first we're going to donate to a charity of Adam's choosing, which is the Natural History Museum of La County and Adam's research specifically on fairy shrimp, which are also sea monkeys, which you can hear all about in part one, but that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show.
All right, clause, what's going on on the topic of those big claws like a what is the evolutionary advantage of like a fiddler crab or not necessarily of toward bilateral symmetry. Is it advantageous to put more resources into one big claw set of two medium sized claus?
Hmmm, interesting question, Thank you. So you said evolutionary advantage, Can you define that for me?
Maybe they only really need one claw to defend themselves, so why spend more time making more muscle? Maybe evolutionarily wise, they're like, well, I'm making less. I'm an exoskeleton and I really just need one, So let's have this other one kind of hang out smaller.
So you can actually like rip claws off of a crab and as it molts, it will regenerate that missing appendage very quickly. Do that, don't do that. And there's lots of crabs that survive just fine with like one claw until like it grows back. Crabs that are in fights, they really want to have two claws the second they're in a fight where one crab only has one claw and the other crab has a second claw. They're done.
Oh yeah, so I actually, off the top of my head, couldn't tell you what the purpose of a fiddler crab's massive asymmetrical claws are. Where ones very small, ones like really big. If you made me guess, it's probably a mating display. And in this particular group of animals, apparently maybe bigger is better.
They're very cute. They are cute, okay, but are they cute or are they like hot cute? So you can see the twenty eighteen New York Times piece titled for fiddler Crabs size does matter, which I'm sorry grosses me out because I'm not of sexually attracted to fiddler crabs. But more than half of male fiddler crabs body weight is that one giant claw of just sixty five percent of their body weight is just that one claw. Huh. The fiddler crab females, they dig that, they love it.
And in these studies conducted by a Ruskin University team, they found that the faster they used robot crabs for this, but they found that the faster the males wave that little sex hammer around the hotter they appear to the females, and this New York Times article explains that quote the wave means come hither. I will dig a burrow for us and our eggs, and we will populate the mudflats
with fiddler crabs. Uncountable nice. Oh, the bigger the crab too, the longer it survived, which bodes well for your uncountable babies. How do you break the ice? What do you do well? Like bumble or parties with a lot of engineers. The lady usually makes the first move. She sees something she likes, she approaches, and then she tickles the crab on one side of its body, and then things just heat up
from there. Speaking of which, Curly Fry and Anna Fraser want to know if climate change is affecting crabs temperature wise.
I have to believe that climate change is affecting everything. I have not seen a ton of data where people are tracking, like rain shifts, for instance, which would be a kind of very plausible thing that would happen with crab populations, for instance, like oceans getting warmer. Here, I'm going to move in a direction where water is a better temperature for me. Right, That is totally a thing that I would expect to happen.
Adam says that likely dissolved oxygen levels decrease with higher temperatures, and that drop and dissolved oxygen can also result from better conditions for these huge algal blooms that eat up a lot of the oxygen and effect of their marine life. And one crab that's been threatened by habitat loss and
fishing is the horseshoe crab. But Amanda, Keegan Newman, Rick ty Shane, and Ryan Marry the grapefruit to Maris Mish the fish, Jen McGilvray, Jane Nelson, first time question asker Kili Shavez, and Isabelle Newman in Isabel's word says, I need to know more about horseshoe crabs. Are they even crabs? They're so wacky looking. Kegan Newman asked, I know horseshoe crabs aren't true crabs. Why aren't they? And also do all crabs have blue blood like a horseshoe crab? Gonna guess no, No, dorabs.
Have blood, No don't. They don't really have what we consider blood. They have other fluids that are serve a similar purpose. It's not blue. Those fluids can have several colors in true crabs, in horseshoe crabs, which your patron crushly points out, it's not true crab that blue colors from the copper based blood that they have, which I think also isn't really blood if you technically right.
So no, not crabs at all. In fact, they're more closely related to scorpions. And yeah, we do have a scorpiology episode we're going to link in the Showwes. But this horseshoe blue blood is called hemolymph, and it contains
hemocyanin and it's dazzling. It looks like a melted blue raspberry slurpee or a Gatorade frost glacier freeze, which is kind of apt because not only have these four hundred and fifty million year old creatures survived dinosaur killing asteroids and stuff and several ice ages, but they might also survive the glaciers that are melting might not phase them, And I'd say, we'll see, but honestly, we're probably not going to be around for that, but maybe neither will they.
So many populations around the world of horseshoe crabs are stable, but some are listed as vulnerable because these slow moving horseshoe crabs make pretty good fishing bait and they're harvested for medical research. Excuse me, Okay, So, horseshoe crab blood has bonkers antibacterial abilities, and it contains something called limitless amoebacite lysate or LAL, and it helps biomedical researchers test
if vaccine batches are tainted by bacteria. It's one of the only substances that can do that, and they're even trying to synthesize it with somecess, but mostly they're still just using horseshoe crab blood. They're blood. They're thrown back in the ocean, but they don't always survive the blood letting though, which is another threat to their survival. So how do you repay horseshoe crabs for all of their
vaccination help? Well, if you see any alive horseshoe crabs and they're flipped upside down, that is a cause of death for up to ten percent of them. So you can gently approach one and you can pick up a side of the shell and flip them back, and if you can, you can put them back safely into the water. Don't grab them by the tails though, or because they don't like that. They're gonna shit talk you forever, like another four hundred and fifty million years.
So yeah, totally different systems.
Does it piss you off that they're called horseshoe crabs? Be honest, it doesn't piss you off. No, Okay, you just you're like, I'll let that one slip because they're so old.
Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure why.
We'll let it go. Yeah, Kanye Kannie Boboni wants to know if there's ever been a species of giant crab like horse sized crabs.
Well, like right now, mm hmm outside of my office is like a twelve foot wide crab. So yeah, what's that? That's that Japanese giant spots.
Oh my god, let's pop back to the tour of the museum's crab basement to see a spider crab, shall we? Oh my gosh, how a spider crab?
Yeah, so that's definitely the biggest, the Japanese giant spider crab. The smallest will be a penafid, which is a common name for that is pea crab. If you guys like oysters, A great game that you can play is you can every time you get a fresh oyster serve tea, you can look for a small crab that's inside of it.
If you see a what you think is a small crab, there's almost certainly even smaller crab, which is the male, which has to live inside of the same animal as the female, and then they reproduce and then they disperse very young. But I actually know an amazing carcinologist, Daryl Felder, who discovered a new species of pea crab. At dinner, was about to enjoy an oyster. It was in his mouth, he felt something, spit it out, saw that it was And he's one of a handful of people in the world.
He can just look at him best a new species. Oh my god, I guess I have to go talk to the chef now and find out where he sourced his oysters from, because I need that for my paper. Also, I need to find the mail that's somewhere in missing that I just spit out of my mouth.
So are they crunchy?
I've never so. I actually found some for the first time. I found them in oysters from a very upscale, well known local grocer Okay, and I had been looking for more than a decade for these things inside of oysters. And I finally found a bunch inside of a couple of dozen I had bought for a party. Oh my god. But because I saw them, I preserved him.
For science and I did not eat them, of course.
Also, the species I found was a super common species. The species I found is almost the size of a nickel. Yeah, and the smallest one is smaller than a grain of rice.
Holy smokes.
Yeah.
I love that. There are some people like hoping to get a pearl and you're like, hope there's a crab in here. Hope there's a pair of crabs in here, honeymoony.
I would be much richer if I was wishing for pearls, but now I'm wishing for crabs. So yeah, smallest crab, biggest crab.
A few people want to know how you feel about YETI crabs, which are not true crabs. They are animurans with that different tail, and they look like big hermit crabs. They look a little lobstery. They're in fact, squat lobsters. And two things about them are remarkable. So they have this cream colored shell and they're covered with this silky, seemingly sun kissed hair like bristles called SETI, which makes them look kind of like hard shell golden retriever puppies
with claws. And they were just discovered in two thousand and five, meaning that as they made their grand debut into the frenzy of public consciousness, it was to the tune of the Garden State soundtrack. Also, their scientific name means hairy goddess kwahrsuta naturally. Elaine Wong first time question asker, and Jemma needed Adam's thoughts on them.
I think they're a poor man's Hasselhoff crab, which was another close related crab that was named I think after a Yetti crab that they decided to name Hasselhoff.
Crab after the Hasselhoff after.
David Hasselhoff because it had a hairy chest. Nice.
Are those hairs actual hairs? They're SETI? What are they?
They are? C?
D ye? Sorry?
Yeah. The one of the last forms of le elitism is anyone trying to pronounce or correct anyone else's pronunciation when they know what they're talking about. I'm like, yeah, I know what you're talking about. I'm not gonna make you say it the same way I say it.
How do you feel? Abut Jeff and Giff do you want to get upset you're gonna say Giff.
No, I'm gonna say Jiff.
I say Jeff.
Do you know why do you say Jeff?
Because he says it's pronounced jeff exactly.
So that's the reason why. Yes, Like, are you going to tell someone how to pronounce their name exactly? Yeah? I mean do you want to like look at them and say, you know, you did a really bad job of spelling your own name, but this is you want to pronounce it that way? Okay? Good?
Yes, if I feel like you have to respect how people want themselves to be represented. So yes, thank you, I say Jeff, And I get ship for it. Yeah, because we get it for everything. This next question about hitchhikers of the crotch was asked by Jenna Orshiro Storm and Mish the Fish. Does the STI even look like a crab? Body lice named crabs? Does that piss you off?
Does not piss me off. It's a source of a lot of really fun jokes, which I think car adorable. This is where I'm going to say, mercifully, I have no idea what they look like. God, And if you've made me guess you should probably talk to I don't know what ver miteses.
I think they're mites. Yeah, okay, so yeah, though they have these front little pinchers like crabs, these underpants roommates are actually insects, and despite everyone's assumption, including mine, they're not even mites. They're technically in the class insecta not a rechnita, and I don't know as so long as we're learning things. I'd also like you to know that, despite being called thyrus pubis, uh, they can infect your
eyelashes if you get too close to other areas. I also want you to know that my computer's search history is an absolute shit show. A few people wanted to know about their walk Do oil crabs skitter sideways?
Scuttle scuttle skitter?
Alissa Gregory said skitter? Is it scuttle.
Skittle scuttling or crab walking? H? Yeah? Do they all? Some of them do it more than others. I think it's a very easy walking gate for something that has legs of that particular orientation and structure. So a lot of them do it, but I don't think all of them do it. Now, I think they can all do it. I don't know if all of them use it as their primary mode of locomotion.
I mean some of them swim. That was new to me.
Yeah, but swimming ones awsome will crawl around.
God, they're so cute. Yeah kay, Gatinsby wants to know what is your personal favorite crab and why?
Oh, personal favorite crab and why why does that have to be crabs?
I know, I know you've got others. Very shrimper up there.
Oh, I have so many things. I honestly really love these peanut favorite crabs because they're just like adorable, small microscopic crabs living inside of oysters and other animals and like inside of burrows, and they're just really fun and they do a cute thing where they're always in pairs, so like they're like, are always made it and find one, you'll find it's made.
Got a little buddy. Yeah that's very good. That's very cute. Okay, So some folks need to know about mass media crab representation, such as Serapiet and Stephanie schmid Falcon And they both asked about this internet famous Howie the Crab, which is this Omaha based rainbow crab. It was purchased from a pet store and it has lived to the elderly age of six, and Howie wears tiny hats. Howie's owner says
the crab can use sign language when she's hungry. I think it all sounds great, but Howie's lifestyle does have its critics. Others say, you know what, if a rainbow crab is going to end up at a pet store and then is lovingly cared for past its optimal lifespan and not being eaten but becoming rich and famous, that's as good as it gets for the crab. But given that Adam is, as we've discussed, not an extremely online person, I lobbed some general media questions at him from Amanda
and average PI. Have you ever been watching a movie and there's a crab in it and you're like, they got that right or wrong? Are there ever crabs in movies?
I don't watch enough movies, unfortunately.
What about Sebastian, the Crab and The Little Mermaid?
That's what I was thinking. I was trying to remember back. I haven't seen any of the recent ones, and the last time I saw The Little Mermaid it was before I was a carcinologist, so I had far fewer opinions on what Sebastian should be doing.
I wonder how many legsies even got.
I really hope he has the right number.
Okay, So Sebastian from The Little Mermaid full name Horatio Thelonias Ignatius, crustaceous. Sebastian is supposed to be a tropical ghost crab. I read this in an article in the publication screen Rant, Sit Down Friends. I got news of astri only has eight legs, and I even found some original character sketches that were sold at auction in December of twenty twenty three. Yeah, eight legs on that, But you know what, let's let it go water under the bridge,
under the sea. Oh, speaking of France, though, what sucks about your job the most? Something's got to suck other than getting interviewed on a Sunday morning by some crackpot with questions that are not related to crowns.
It's really hard. There are so many new species that oftentimes you'll be looking at something and it's just really hard to know if it's a new species or one of the many thousands, tens of thousands that we already know about. We were talking about with smelly crab smell. I I'm just a little crazy, and I'll shove my hands and crab jars all the time, and I get very self conscious afterwards because I did it out of the necessity desperation, and I feel like I small like crabs.
But I think I exclusively hang out with kind people who have never said a thing about it.
So you don't what smelly crabs to me?
Okay, that's good. Yeah, the fear of small light crabs, that's like the worst part of my job. It's not even that I'm sure that I smell like crabs, but it's the fear that I small like crabs.
Has your partner ever told you smell it a little crabby?
No?
Which this is why I'm I'm only involved with the kindest, sweetest people in my life, so I'm really lucky.
Would it be a kindness for them to tell you that you do smell like crabs? Or is it better to not know?
Oh? I do believe that it would be a kindness to tell me so I could do something about it.
Okay, what's the best part about your job?
The best part about my job is the absolutely amazing amount of diversity that happens with crustaceans in general. Just they have solved so many different problems, so many different ways. They live in such extreme environments. I have studied roly pulleys like in my actual backyard, that are like terrestrial species. I have studied crabs that are walking around Costa Rica
on land crabs. I have studied marine species. I've studied that hydrofermal vent or gas vent shrimp, which is really cool and.
You don't eat a lot of crab.
I have probably eaten part of five crabs in my life.
Oh wow, Yeah, how do you feel about imitation crap being called crab with a K?
I grew up a vegetarian as well. I was vegetarian and kosher like cereal, So I eat a lot of crab with a K and meat. I'm okay with it.
Actually, ps, just so you know, crab with a K is actually this string cheese like stick of Alaskan pollock wheat protein, egg binder, and this magical substance called transglutaminise, which is an enzyme that has been called meat glue. Grab with a K. Okay, any of the other flim flame about crabs that you want to get on a soapbox about any other scientific flim flam. This is your chance you get a megaphone.
So basically, I would say my soapbox is right now, there are so many marine species that need to be studied. We're in this climate crisis right and I'm part of an institution that wants to study them and to preserve
a record of the biological history of Earth. I'm just really all about using new molcola our tools, so DNA kind of like we were talking about with the cinniment toast shrimp guy, Like these new tools that will allow us to study biodiversity and animal using genetics instead of the morphology of crabs and getting as much representation of
all the biodiversity in the world captured. Right now, we're using technology that's called environmental DNA where we will sample whole environments by taking a scoop of water then filtering out all the free floating DNA essentially that's in that sample, and then that will tell you the biodiversity that has been within I don't know a mile of that one spot. Like, we need big data to answer these questions about climate change and range extensions, and right now we don't have that.
And we're doing that for California, but we don't have money to do all the things that live on land, and we don't have all the money to do all the things that live in a deep ocean that we barely know anything about. So that's my soapbox.
Do you think the world needs more carcinologists to help with this?
We definitely do right now in this transitionary stage. The biodiversity research I'm talking about that uses these different tools is going to discover the ninety percent of biodiversity that is so cryptic to us that we don't even know it is this. Yeah, we need more people studying crabs.
So if someone has a love of crabs, think about it. Think about becoming a crab scientist. Maybe.
Yeah, if you want to be poor, that'd be a great nature. That'd be a great way to be poor. But have all of crab you want to eat. I guess, Oh, do.
You get crabby about studying crabs? Are you a crabby person?
You should interview my coworkers. I'm either. I think that I react to the energy that is presented to me. So I'm saying to be a little I can be a little krabby.
I think, Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm so annoying.
No, you're not. I'm just like all sugar and spice all the time.
That's okay, you're a multi dimensional human being.
Yes, we all are.
Thanks for doing this.
Thank you for having me. It's been actually really fun answering your questions. Really.
Yeah, I thought you hated me. I was like, oh no, this guy's so cool.
He hates me, so I besigning all that stuff. This is it's just who I am. I give off his energy. But yeah, no, this is all right. Literally, this is out of enjoyable conversations. This is like a like an eight.
That's amazing.
Yeah, I know, so like that's very enjoyable.
Okay.
I was like, oh no, no, no, I'm never gonna have a crab friend.
No, no, this is great.
You're a patient, patient human being. So ask crab questions to crab people, because even if they seem like they'd rather plunge themselves into Arctic waters, they might actually just be shy and having a good time. So, Adam Wall, you're wonderful. I loved this and I'd invite you to game night if I ever had one. You're a good one. And Adam's Twitter is linked in the show notes, where he just sometimes peaks from his shell to share some
carcinological research. But we'll also link the lovely Natural History Museum of La County and we're at ologies on Twitter, Blue Sky and Instagram. I'm at ali Ward with one l across the board. Usmologies are shorter, kid friendly versions of classic episodes and you can download them all for free at aliward dot com. Slash smologies, which will be
linked in the show notes. We have so much ologies merch at ologiesmarch dot com and if you hashtag your pictures ologies merch then we'll repost you on our Instagram. I love seeing it out in the wild. Aaron Talbert Adminsiologies podcast Facebook group. Susan Hale is our overlord managing director. Thank God. Kelly R. Dwyer makes the website and can make yours as well. Aveline Malick makes our professional transcripts. Happy Belated to the truly astounding doctor Sarah MacNulty, who
founded Skype a scientist. You can listen to her Toothology episode to learn all about squid as well as her return for Toothological Lotology About squid games but absolutely not the TV show. We talk about actual games that Sevla pods play, and if you're feeling up to it, send a donation to skypeascientist dot com to help get more experts in classrooms for free. We will link them in the show notes. Even if it's just five or ten bucks. You can help change a kid's life. And our life
changing lead editor is Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. And if you stick around until the end of the episode, I tell you a secret. And this week, as long as we're talking crabs. When I was a kid, my family would sometimes drive like two and a half hours to the beach, all loaded up in a station wagon, listening to cassette tapes of Prince and Madonna. You know who had come with us is Aaron Talbert, admin of the Ologies podcast Facebook group, because I've known her since
we were four. But anyway, once we went to Ocean Beach, I think at San Francisco, and my sister Janelle and I marveled at these dome backed sand crabs that were hopping around the show or and so we put a few in an empty sandwich bag that still smelled like salami, and we took a few of them home as pets and found out pretty quickly the hard way that that's not feasible or good for the crabs, or something that anyone wanted to smell in a hot car in the summer.
So whilst on vacation, just leave the crabs to do their crabby business unless it's a horseshoe non crab, and then you can go ahead and help them when they're flipping out. Okay, everyone be good to each other.
Bye bye, pacadermatology, homology, crypto zoology, lithology and technology, meteorology and patology, apology, ceiology, selenology.
Well home, yeah,