November 30, 2021 • 45 mins
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is back from Thanksgiving break, so Robert and Joe discuss even more crab science and mythology.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back from the break. We thought the best way
to jump right back in would be to do more crabs.
(00:23):
That's right. We had we'd just recently done a couple
of episodes about crabs eating strange things, and we had
some We had some crab run over anyway, so we thought, well,
what what's what better than to go ahead and just
jump right back in two more crabs. Crab overflow. Did
you happen to eat any crab over the break? Rub?
(00:43):
I went crabbing with my son and my and my
brother in law, um, and they did catch crabs, and
they were excited about them. I ended up not eating
any of the crabs just because I don't know, I
just wasn't feeling it. It's a lot of work, Uh,
you gotta be you gotta want it so um. So
I abstained from the consumption of crabs, but I did
(01:05):
get to observe some crabs. In my experience, I feel
like it's always kind of embarrassing to eat a crab
you're just sitting there working on it, you know. I
guess it's all of the the intense concentration it takes
to crack the pieces and stuff. You're not really following
the conversation at the table very well. It's you're in
your own world. Yeah, I mean, it definitely is one
of those activities that that puts you in the It
(01:28):
feels like you put you in an archaic mindset. You know,
you can imagine yourself, you know, you know, picking apart
a carcass on some sort of primordial shore, uh sort
of a situation. And and therefore you do get in
the zone. You get in the crab zone, right. Um,
But I don't know that. This this year, I wasn't
feeling it, So I did not have any crab, but
(01:49):
I was. I was in New Orleans, uh, and I
did enjoy some some very nice food, uh, some very
nice drinks. I made it over to Latitude once more
and had some some drinks that beach pump berries. Oh
do they do anything with tiki turkey puns for for
this time of year? Well, no, it's they're getting into
the sip in the Santa things. So there were some
Christmas ones I had a Christmas Eve of destruction, which
(02:11):
was very nice. Okay, okay, but we gotta talk crabs.
That people want crabs. Yeah, let's get into crabs. So um,
you know, in our in our most recent episodes on Crabs,
I did dish out a little bit of crab mythology,
and I mentioned how crabs don't often seem to have
central rolls and myths and folklores for various reasons. But
but that doesn't mean they don't have some very fun cameos.
(02:34):
And of course I do hold out hope that there
are some some other crab myths and legends out there
that I just don't know about. And so, as always,
if I'm missing something right in and let us know now.
In The Eight Immortals Cross the Sea, an important Chinese
work of the Ming dynasty, you basically have the story
of these eight powerful humanoid beings using their various powers
(02:56):
to cross the ocean and kind of show off as
their doing it. Okay, I'm trying to is this something
we've talked about on the show before or similar to it,
or or a lot of these beings sort of overlapping
with the animals of the Chinese zodiac. I believe we've
talked about the immortals before, but I don't think we've
really looked at this particular work. Okay uh. And you
(03:18):
might be thinking of the Chinese zodiac origin story about
the the animal race where they have to cross a
great river, so so this is different than that. But basically,
these are these are super beings. They have superpowers, and
so they're showing off as they crossed the ocean, and
crossing the ocean also entails outsmarting and overpowering the Dragon King,
(03:41):
as this is his domain. And we have mentioned the
Dragon King on the show before, but it's said that
the dragon King is served by quote, shrimp soldiers and
crab generals, as this is the sea after all. And
and I believe these these these sort of shrimp soldiers
and crab generals also show up in tales of the
Monkey King when when he encounters the Dragon King or
(04:04):
the Dragon king soldiers. What is it about crabs that
puts them in commander rolls? Don't I mean, you're gonna
put the shrimp in the commander roll? I mean it
seems like a no brainer, right, But the thing is
that in these stories, the shrimp and the crabs are
generally seen as ineffectual. So you have this saying that
emerges from these tales. Any you have references to shrimp
(04:28):
soldiers and crab generals. This has just become become a
way of referring to ineffective soldiers. Uh so I kind
of like that phrase. Okay, So would this be kind
of similar to when people say tin soldiers like t
I N I think so, yeah, I think this would
be this would be a version of that in Mandarin. Now,
there's another Chinese crab myth that I was reading about
(04:50):
that that was really fascinating me, and I wasn't really
able to get quite to the bottom of it, but
it pops up in yang and and Turner's Handbook of
Chinese Mythology. It concerns the Yellow Emperor, and there are
a lot of stories about the Yellow Emper and this
one just happens to involve crabs. A lot of these
emerge from from xin Jung in a non province, and
(05:12):
this one seems to have as well. And in this
particular tale, the Yellow Emperor's attendants find a nice cave
for him to visit in the summer. So this is
just just a really nice cave. It's cool. Uh, you
know some water there. You can rest very comfortable. Except
they're way too many mosquitoes and other unwanted vermin living
in the cave. So the Yellow Emperor just kind of
(05:34):
casually mentions like, geez, I wish someone would drive these
creatures away. Wish somebody would wipe these creatures out so
I could enjoy this cave, because otherwise it's a great
place to spend the summer. So what happens when an
individual of great power casually mentions the desire, Well, oftentimes
u uh, somebody will see an opportunity, and that's what
the crabs living in the cave do. They hear this
(05:55):
and they decide, well, let's do it, so they drive
all the unwanted creature year is out of this wondrous cave.
And as a reward, the Yellow Emperor is said to
have given these crabs an extra set of legs. Quote. Thereafter,
only the crabs in the local pond have tin legs. Wait,
I'm confused. Okay, so do you know anything about how
(06:19):
this connects to to biology, because so crabs are decapods
that should have ten legs, right right right, Yeah, this
is where I really started scratching my head a bit because, yeah,
that decapod crabs are quite literally tin legged crabs, So
what would these other crabs have been? Well, I guess
it seems to get complicated because technically decapods can have
as many as thirty eight appendages and generally the peiopods
(06:44):
or walking appendages or what we very loosely refer to
as legs, and there are five pairs of those. But
at the same time, many common crabs, such as ghost grabs,
they do run around on four pairs of legs and
sometimes actually only employ three pairs and running and the
fifth pair of legs are the claws, which we humans
(07:04):
often go ahead and at least think of his hands, right,
because we can make we can make a little crab
claws with our hands, and so we kind of feel
like those are the crabs hands, right, Yeah, And if
you want to get really technical, I mean, crabs have
all kinds of bilaterally symmetrical appendages that you could imagine
our legs or have evolved from legs at some point,
so you know, crabs have jaw legs in their mouths,
(07:26):
the uh, the maxilla pads that help them eat and
uh and yeah, so so, yeah, it's true. Even though
they will typically have ten legs or leg like appendages,
some of those could be seen as other things. Like
you're saying, you know, a person looking at a crab's
claws as well, those aren't legs, those are hands, or
looking at maybe the swimmer legs says those aren't legs,
(07:47):
those are fins. Yeah. Yeah, because some crabs have paddles
for their their hindmost pair of legs, so you can
at least imagine a scenario in which someone might not
count those as being part of the leg count. But um,
but yeah, I'm not really sure how to exactly interpret
this story that maybe there's something missing in translation. Um,
(08:08):
you know, I looked around at a few papers about
extra leg genetic abnormalities in some crabs, so maybe that's
not out of the question either. Uh, maybe there was
just something particular about the crabs in this cave environment
or or even you know, is it sometimes the case
in accounts like this and legends, Maybe it's not even
describing a crab, it's something else. And the legend comes
(08:30):
down to, you know, describing, why does this thing look
a little different than what we're used to well, because
it did something wonderful and therefore was gifted extra appendages. Okay,
what number of appendages? Does it become not that useful
to have more of them? You know, if you've got
if you've got two arms, having two more arms, that
seems like a real upgrade, right, like goro has got
a real advantage over regular human. But once let's say
(08:54):
you already have uh ten bilaterally symmetrical appendages, if you
get two more, is I mean, is that really an
upgrade or do they just get in the way at
that point? Yeah, I guess this is usually a question
that that evolution natural selection solves over time. Right if
if appendages are not needed while then they're just a
drain on the the economy of the body, and therefore
(09:16):
there's a there's a a possibility they're going to disappear
over time, that they're gonna atrophy. So I don't know.
But anyway, coming back to the story you were telling,
I love that detail about the Yellow Emperor, just sort
of idly saying, oh, I wish someone would get rid
of all these mosquitoes because it kind of reminds me
of the Actually don't know if this is historically solid
(09:38):
but the at least the at least legendary tale of
the death of Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who
when Henry the second supposedly said he was like mad
at him, I guess and said, you know, won't someone
rid me of this meddlesome priest? And uh, it wasn't
given as an order. He was just kind of musing
about how mad he was. But some nights happened overhear
(10:00):
him and they're like, well, okay, I guess we gotta
go kill this guy, and they did. Yeah, it basically
seems to be the same situation here. Now I'm out
of my depth on this, but I also can't help
but wonder maybe part of the idea of the story
is the crab has so many legs anyway, and therefore
it's not much of a reward. Um. I don't know.
(10:20):
It makes me wonder, but I couldn't find out. I
looked around. I couldn't find any other strong sources, you know,
in in English on this. But if anyone out there
has any details about strange crabs in a non province,
crabs from the caves, and crabs with extra limbs right in,
I would love to love to have more clarity on this.
(10:41):
While you were telling the story, I was hit with
a with a tremendously bad pun. Should I say it?
Should I not say it? I don't know. It was
little pinchers have big ears. That's good now, Yeah, it's good. Now.
There are there are other crab tales to be found
in Chinese mythology. For instance, they're fair the old myths
to be found throughout various myth cycles of China among
(11:04):
different ethnic groups about the separation of heaven and Earth. Uh.
This is of course something you see in in other
myth cycles as well. Uh. And in Chinese traditions sometimes
there is a sky tower or sky pillar connecting the two,
and sometimes an animal is to blame for severing this
tower or pillar. And apparently in some tellings it is
(11:24):
a crab that does the snippet. Ah, well, that would
make sense. Yet again, when there's something to be snipped
in a myth, sometimes the crab will fill that gap. Yeah.
Now another one that I was reading about this one.
This is another you know, you know, very old mythological tale,
and it's the story of of woman cho of whom
there are I think three narratives in the Classic of Mountain,
(11:48):
Mountains and Seas, and as Zan Barrel explains in Chinese
Mythology and an Introduction, the written versions of these tales
UH date from the first century b c. E. And
the first century SEE and they tell of a time
during which quote, there are two people in the sea,
but we only meet one woman, Chow, who is strongly
(12:08):
linked with the crab. And it seems like she may
either take on the form of a crab or she
has a crab that is her attendant. And it seems
like this might be a crab of unusual size. And
the reasons for this seemed to include the idea that, okay,
you've got the land and the and you've got the sea,
and you have the crab, which kind of has a
dual nature. Like the crab lives on both. It can
(12:31):
scamper on the beach, but then it can scamper beneath
the waves, it can swim in the water, and so forth. Yeah,
the dual nature is right there in its body. It's
it lives in the ocean, but it walks on its legs.
But then the crab also does another interesting thing. It molts,
it sheds it's it's old shell and grows a new one,
and this was seen as a kind of regeneration that
(12:52):
might allow the crab to live forever. And it was
also associated with cycles of the moon, and of course
the moon has strong can actions to the idea of
immortality in Chinese mythology as well. Oh, that's very interesting
and it makes me wonder why we have commonly adopted
the metaphor of the butterfly as the you know, the
(13:13):
the important image from nature of something going through a
transformation and then uh and then coming coming out something new.
I mean, I guess the difference there is that a
butterfly looks very different than the than the larval stage
that went into the pupa. But uh, but when a
crab comes out is just bigger. So maybe that is
a better metaphor. I don't know. Now. Woman Chow is
(13:35):
also known as Woman Chow corpse corpse deity and uh.
This is connected to drought and the time of the
Ten Sons, the time in Chinese mythology we've mentioned in
the show before, Uh when there are tens sons in
the sky and they are burning up the earth, as
related in the Shanghai Shehan quote Woman Chow corpse was born,
(13:56):
but the tin son scorched her to death. That was
north of the land of Men. She screened her face
with her right hand where the tin suns are up above.
Woman cho lived there on top of the mountain, so
she's she's scorched and burned by the surplus suns, perhaps
seemingly especially her hand because she's shielding her eyes with
that hand. But then she is later reborn in brilliant green,
(14:20):
so she has renewal. She is drought survival. But she
has also connected to these observations of the crab and
the idea that the crab experiences this sort of periodic
renewal as well. Now, another area concerning crabs that I
(14:40):
was looking at kind of comes back to stuff we've
talked about already about the you know, the idea that
the crab design is a winning design, that it's emerged
independently multiple times, and that according to some eventually everything
will become a crab, Right, that's kind of the meme. Yeah,
I think the more modest phrasing is that other crustace
ends that are not necessarily crablike in form have repeatedly
(15:04):
evolved into crab like forms multiple times in the history
of life. Yeah. So earlier this year, Doug Johnson wrote
a fun article for Ours Technica titled on Earth things
evolve into crabs. Could the same be true in space? Uh?
And so that part of this article is the author's
generally summing up some of these ideas we've we've discussed already,
(15:26):
but then he gets into this this issue of alien
life because if we follow the logic that aliens might
be humanoid, because that's what we see emerge as a
dominant intelligent life form on our own world, then we
might go as far as to wonder, well, if crabs
are a popular form on this planet, wouldn't it make
sense to see crab or crab like bodies crab morphs
(15:48):
if you will on alien worlds as well. I want
to believe so. Um Johnson reached out to one of
the authors of the paper I referenced in our previous
crab episode, Joe Woolf, for researcher at Harvard University's Department
of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. The article was how does
a crab become a crustacean? And I have to say
(16:10):
absolutely love this quote from her. This is something she
told to ours technical and in the the the interview
quote there is no clear cut reason why being a
crab is better than not being a crab. But if
you say that too loud, the crabs in the cable
here you and then they'll turn into something else. True.
(16:30):
But I love this this quote because there's an absurdity
to it, obviously, but it also does ring absolutely true
and betrays a deeper understanding. You know, we don't have
an answer in human reason and human language to the
question here, but evolution provides its own answer, and the
answer seems to be the crab form itself um in
various examples. However, Johnson talks to Charles Marshall, director of
(16:55):
the University of California Museum of Paleontology, and Marshall points out,
at all in all, it's a fairly narrow group of
species that have become crab morphs on our planet. Um
that you know that we shouldn't we shouldn't get too
excited about this kind this idea. It's like, well, crabs
are everywhere, so they must be in space. Like there's like,
ultimately it's still a situation where the crab form has
(17:18):
evolved as an answer to specific questions posed by our
natural environment and not say universal questions, right, And I
think the other half of that, uh, the other important
point highlighted by by Marshall's observation here is that it's
not just that the natural environment creates some pressure that
encourages crab like forms, but that it's also certain morphological
(17:42):
starting places that if you're starting with a genome that
codes for a certain kind of body plan, it's easy
to get from there into a crab like form. And
that body plan is like other certain types of especially
marine arthropods, you know, certain crustacean types. I mean like,
for example, you can you can look at that the
(18:03):
hands of various organisms, right, Like to get something like
an extra finger or an extra thumb, it has to
come from somewhere. You know, there has to be a
starting point. It's not just you know, suddenly thumb sort
of a situation exactly so, and maybe you know, another
billion years, we could find that all kinds of mammals
on Earth have evolved thumbs, because it turns out it's
(18:24):
really useful for all kinds of animals. But you're not
going to really find uh, say, crabs, with thumbs, right,
because they don't really have the morphological building blocks to
start with to make thumbs right. But I mean they do.
They do sometimes have access to thumbs, because we do
mention that they will show down on a cadaver. Yeah. Um,
then again I want just to doubt what I just said.
(18:45):
I mean, I guess, depending on how expansive your definition
of thumb is, you could say that the crabs claws
the pinching motion provides some of what a thumb is
good for. Right, That a thumb can help you, you know,
close your hand over an object in order to manipulate it,
obviously with much more dexterity than usually a crab can.
But I can see why we might look at the
(19:05):
crab body and think, well, this might be good in
in space, because we look at the way the crab
moves on land and through water, and it's easy to
extrapolate that toum like a microgravity situation. Right. So, in
the same way that you have some crabs on Earth
who's whose rear most pair of legs has turned into
(19:28):
swimmer legs, a little paddle legs to help them move
through the water, you could imagine a crab whose final
pair of legs has turned into ion thrusters. Well, I
wouldn't go that far, but um, I will say that
add that. I think another aspect of all of this
is that, you know, we we tend to think of
(19:48):
like crab more popping up everywhere and imagine them in
the future and another planets, because we do take a
lot of delight in these organisms. I mean, they're weird,
they're stealthy, they're efficient, they're kind of funny to look at. Uh,
they're amusing to watch in the wild, and of course
we like to eat some of them. Uh, So we
have a vested interest in their existence, and that's always
a great way to wind up as a noted animal
(20:10):
for humans. Is it something that we eat or is
it something that can eat us? And uh, you know
that the crab kind of checks off both boxes with
some caveats on the consumption of humans. That's a very
well observed But I want to come back to crabs
eating strange things, or being attracted to eat strange things
(20:30):
at least, uh, And I wanted to do that by
looking at a study I came across from just this
year looking at hermit crabs. Now we've mentioned hermit crabs
a number of times in this series. Now, hermit crabs
are decapod crustaceans. They're not considered to quote true crabs.
I can't remember if we've said that already, but they
(20:50):
belong to the group and Amura meaning the false crabs,
rather than bracky era, which are supposedly true crabs. But hey,
you know, they're they're close enough. They're crab abs. And
so the study that I was reading about that I
wanted to talk about was actually just published earlier this year,
so in and it was by Jack green Shields, Paula Schrmocker,
(21:11):
and your Hartigie in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin. The
authors here start by noting that a bunch of research
has identified a problem of marine life being in one
way or another, attracted to plastic waste. So we've talked
before about some of the problems with plastic trash in
(21:33):
the ocean. We discussed this somewhat in our interview with
Christine Figner as it regards um, you know, the interactions
between plastic waste and sea turtles. But plastic trash in
the ocean is not just a sort of accidental collision problem, right,
It's not just that a turtle happens to randomly swim
into a bunch of plastic six pack rings that are
(21:54):
floating along on the surface of the water. In many cases,
it appears that animals that live in the ocean are
actively attracted to plastic waste, that it is, it is
getting their attention in one way or another and disrupting
their natural survival behaviors, and there are debates about the
reasons for this. There are, of course, no doubt, different
(22:15):
reasons when it comes to different types of plastic waste
and different animals. So, for example, in some cases, visual
mechanisms have been proposed maybe who knows, maybe a plastic
bag drifting through the water looks like a delectable jellyfish
and so forth. But in other cases the mechanisms can
remain more obscure. And in this study, the authors were
(22:38):
investigating a strange phenomenon in a hermit crab species called
Pagurus bernardis, which is the common hermit crab or the
soldier crab. This is a species that's native to the
Atlantic coast of Europe and along the northern coast of Europe,
basically the coast of Europe, but not really the Mediterranean. Uh. Specifically,
this study I think was looking at the water is
(23:00):
off of the eastern northern coast of England, so off
of a place called robin Hood's Bay in North Yorkshire.
I was actually listening to a radio interview on the
CBC with Paula Shermacher, one of the authors of the study,
and it was addressing the question of why were hermit
crabs chosen for the study, and Shermocher says that hermit
(23:22):
crabs are sort of a good model species to study.
She identified a few reasons. They're small, they're very curious,
and they have quote a very diverse appetite, which I
think goes with a lot of the things we've been
saying so far. That you know, there are plenty of
crabs out there, both true crabs and and crab like animals,
(23:42):
false crabs that that are not super picky when it
comes to food types. They'll take what they can get,
and hermit crabs often appear to fit that bill. They
have a they have diverse diets and appetites. Yeah, I
love that tidbit about hermit crabs, Uh says they they're
they're interested in things that smell like, but they're also
interested in the site of another hermit crab appearing to
(24:04):
eat something, so that that alone is is enough of
a cue for them, right. But so, this research team
was based out of the University of Hull in England,
and what it found was that hermit crabs were attracted
to the smell of a plastic additive known as olamide. Now,
(24:25):
oleamide is an organic compound. It's used as an additive
agent in numerous plastic products. I was digging around trying
to find out more about exactly what it's used for,
and it looks like most often olyamide is used as
a quote slip agent h and so this would be
something that is added to a polymer to reduce the
(24:47):
coefficient of friction on the surface of the material, basically
to make the polymer more slippery. I also saw one
of the authors here I think it was in that
CBC interview, saying that it helps in some ways make
the plastic more malleable. But it seems like the major
use of it from what I could tell, was to
make plastics less grippy, to make them them a little
(25:09):
slicker to the touch. And so you might wonder, well,
why would you want that. Sometimes I think that's a
desirable characteristic of plastic on the consumer side, But it
also looks like slip additives are just important on the
manufacturing side, especially with products involving thin plastic films like
plastic bags and thin plastic food wrappers and packaging and
(25:32):
things like that, and that adding the slip additives helps
make it easier to like extrude the materials and then
wrap them up tightly. But olamide is also a a
natural fatty acid. It's a natural organic compound that you
know you'll find it in our bodies. It apparently has
something to do with the regulation of sleep in in humans,
(25:55):
and so I think has attracted some attention as a
possible sleep aid, though I can't vow much for whether
those UH alleged uses would be valid or not, but
at least olamide naturally seems to play some role in
the regulation of the desire for sleep in the human body.
But again, it's also being used as this additive to
help lubricate our plastics. And it turns out when you
(26:17):
put oleamide into plastics onlyamide can sometimes leach out from
that plastic into the environment. So what happens if you're
a hermit crab and you are crawling along the ocean
floor and you happen to stagger into a big junkyard
of plastic waste that is flooding the water with low
concentrations of oleamide. Well, according to this study, surprisingly, if
(26:42):
you're a hermit crab, that gets you really excited. Uh.
The authors of this research found that exposure to low
concentrations of oleamide dispersed in water will cause an increase
in the respiration rate of hermit crabs, and that this
is a standard bio mark or sign that that indicates
excitement and attraction. Speaking to CBC Radio, Polischermacher again, one
(27:06):
of the authors characterized the hermit crabs reacting to the
oleamide as almost hyperactive. And so the question would be
why why do they get so excited and stirred up
when they smell this plastic additive. Well, basically, it seems
that they're reacting to oleamide the same way they react
when they smell a really exciting food stimulant. So this
(27:30):
research was done in controlled conditions. But if if this
in fact bears out into the natural environment, what you
have to imagine is you've got some piece of very
well lubricated plastic trash that is leaching oleamide into the
sea water, and then a hermit crab smells it, and
then it kind of powers up, gets excited, and heads
toward the food source, only to find an inedible piece
(27:51):
of plastic at the end of its hunt, which obviously
is not great for the hermit crab is because they
should be spending that energy hunting for real food rather
than the plastic that they can't really get nutrition from.
So why would this compound used in polymer manufacturing cause
a hermit crab to react as if it smelled food. Well, again,
(28:13):
I think the answer is not known for sure, but
the authors seem to have a pretty strong suspicion on
that front, which is that olamide is chemically similar to
olaic acid, which is a chemical that is released by
the rotting bodies of dead arthropods. Of course, hermit crabs
are arthropods as well, you know, these these related creatures
(28:34):
with exoskeletons. So a hermit crab may well smell a
plastic food wrapper that's been you know, tossed into the
oceans litter, and then it literally starts heavy breathing at
the thought of the ripe dead body of an arthropod
cousin that that it might be able to feast on.
Because again, hermit crabs are scavengers, and this is what
(28:55):
the authors call an old factory trap. All right, yeah,
well this this makes sense. Yet it smells like shrimp
death or a crab death or or what have you.
They're going to be interested and go over there and
check it out. And even if it's not, I mean,
even if they want you know, didn't actually consume any
of the plastic. Like you said, this is wasted energy.
This is wasted scavenging that that that should be spent
(29:18):
on more lucrative endeavors. Right. So yeah, So to come
back to the original question, that this is one indication
of another way plastic waste in the ocean could be
harmful to wildlife and showing a mechanism of attraction. In
this case, it could attract these hermit crabs by way
of additive leaching, possibly on the false promise of rotting
(29:40):
kin flesh. Now, as to the question of whether the
hermit crabs actually end up eating the plastic, whether they
find it, I'm not sure about that. This study was
just looking at them. Responding to the smell as if
it were food. I don't know whether they would actually
try to get it down the gullet or not. Another
thing that I thought was worth bagging is there was
(30:01):
an interesting case of miscommunication and some early science reporting
about this study because a number of early articles about
this study incorrectly claimed that the that the hermit crabs
were sexually aroused by the smell of the plastic additive.
That is not true. That is not true of hermit crabs.
That seems to have been a miscommunication based I think
(30:23):
out of the university press office where this study came from.
But while this is not true for hermit crabs, it
does appear that olamide is a constituent of the sex
pheromones of some other organisms like cleaner shrimp. So you know,
you can't rule out all possibilities. Maybe there are some
Arthur pods in the ocean that would have some kind
of sexual response to plastic additives. Thank you, thank you.
(30:50):
Now I was looking up more on the relationship between olamide,
oleic acid and decomposition, and uh, I was reading a
few things that actually reminded me of something we've touched
on on the show before, which is the fact that
oleic acid played a role in some classic research on
ants by E. O. Wilson. Robert. I don't know if
(31:12):
this rings a bell for you, but uh so. Back
in the fifties, EO. Wilson, the great entomologist, was studying
harvester ants and their waste disposal behaviors, and so many
ants have tremendous waste disposal capabilities. So ants will sometimes
create a midden in or around their nest, basically a
(31:34):
trash heap where they dump their garbage. And the makeup
of this midden can vary, but it will include everything
from feces, to debris removed during nest construction or other behaviors,
to the dead bodies of fellow ants from the colony.
So you come across a dead ant in the colony,
you want to get that out of there, and so
(31:55):
the ants will take it away to to the midden
or in some cases just away from the nest. But
in other cases to this, this trash heap and the
middens containing the bodies of dead ants have sometimes been
referred to as ant graveyards or ant cemeteries. They are
somewhat creepy to look at. They're like a spider's web
without the web. The process by which social insects remove
(32:18):
dead relatives from their nest is known as necrophoresis, and
that that comes from necro meaning dead and phoresis meaning
carrying or transport. But to bring this back to EO.
Wilson in this somewhat famous story from the history of entomology,
when EO. Wilson was studying this death transportation behavior in
(32:38):
harvester ants in the nineteen fifties, he started to wonder
how the ants could tell that one of their number
had died and needed to be removed. What what was
it that triggered the undertaker behavior in a certain in
a certain subset of ants a certain period after another
one of them had died, And so Wilson he figured
(33:00):
this likely was caused by by some kind of smell,
a pheromone of some kind. In this case, it's something
that would actually come to be known as a necromone.
And he studied a bunch of different compounds that that
could be released by a crushed or decaying dead aunt,
and he eventually found a winner, which was our old
friend from from just a bit earlier, oleic acid. So,
(33:23):
according to this story. He then tried an experiment where
he got a bit of oleic acid and he dabbed
it onto a live harvester ant to see what would happen. Okay,
so this is one of these compounds released when an
aunt is dead. Now an aunt is alive, but it's
got this stuff all over it. And sure enough he
reported that eventually the tainted aunt was grabbed by other
(33:45):
ants and then treated as a dead aunt. So it
was alive and kicking, but it was carried off to
the midden for disposal. So basically he framed an aunt. Yes,
he hung a sign on it saying I am a corpse,
and the other aunts were like, hey, time to time
to get to work. Um Now, I think the happy
ending of the story, if I recall correctly, is that
(34:06):
after the ants spent a while cleaning the oleic acid
off of its exoskeleton, its successfully rejoined the colony. So
it just had to get all this stuff off of it. Yeah.
I um, I remember reading about this or or we're
seeing it covered in one of the documentaries about Wilson. Um.
I think one of the things I love about him
is that, like he clearly has a tremendous amount of
(34:27):
of love for ants, but it's a love that is
based in how they actually function as organisms, more so
than like anthropomorphism, because it's easy to love ants and
you know, think in terms of of armies and you know,
very human models of what they're doing and why they're
doing it. But but Wilson, you know, I wouldn't go
(34:47):
as sup first. Well, I would go as far as
to say that Wilson like speaks and understands their language
because because that that is a predominant area of a
lot of his study. He understands how they communicate and
and and in doing so he has this this understanding
of what they are and you know, how they function. Oh,
I totally agree. That comes through when you hear him
(35:07):
talk about ants. Yeah, that he he loves ants, not
not by anthropomorphizing them, but loves ants as ants. Let
ants be ants. They're really good at it, and it's
really the best at it. I mean, if you actually
part of the problem is if you try to love
ants by anthropomorphizing them, by imagining them as tiny humans,
then their behavior becomes monstrous. Like humans should not be
(35:31):
doing what ants do, but ants should do what ants do.
Ants are great at doing ants. By the way, if
you want more content on ants, we did a series
about ant wars. Uh I guess it was last year,
but you can find those those episodes. I think there
are three or four of them in the archives. But
so anyway, for for these harvester ants, oleic acid seems
(35:52):
to trigger an instinctual behavior that says, hey, this object
is filthy, rotting trash. Maybe you know it's some kind
of garbage it or it's a dead one of you.
So it just needs it needs to be out of here.
Get it out of here, and take it to the midden. Now,
in contrast with the other study with hermit crabs, I
thought this was just funny because in so in these
harvester ants, oleic acid means you know, I am dead,
(36:14):
take me to the graveyard, and in hermit crabs oleic
acid and and possibly ole am I to because it
is chemically similar, causes the reaction of you know, commence
your heavy breathing. The buffet is now open. But in
either case it appears to have something to do with
death and decay. It's just the question of like, does
arthropod death and decay signal to you a sort of
(36:38):
an affection risk, something that's like whatever this is, it's
it's it's not something we want in our colony. We
need to get it out for hygienic purposes, or does
it signal something is potentially delicious and you know you're
not going to miss up a chance to get some lunch.
And apparently the use of oleic acid is a type
of signaling molecule conveying information about death and decay among arthropods.
(37:01):
Doesn't stop there, because I was looking at a study
from two thousand nine published in the journal Evolutionary Biology
by Yao at All called the Ancient Chemistry of Avoiding
Risks of Predation and Disease. Uh. You know, so a
cockroach can smell a dead or crushed cockroach nearby, and
the researchers determined that it was primarily by the presence
(37:24):
of a couple of fatty acids linoleic acid and oleic acid. Again,
like we've been talking about using these, uh, these molecules
as necromane cues, and the authors here separate the responses
to these necromane cues into into two main categories so
that they talk about what we were just talking about.
The the necrophoric behavior of advanced to use social insects
(37:47):
like ants, bees, and termites that will smell oleic acid
or linoleic acid on on a dead member of their
nest and then use that as a behavioral trigger to
get that thing out of the nest or into the
safely away from the activity of the other members of
the nest. Uh. So that's necrophoric behavior. But then there
are plenty of other arthropods like cockroaches apparently, uh these
(38:10):
would be classified as maybe semi social species that practice
necrophobic behavior instead. So that's just avoiding the smell of
death of their own kind. And the authors here we're
looking at the question of how where does this come from?
You know, lots of different arthropods seem to have this
behavioral response to these compounds. And so the authors say, quote,
(38:33):
we hypothesize that necromones are a phylogenetically ancient class of
related signals and predicted that terrestrial isopoda that strongly aggregate
and lack known dispersants would avoid body fluids and corpses
using fatty acid necromones. These again would be things like
like oleic acid or linoleic acid, And so the researchers
(38:56):
here found that indeed, these these isopods were were repelled
by several things, so crushed conspecifics. They were also avoidant
of non crush just intact corpses of their own kind,
and alcohol extracts of the bodies of their own dead.
And then they write quote as predicted, the repellent fraction
(39:16):
contained olaic and linoleic acids, and authentic standards repelled several
isopod species. And then I think they also did some
tests in other organisms, tent caterpillars and fall web worms,
and found that these creatures would would also tend to
when they were siting their nests, they would avoid sites
that smelled like the body fluids of their own con specifics.
(39:39):
And then finally the researchers found that just plain olaic
and linoleic acids were strongly avoided by these creatures. So
there are diverse types of arthropods across, you know, widely
varying categories of life that all seemed to have this
necromone response. They smell oleic acid or linoleic acid, and
(40:01):
that signals to them some kind of get away from
this reaction. And the researchers here traced this back to
aquatic ancestors of all these existing creatures, uh that that
lived probably more than four hundred million years ago, they say,
at least four hundred and twenty million years ago, And
this predates the the divergence of Crustacea and hexapoda. So
(40:24):
modern terrestrial insects and crustaceans, which would include crabs an
ancestor tracing back to before those different categories of life
split off from each other, probably developed this response. Though
of course, at some point along the way some creatures
started reacting to oleic acid as as something to be
choted down on. Wow. So there's you know, there's plenty
(40:46):
to be concerned about with with with our over alliance
on plastic, especially single use plastics. But in this we
see a way that that plastics can end up um
interfering with this, uh, with with the with the olfactory
language of decomposition that is so rooted and established in
(41:07):
the natural world. The hugely widespread chemical language. Yeah, that
affects insects and and and crustaceans, and and they're different
responses to it. But if the researchers in this study
or right, it's at least one of these chemical additives
commonly used in plastic just happens to start saying words
in this ancient language, and that kind of confuses that
(41:30):
could potentially confuse all kinds of organisms. It's kind of
like an alien probe or land on Earth, and it
was it was, you know, just it was carrying out
some sort of you know, function unrelated to human beings.
But it also emitted a signal on an audible signal
uh in English that said half off on electronics, um,
(41:51):
you know, and the people would be then be drawn
to it, and they might be disappointed when they reach
it and find out that it's it's just you know,
terraforming the planet or something and not off drink discount electronics.
So what do you say on Earth that makes some
people think, you know, death and decay, stay away, and
makes other people think delicious? Um, all you can eat buffet.
I mean really, that's you don't have to go much
(42:14):
further than that. The smell of packet French onion soup
mix angels to some devils to others. You know, all right,
all right, you never noticed that, Like some people smell
that and it's just like the eyes go wide. It's delicious.
And then I don't know. Sometimes it just smells like armpits.
Maybe hot dog water would be another example, you know,
you know, depending on like you know, so many things.
(42:36):
It's it's contact. Right. For many people, that's gonna it
smells like, you know, a day at the ballpark. Other
people are gonna be like, that's just that smells like
like sausage meat has been soaking in there and and
you know, in there for a day or so in
a cart. How to hermit crabs react to hot dog water?
I bet well, I bet yeah, I bet they. I
(42:56):
bet they. They're very interested. They want to know more
about at it. All. Right, Well, we're gonna go and
close the uh, the the crab trap on this one,
but but we'll be back in the future, who knows what.
We'll probably be back with more crab content at some point. Uh.
They're probably not for for Thursday. But in the meantime,
we'd love to we'd love to hear from everybody out there.
(43:18):
What are your thoughts on some of the myths and
legends we talked about here, some of the environmental issues,
and of course the behavior of crabs. Um oh, and
on an unrelated note, I also just want to signal out.
Another really fun thing to do in New Orleans that
I did not know about until this previous break. Music
Box Village UM really fun place. It's like a imagine
(43:39):
a like a kind of Junkyard playground environment where everything
is a musical instrument and um and uh and uh, adults, children,
you know whoever, everyone when there is invited to sort
of make sounds on it uh and creates this wonderful
communal experience. They're also performers there. I just had a
great time with I just felt like I should I
(44:01):
should share this. I should share this with the world.
If you're not if you're not familiar with it, I've
never heard of that. Yeah you can. You can look
at up at music Box Village dot com. In the meantime,
if you would like to listen to other episodes of
Stuff to Blow your Mind, you know where to find
us uh Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. It's
anywhere you get your podcasts. You get core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Monday's, artifacts on Wednesdays,
(44:24):
and on Friday's we do weird House Cinema. That's our
time to set aside most serious uh topics and just
talk about a strange film, big things. As always to
our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
just to say hello, you can email us at contact
(44:44):
at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com Stuff to
Blow your Mind. It's production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio with the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back from the break. We thought the best way
to jump right back in would be to do more crabs.
(00:23):
That's right. We had we'd just recently done a couple
of episodes about crabs eating strange things, and we had
some We had some crab run over anyway, so we thought, well,
what what's what better than to go ahead and just
jump right back in two more crabs. Crab overflow. Did
you happen to eat any crab over the break? Rub?
(00:43):
I went crabbing with my son and my and my
brother in law, um, and they did catch crabs, and
they were excited about them. I ended up not eating
any of the crabs just because I don't know, I
just wasn't feeling it. It's a lot of work, Uh,
you gotta be you gotta want it so um. So
I abstained from the consumption of crabs, but I did
(01:05):
get to observe some crabs. In my experience, I feel
like it's always kind of embarrassing to eat a crab
you're just sitting there working on it, you know. I
guess it's all of the the intense concentration it takes
to crack the pieces and stuff. You're not really following
the conversation at the table very well. It's you're in
your own world. Yeah, I mean, it definitely is one
of those activities that that puts you in the It
(01:28):
feels like you put you in an archaic mindset. You know,
you can imagine yourself, you know, you know, picking apart
a carcass on some sort of primordial shore, uh sort
of a situation. And and therefore you do get in
the zone. You get in the crab zone, right. Um,
But I don't know that. This this year, I wasn't
feeling it, So I did not have any crab, but
(01:49):
I was. I was in New Orleans, uh, and I
did enjoy some some very nice food, uh, some very
nice drinks. I made it over to Latitude once more
and had some some drinks that beach pump berries. Oh
do they do anything with tiki turkey puns for for
this time of year? Well, no, it's they're getting into
the sip in the Santa things. So there were some
Christmas ones I had a Christmas Eve of destruction, which
(02:11):
was very nice. Okay, okay, but we gotta talk crabs.
That people want crabs. Yeah, let's get into crabs. So um,
you know, in our in our most recent episodes on Crabs,
I did dish out a little bit of crab mythology,
and I mentioned how crabs don't often seem to have
central rolls and myths and folklores for various reasons. But
but that doesn't mean they don't have some very fun cameos.
(02:34):
And of course I do hold out hope that there
are some some other crab myths and legends out there
that I just don't know about. And so, as always,
if I'm missing something right in and let us know now.
In The Eight Immortals Cross the Sea, an important Chinese
work of the Ming dynasty, you basically have the story
of these eight powerful humanoid beings using their various powers
(02:56):
to cross the ocean and kind of show off as
their doing it. Okay, I'm trying to is this something
we've talked about on the show before or similar to it,
or or a lot of these beings sort of overlapping
with the animals of the Chinese zodiac. I believe we've
talked about the immortals before, but I don't think we've
really looked at this particular work. Okay uh. And you
(03:18):
might be thinking of the Chinese zodiac origin story about
the the animal race where they have to cross a
great river, so so this is different than that. But basically,
these are these are super beings. They have superpowers, and
so they're showing off as they crossed the ocean, and
crossing the ocean also entails outsmarting and overpowering the Dragon King,
(03:41):
as this is his domain. And we have mentioned the
Dragon King on the show before, but it's said that
the dragon King is served by quote, shrimp soldiers and
crab generals, as this is the sea after all. And
and I believe these these these sort of shrimp soldiers
and crab generals also show up in tales of the
Monkey King when when he encounters the Dragon King or
(04:04):
the Dragon king soldiers. What is it about crabs that
puts them in commander rolls? Don't I mean, you're gonna
put the shrimp in the commander roll? I mean it
seems like a no brainer, right, But the thing is
that in these stories, the shrimp and the crabs are
generally seen as ineffectual. So you have this saying that
emerges from these tales. Any you have references to shrimp
(04:28):
soldiers and crab generals. This has just become become a
way of referring to ineffective soldiers. Uh so I kind
of like that phrase. Okay, So would this be kind
of similar to when people say tin soldiers like t
I N I think so, yeah, I think this would
be this would be a version of that in Mandarin. Now,
there's another Chinese crab myth that I was reading about
(04:50):
that that was really fascinating me, and I wasn't really
able to get quite to the bottom of it, but
it pops up in yang and and Turner's Handbook of
Chinese Mythology. It concerns the Yellow Emperor, and there are
a lot of stories about the Yellow Emper and this
one just happens to involve crabs. A lot of these
emerge from from xin Jung in a non province, and
(05:12):
this one seems to have as well. And in this
particular tale, the Yellow Emperor's attendants find a nice cave
for him to visit in the summer. So this is
just just a really nice cave. It's cool. Uh, you
know some water there. You can rest very comfortable. Except
they're way too many mosquitoes and other unwanted vermin living
in the cave. So the Yellow Emperor just kind of
(05:34):
casually mentions like, geez, I wish someone would drive these
creatures away. Wish somebody would wipe these creatures out so
I could enjoy this cave, because otherwise it's a great
place to spend the summer. So what happens when an
individual of great power casually mentions the desire, Well, oftentimes
u uh, somebody will see an opportunity, and that's what
the crabs living in the cave do. They hear this
(05:55):
and they decide, well, let's do it, so they drive
all the unwanted creature year is out of this wondrous cave.
And as a reward, the Yellow Emperor is said to
have given these crabs an extra set of legs. Quote. Thereafter,
only the crabs in the local pond have tin legs. Wait,
I'm confused. Okay, so do you know anything about how
(06:19):
this connects to to biology, because so crabs are decapods
that should have ten legs, right right right, Yeah, this
is where I really started scratching my head a bit because, yeah,
that decapod crabs are quite literally tin legged crabs, So
what would these other crabs have been? Well, I guess
it seems to get complicated because technically decapods can have
as many as thirty eight appendages and generally the peiopods
(06:44):
or walking appendages or what we very loosely refer to
as legs, and there are five pairs of those. But
at the same time, many common crabs, such as ghost grabs,
they do run around on four pairs of legs and
sometimes actually only employ three pairs and running and the
fifth pair of legs are the claws, which we humans
(07:04):
often go ahead and at least think of his hands, right,
because we can make we can make a little crab
claws with our hands, and so we kind of feel
like those are the crabs hands, right, Yeah, And if
you want to get really technical, I mean, crabs have
all kinds of bilaterally symmetrical appendages that you could imagine
our legs or have evolved from legs at some point,
so you know, crabs have jaw legs in their mouths,
(07:26):
the uh, the maxilla pads that help them eat and
uh and yeah, so so, yeah, it's true. Even though
they will typically have ten legs or leg like appendages,
some of those could be seen as other things. Like
you're saying, you know, a person looking at a crab's
claws as well, those aren't legs, those are hands, or
looking at maybe the swimmer legs says those aren't legs,
(07:47):
those are fins. Yeah. Yeah, because some crabs have paddles
for their their hindmost pair of legs, so you can
at least imagine a scenario in which someone might not
count those as being part of the leg count. But um,
but yeah, I'm not really sure how to exactly interpret
this story that maybe there's something missing in translation. Um,
(08:08):
you know, I looked around at a few papers about
extra leg genetic abnormalities in some crabs, so maybe that's
not out of the question either. Uh, maybe there was
just something particular about the crabs in this cave environment
or or even you know, is it sometimes the case
in accounts like this and legends, Maybe it's not even
describing a crab, it's something else. And the legend comes
(08:30):
down to, you know, describing, why does this thing look
a little different than what we're used to well, because
it did something wonderful and therefore was gifted extra appendages. Okay,
what number of appendages? Does it become not that useful
to have more of them? You know, if you've got
if you've got two arms, having two more arms, that
seems like a real upgrade, right, like goro has got
a real advantage over regular human. But once let's say
(08:54):
you already have uh ten bilaterally symmetrical appendages, if you
get two more, is I mean, is that really an
upgrade or do they just get in the way at
that point? Yeah, I guess this is usually a question
that that evolution natural selection solves over time. Right if
if appendages are not needed while then they're just a
drain on the the economy of the body, and therefore
(09:16):
there's a there's a a possibility they're going to disappear
over time, that they're gonna atrophy. So I don't know.
But anyway, coming back to the story you were telling,
I love that detail about the Yellow Emperor, just sort
of idly saying, oh, I wish someone would get rid
of all these mosquitoes because it kind of reminds me
of the Actually don't know if this is historically solid
(09:38):
but the at least the at least legendary tale of
the death of Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who
when Henry the second supposedly said he was like mad
at him, I guess and said, you know, won't someone
rid me of this meddlesome priest? And uh, it wasn't
given as an order. He was just kind of musing
about how mad he was. But some nights happened overhear
(10:00):
him and they're like, well, okay, I guess we gotta
go kill this guy, and they did. Yeah, it basically
seems to be the same situation here. Now I'm out
of my depth on this, but I also can't help
but wonder maybe part of the idea of the story
is the crab has so many legs anyway, and therefore
it's not much of a reward. Um. I don't know.
(10:20):
It makes me wonder, but I couldn't find out. I
looked around. I couldn't find any other strong sources, you know,
in in English on this. But if anyone out there
has any details about strange crabs in a non province,
crabs from the caves, and crabs with extra limbs right in,
I would love to love to have more clarity on this.
(10:41):
While you were telling the story, I was hit with
a with a tremendously bad pun. Should I say it?
Should I not say it? I don't know. It was
little pinchers have big ears. That's good now, Yeah, it's good. Now.
There are there are other crab tales to be found
in Chinese mythology. For instance, they're fair the old myths
to be found throughout various myth cycles of China among
(11:04):
different ethnic groups about the separation of heaven and Earth. Uh.
This is of course something you see in in other
myth cycles as well. Uh. And in Chinese traditions sometimes
there is a sky tower or sky pillar connecting the two,
and sometimes an animal is to blame for severing this
tower or pillar. And apparently in some tellings it is
(11:24):
a crab that does the snippet. Ah, well, that would
make sense. Yet again, when there's something to be snipped
in a myth, sometimes the crab will fill that gap. Yeah.
Now another one that I was reading about this one.
This is another you know, you know, very old mythological tale,
and it's the story of of woman cho of whom
there are I think three narratives in the Classic of Mountain,
(11:48):
Mountains and Seas, and as Zan Barrel explains in Chinese
Mythology and an Introduction, the written versions of these tales
UH date from the first century b c. E. And
the first century SEE and they tell of a time
during which quote, there are two people in the sea,
but we only meet one woman, Chow, who is strongly
(12:08):
linked with the crab. And it seems like she may
either take on the form of a crab or she
has a crab that is her attendant. And it seems
like this might be a crab of unusual size. And
the reasons for this seemed to include the idea that, okay,
you've got the land and the and you've got the sea,
and you have the crab, which kind of has a
dual nature. Like the crab lives on both. It can
(12:31):
scamper on the beach, but then it can scamper beneath
the waves, it can swim in the water, and so forth. Yeah,
the dual nature is right there in its body. It's
it lives in the ocean, but it walks on its legs.
But then the crab also does another interesting thing. It molts,
it sheds it's it's old shell and grows a new one,
and this was seen as a kind of regeneration that
(12:52):
might allow the crab to live forever. And it was
also associated with cycles of the moon, and of course
the moon has strong can actions to the idea of
immortality in Chinese mythology as well. Oh, that's very interesting
and it makes me wonder why we have commonly adopted
the metaphor of the butterfly as the you know, the
(13:13):
the important image from nature of something going through a
transformation and then uh and then coming coming out something new.
I mean, I guess the difference there is that a
butterfly looks very different than the than the larval stage
that went into the pupa. But uh, but when a
crab comes out is just bigger. So maybe that is
a better metaphor. I don't know. Now. Woman Chow is
(13:35):
also known as Woman Chow corpse corpse deity and uh.
This is connected to drought and the time of the
Ten Sons, the time in Chinese mythology we've mentioned in
the show before, Uh when there are tens sons in
the sky and they are burning up the earth, as
related in the Shanghai Shehan quote Woman Chow corpse was born,
(13:56):
but the tin son scorched her to death. That was
north of the land of Men. She screened her face
with her right hand where the tin suns are up above.
Woman cho lived there on top of the mountain, so
she's she's scorched and burned by the surplus suns, perhaps
seemingly especially her hand because she's shielding her eyes with
that hand. But then she is later reborn in brilliant green,
(14:20):
so she has renewal. She is drought survival. But she
has also connected to these observations of the crab and
the idea that the crab experiences this sort of periodic
renewal as well. Now, another area concerning crabs that I
(14:40):
was looking at kind of comes back to stuff we've
talked about already about the you know, the idea that
the crab design is a winning design, that it's emerged
independently multiple times, and that according to some eventually everything
will become a crab, Right, that's kind of the meme. Yeah,
I think the more modest phrasing is that other crustace
ends that are not necessarily crablike in form have repeatedly
(15:04):
evolved into crab like forms multiple times in the history
of life. Yeah. So earlier this year, Doug Johnson wrote
a fun article for Ours Technica titled on Earth things
evolve into crabs. Could the same be true in space? Uh?
And so that part of this article is the author's
generally summing up some of these ideas we've we've discussed already,
(15:26):
but then he gets into this this issue of alien
life because if we follow the logic that aliens might
be humanoid, because that's what we see emerge as a
dominant intelligent life form on our own world, then we
might go as far as to wonder, well, if crabs
are a popular form on this planet, wouldn't it make
sense to see crab or crab like bodies crab morphs
(15:48):
if you will on alien worlds as well. I want
to believe so. Um Johnson reached out to one of
the authors of the paper I referenced in our previous
crab episode, Joe Woolf, for researcher at Harvard University's Department
of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. The article was how does
a crab become a crustacean? And I have to say
(16:10):
absolutely love this quote from her. This is something she
told to ours technical and in the the the interview
quote there is no clear cut reason why being a
crab is better than not being a crab. But if
you say that too loud, the crabs in the cable
here you and then they'll turn into something else. True.
(16:30):
But I love this this quote because there's an absurdity
to it, obviously, but it also does ring absolutely true
and betrays a deeper understanding. You know, we don't have
an answer in human reason and human language to the
question here, but evolution provides its own answer, and the
answer seems to be the crab form itself um in
various examples. However, Johnson talks to Charles Marshall, director of
(16:55):
the University of California Museum of Paleontology, and Marshall points out,
at all in all, it's a fairly narrow group of
species that have become crab morphs on our planet. Um
that you know that we shouldn't we shouldn't get too
excited about this kind this idea. It's like, well, crabs
are everywhere, so they must be in space. Like there's like,
ultimately it's still a situation where the crab form has
(17:18):
evolved as an answer to specific questions posed by our
natural environment and not say universal questions, right, And I
think the other half of that, uh, the other important
point highlighted by by Marshall's observation here is that it's
not just that the natural environment creates some pressure that
encourages crab like forms, but that it's also certain morphological
(17:42):
starting places that if you're starting with a genome that
codes for a certain kind of body plan, it's easy
to get from there into a crab like form. And
that body plan is like other certain types of especially
marine arthropods, you know, certain crustacean types. I mean like,
for example, you can you can look at that the
(18:03):
hands of various organisms, right, Like to get something like
an extra finger or an extra thumb, it has to
come from somewhere. You know, there has to be a
starting point. It's not just you know, suddenly thumb sort
of a situation exactly so, and maybe you know, another
billion years, we could find that all kinds of mammals
on Earth have evolved thumbs, because it turns out it's
(18:24):
really useful for all kinds of animals. But you're not
going to really find uh, say, crabs, with thumbs, right,
because they don't really have the morphological building blocks to
start with to make thumbs right. But I mean they do.
They do sometimes have access to thumbs, because we do
mention that they will show down on a cadaver. Yeah. Um,
then again I want just to doubt what I just said.
(18:45):
I mean, I guess, depending on how expansive your definition
of thumb is, you could say that the crabs claws
the pinching motion provides some of what a thumb is
good for. Right, That a thumb can help you, you know,
close your hand over an object in order to manipulate it,
obviously with much more dexterity than usually a crab can.
But I can see why we might look at the
(19:05):
crab body and think, well, this might be good in
in space, because we look at the way the crab
moves on land and through water, and it's easy to
extrapolate that toum like a microgravity situation. Right. So, in
the same way that you have some crabs on Earth
who's whose rear most pair of legs has turned into
(19:28):
swimmer legs, a little paddle legs to help them move
through the water, you could imagine a crab whose final
pair of legs has turned into ion thrusters. Well, I
wouldn't go that far, but um, I will say that
add that. I think another aspect of all of this
is that, you know, we we tend to think of
(19:48):
like crab more popping up everywhere and imagine them in
the future and another planets, because we do take a
lot of delight in these organisms. I mean, they're weird,
they're stealthy, they're efficient, they're kind of funny to look at. Uh,
they're amusing to watch in the wild, and of course
we like to eat some of them. Uh, So we
have a vested interest in their existence, and that's always
a great way to wind up as a noted animal
(20:10):
for humans. Is it something that we eat or is
it something that can eat us? And uh, you know
that the crab kind of checks off both boxes with
some caveats on the consumption of humans. That's a very
well observed But I want to come back to crabs
eating strange things, or being attracted to eat strange things
(20:30):
at least, uh, And I wanted to do that by
looking at a study I came across from just this
year looking at hermit crabs. Now we've mentioned hermit crabs
a number of times in this series. Now, hermit crabs
are decapod crustaceans. They're not considered to quote true crabs.
I can't remember if we've said that already, but they
(20:50):
belong to the group and Amura meaning the false crabs,
rather than bracky era, which are supposedly true crabs. But hey,
you know, they're they're close enough. They're crab abs. And
so the study that I was reading about that I
wanted to talk about was actually just published earlier this year,
so in and it was by Jack green Shields, Paula Schrmocker,
(21:11):
and your Hartigie in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin. The
authors here start by noting that a bunch of research
has identified a problem of marine life being in one
way or another, attracted to plastic waste. So we've talked
before about some of the problems with plastic trash in
(21:33):
the ocean. We discussed this somewhat in our interview with
Christine Figner as it regards um, you know, the interactions
between plastic waste and sea turtles. But plastic trash in
the ocean is not just a sort of accidental collision problem, right,
It's not just that a turtle happens to randomly swim
into a bunch of plastic six pack rings that are
(21:54):
floating along on the surface of the water. In many cases,
it appears that animals that live in the ocean are
actively attracted to plastic waste, that it is, it is
getting their attention in one way or another and disrupting
their natural survival behaviors, and there are debates about the
reasons for this. There are, of course, no doubt, different
(22:15):
reasons when it comes to different types of plastic waste
and different animals. So, for example, in some cases, visual
mechanisms have been proposed maybe who knows, maybe a plastic
bag drifting through the water looks like a delectable jellyfish
and so forth. But in other cases the mechanisms can
remain more obscure. And in this study, the authors were
(22:38):
investigating a strange phenomenon in a hermit crab species called
Pagurus bernardis, which is the common hermit crab or the
soldier crab. This is a species that's native to the
Atlantic coast of Europe and along the northern coast of Europe,
basically the coast of Europe, but not really the Mediterranean. Uh. Specifically,
this study I think was looking at the water is
(23:00):
off of the eastern northern coast of England, so off
of a place called robin Hood's Bay in North Yorkshire.
I was actually listening to a radio interview on the
CBC with Paula Shermacher, one of the authors of the study,
and it was addressing the question of why were hermit
crabs chosen for the study, and Shermocher says that hermit
(23:22):
crabs are sort of a good model species to study.
She identified a few reasons. They're small, they're very curious,
and they have quote a very diverse appetite, which I
think goes with a lot of the things we've been
saying so far. That you know, there are plenty of
crabs out there, both true crabs and and crab like animals,
(23:42):
false crabs that that are not super picky when it
comes to food types. They'll take what they can get,
and hermit crabs often appear to fit that bill. They
have a they have diverse diets and appetites. Yeah, I
love that tidbit about hermit crabs, Uh says they they're
they're interested in things that smell like, but they're also
interested in the site of another hermit crab appearing to
(24:04):
eat something, so that that alone is is enough of
a cue for them, right. But so, this research team
was based out of the University of Hull in England,
and what it found was that hermit crabs were attracted
to the smell of a plastic additive known as olamide. Now,
(24:25):
oleamide is an organic compound. It's used as an additive
agent in numerous plastic products. I was digging around trying
to find out more about exactly what it's used for,
and it looks like most often olyamide is used as
a quote slip agent h and so this would be
something that is added to a polymer to reduce the
(24:47):
coefficient of friction on the surface of the material, basically
to make the polymer more slippery. I also saw one
of the authors here I think it was in that
CBC interview, saying that it helps in some ways make
the plastic more malleable. But it seems like the major
use of it from what I could tell, was to
make plastics less grippy, to make them them a little
(25:09):
slicker to the touch. And so you might wonder, well,
why would you want that. Sometimes I think that's a
desirable characteristic of plastic on the consumer side, But it
also looks like slip additives are just important on the
manufacturing side, especially with products involving thin plastic films like
plastic bags and thin plastic food wrappers and packaging and
(25:32):
things like that, and that adding the slip additives helps
make it easier to like extrude the materials and then
wrap them up tightly. But olamide is also a a
natural fatty acid. It's a natural organic compound that you
know you'll find it in our bodies. It apparently has
something to do with the regulation of sleep in in humans,
(25:55):
and so I think has attracted some attention as a
possible sleep aid, though I can't vow much for whether
those UH alleged uses would be valid or not, but
at least olamide naturally seems to play some role in
the regulation of the desire for sleep in the human body.
But again, it's also being used as this additive to
help lubricate our plastics. And it turns out when you
(26:17):
put oleamide into plastics onlyamide can sometimes leach out from
that plastic into the environment. So what happens if you're
a hermit crab and you are crawling along the ocean
floor and you happen to stagger into a big junkyard
of plastic waste that is flooding the water with low
concentrations of oleamide. Well, according to this study, surprisingly, if
(26:42):
you're a hermit crab, that gets you really excited. Uh.
The authors of this research found that exposure to low
concentrations of oleamide dispersed in water will cause an increase
in the respiration rate of hermit crabs, and that this
is a standard bio mark or sign that that indicates
excitement and attraction. Speaking to CBC Radio, Polischermacher again, one
(27:06):
of the authors characterized the hermit crabs reacting to the
oleamide as almost hyperactive. And so the question would be
why why do they get so excited and stirred up
when they smell this plastic additive. Well, basically, it seems
that they're reacting to oleamide the same way they react
when they smell a really exciting food stimulant. So this
(27:30):
research was done in controlled conditions. But if if this
in fact bears out into the natural environment, what you
have to imagine is you've got some piece of very
well lubricated plastic trash that is leaching oleamide into the
sea water, and then a hermit crab smells it, and
then it kind of powers up, gets excited, and heads
toward the food source, only to find an inedible piece
(27:51):
of plastic at the end of its hunt, which obviously
is not great for the hermit crab is because they
should be spending that energy hunting for real food rather
than the plastic that they can't really get nutrition from.
So why would this compound used in polymer manufacturing cause
a hermit crab to react as if it smelled food. Well, again,
(28:13):
I think the answer is not known for sure, but
the authors seem to have a pretty strong suspicion on
that front, which is that olamide is chemically similar to
olaic acid, which is a chemical that is released by
the rotting bodies of dead arthropods. Of course, hermit crabs
are arthropods as well, you know, these these related creatures
(28:34):
with exoskeletons. So a hermit crab may well smell a
plastic food wrapper that's been you know, tossed into the
oceans litter, and then it literally starts heavy breathing at
the thought of the ripe dead body of an arthropod
cousin that that it might be able to feast on.
Because again, hermit crabs are scavengers, and this is what
(28:55):
the authors call an old factory trap. All right, yeah,
well this this makes sense. Yet it smells like shrimp
death or a crab death or or what have you.
They're going to be interested and go over there and
check it out. And even if it's not, I mean,
even if they want you know, didn't actually consume any
of the plastic. Like you said, this is wasted energy.
This is wasted scavenging that that that should be spent
(29:18):
on more lucrative endeavors. Right. So yeah, So to come
back to the original question, that this is one indication
of another way plastic waste in the ocean could be
harmful to wildlife and showing a mechanism of attraction. In
this case, it could attract these hermit crabs by way
of additive leaching, possibly on the false promise of rotting
(29:40):
kin flesh. Now, as to the question of whether the
hermit crabs actually end up eating the plastic, whether they
find it, I'm not sure about that. This study was
just looking at them. Responding to the smell as if
it were food. I don't know whether they would actually
try to get it down the gullet or not. Another
thing that I thought was worth bagging is there was
(30:01):
an interesting case of miscommunication and some early science reporting
about this study because a number of early articles about
this study incorrectly claimed that the that the hermit crabs
were sexually aroused by the smell of the plastic additive.
That is not true. That is not true of hermit crabs.
That seems to have been a miscommunication based I think
(30:23):
out of the university press office where this study came from.
But while this is not true for hermit crabs, it
does appear that olamide is a constituent of the sex
pheromones of some other organisms like cleaner shrimp. So you know,
you can't rule out all possibilities. Maybe there are some
Arthur pods in the ocean that would have some kind
of sexual response to plastic additives. Thank you, thank you.
(30:50):
Now I was looking up more on the relationship between olamide,
oleic acid and decomposition, and uh, I was reading a
few things that actually reminded me of something we've touched
on on the show before, which is the fact that
oleic acid played a role in some classic research on
ants by E. O. Wilson. Robert. I don't know if
(31:12):
this rings a bell for you, but uh so. Back
in the fifties, EO. Wilson, the great entomologist, was studying
harvester ants and their waste disposal behaviors, and so many
ants have tremendous waste disposal capabilities. So ants will sometimes
create a midden in or around their nest, basically a
(31:34):
trash heap where they dump their garbage. And the makeup
of this midden can vary, but it will include everything
from feces, to debris removed during nest construction or other behaviors,
to the dead bodies of fellow ants from the colony.
So you come across a dead ant in the colony,
you want to get that out of there, and so
(31:55):
the ants will take it away to to the midden
or in some cases just away from the nest. But
in other cases to this, this trash heap and the
middens containing the bodies of dead ants have sometimes been
referred to as ant graveyards or ant cemeteries. They are
somewhat creepy to look at. They're like a spider's web
without the web. The process by which social insects remove
(32:18):
dead relatives from their nest is known as necrophoresis, and
that that comes from necro meaning dead and phoresis meaning
carrying or transport. But to bring this back to EO.
Wilson in this somewhat famous story from the history of entomology,
when EO. Wilson was studying this death transportation behavior in
(32:38):
harvester ants in the nineteen fifties, he started to wonder
how the ants could tell that one of their number
had died and needed to be removed. What what was
it that triggered the undertaker behavior in a certain in
a certain subset of ants a certain period after another
one of them had died, And so Wilson he figured
(33:00):
this likely was caused by by some kind of smell,
a pheromone of some kind. In this case, it's something
that would actually come to be known as a necromone.
And he studied a bunch of different compounds that that
could be released by a crushed or decaying dead aunt,
and he eventually found a winner, which was our old
friend from from just a bit earlier, oleic acid. So,
(33:23):
according to this story. He then tried an experiment where
he got a bit of oleic acid and he dabbed
it onto a live harvester ant to see what would happen. Okay,
so this is one of these compounds released when an
aunt is dead. Now an aunt is alive, but it's
got this stuff all over it. And sure enough he
reported that eventually the tainted aunt was grabbed by other
(33:45):
ants and then treated as a dead aunt. So it
was alive and kicking, but it was carried off to
the midden for disposal. So basically he framed an aunt. Yes,
he hung a sign on it saying I am a corpse,
and the other aunts were like, hey, time to time
to get to work. Um Now, I think the happy
ending of the story, if I recall correctly, is that
(34:06):
after the ants spent a while cleaning the oleic acid
off of its exoskeleton, its successfully rejoined the colony. So
it just had to get all this stuff off of it. Yeah.
I um, I remember reading about this or or we're
seeing it covered in one of the documentaries about Wilson. Um.
I think one of the things I love about him
is that, like he clearly has a tremendous amount of
(34:27):
of love for ants, but it's a love that is
based in how they actually function as organisms, more so
than like anthropomorphism, because it's easy to love ants and
you know, think in terms of of armies and you know,
very human models of what they're doing and why they're
doing it. But but Wilson, you know, I wouldn't go
(34:47):
as sup first. Well, I would go as far as
to say that Wilson like speaks and understands their language
because because that that is a predominant area of a
lot of his study. He understands how they communicate and
and and in doing so he has this this understanding
of what they are and you know, how they function. Oh,
I totally agree. That comes through when you hear him
(35:07):
talk about ants. Yeah, that he he loves ants, not
not by anthropomorphizing them, but loves ants as ants. Let
ants be ants. They're really good at it, and it's
really the best at it. I mean, if you actually
part of the problem is if you try to love
ants by anthropomorphizing them, by imagining them as tiny humans,
then their behavior becomes monstrous. Like humans should not be
(35:31):
doing what ants do, but ants should do what ants do.
Ants are great at doing ants. By the way, if
you want more content on ants, we did a series
about ant wars. Uh I guess it was last year,
but you can find those those episodes. I think there
are three or four of them in the archives. But
so anyway, for for these harvester ants, oleic acid seems
(35:52):
to trigger an instinctual behavior that says, hey, this object
is filthy, rotting trash. Maybe you know it's some kind
of garbage it or it's a dead one of you.
So it just needs it needs to be out of here.
Get it out of here, and take it to the midden. Now,
in contrast with the other study with hermit crabs, I
thought this was just funny because in so in these
harvester ants, oleic acid means you know, I am dead,
(36:14):
take me to the graveyard, and in hermit crabs oleic
acid and and possibly ole am I to because it
is chemically similar, causes the reaction of you know, commence
your heavy breathing. The buffet is now open. But in
either case it appears to have something to do with
death and decay. It's just the question of like, does
arthropod death and decay signal to you a sort of
(36:38):
an affection risk, something that's like whatever this is, it's
it's it's not something we want in our colony. We
need to get it out for hygienic purposes, or does
it signal something is potentially delicious and you know you're
not going to miss up a chance to get some lunch.
And apparently the use of oleic acid is a type
of signaling molecule conveying information about death and decay among arthropods.
(37:01):
Doesn't stop there, because I was looking at a study
from two thousand nine published in the journal Evolutionary Biology
by Yao at All called the Ancient Chemistry of Avoiding
Risks of Predation and Disease. Uh. You know, so a
cockroach can smell a dead or crushed cockroach nearby, and
the researchers determined that it was primarily by the presence
(37:24):
of a couple of fatty acids linoleic acid and oleic acid. Again,
like we've been talking about using these, uh, these molecules
as necromane cues, and the authors here separate the responses
to these necromane cues into into two main categories so
that they talk about what we were just talking about.
The the necrophoric behavior of advanced to use social insects
(37:47):
like ants, bees, and termites that will smell oleic acid
or linoleic acid on on a dead member of their
nest and then use that as a behavioral trigger to
get that thing out of the nest or into the
safely away from the activity of the other members of
the nest. Uh. So that's necrophoric behavior. But then there
are plenty of other arthropods like cockroaches apparently, uh these
(38:10):
would be classified as maybe semi social species that practice
necrophobic behavior instead. So that's just avoiding the smell of
death of their own kind. And the authors here we're
looking at the question of how where does this come from?
You know, lots of different arthropods seem to have this
behavioral response to these compounds. And so the authors say, quote,
(38:33):
we hypothesize that necromones are a phylogenetically ancient class of
related signals and predicted that terrestrial isopoda that strongly aggregate
and lack known dispersants would avoid body fluids and corpses
using fatty acid necromones. These again would be things like
like oleic acid or linoleic acid, And so the researchers
(38:56):
here found that indeed, these these isopods were were repelled
by several things, so crushed conspecifics. They were also avoidant
of non crush just intact corpses of their own kind,
and alcohol extracts of the bodies of their own dead.
And then they write quote as predicted, the repellent fraction
(39:16):
contained olaic and linoleic acids, and authentic standards repelled several
isopod species. And then I think they also did some
tests in other organisms, tent caterpillars and fall web worms,
and found that these creatures would would also tend to
when they were siting their nests, they would avoid sites
that smelled like the body fluids of their own con specifics.
(39:39):
And then finally the researchers found that just plain olaic
and linoleic acids were strongly avoided by these creatures. So
there are diverse types of arthropods across, you know, widely
varying categories of life that all seemed to have this
necromone response. They smell oleic acid or linoleic acid, and
(40:01):
that signals to them some kind of get away from
this reaction. And the researchers here traced this back to
aquatic ancestors of all these existing creatures, uh that that
lived probably more than four hundred million years ago, they say,
at least four hundred and twenty million years ago, And
this predates the the divergence of Crustacea and hexapoda. So
(40:24):
modern terrestrial insects and crustaceans, which would include crabs an
ancestor tracing back to before those different categories of life
split off from each other, probably developed this response. Though
of course, at some point along the way some creatures
started reacting to oleic acid as as something to be
choted down on. Wow. So there's you know, there's plenty
(40:46):
to be concerned about with with with our over alliance
on plastic, especially single use plastics. But in this we
see a way that that plastics can end up um
interfering with this, uh, with with the with the olfactory
language of decomposition that is so rooted and established in
(41:07):
the natural world. The hugely widespread chemical language. Yeah, that
affects insects and and and crustaceans, and and they're different
responses to it. But if the researchers in this study
or right, it's at least one of these chemical additives
commonly used in plastic just happens to start saying words
in this ancient language, and that kind of confuses that
(41:30):
could potentially confuse all kinds of organisms. It's kind of
like an alien probe or land on Earth, and it
was it was, you know, just it was carrying out
some sort of you know, function unrelated to human beings.
But it also emitted a signal on an audible signal
uh in English that said half off on electronics, um,
(41:51):
you know, and the people would be then be drawn
to it, and they might be disappointed when they reach
it and find out that it's it's just you know,
terraforming the planet or something and not off drink discount electronics.
So what do you say on Earth that makes some
people think, you know, death and decay, stay away, and
makes other people think delicious? Um, all you can eat buffet.
I mean really, that's you don't have to go much
(42:14):
further than that. The smell of packet French onion soup
mix angels to some devils to others. You know, all right,
all right, you never noticed that, Like some people smell
that and it's just like the eyes go wide. It's delicious.
And then I don't know. Sometimes it just smells like armpits.
Maybe hot dog water would be another example, you know,
you know, depending on like you know, so many things.
(42:36):
It's it's contact. Right. For many people, that's gonna it
smells like, you know, a day at the ballpark. Other
people are gonna be like, that's just that smells like
like sausage meat has been soaking in there and and
you know, in there for a day or so in
a cart. How to hermit crabs react to hot dog water?
I bet well, I bet yeah, I bet they. I
(42:56):
bet they. They're very interested. They want to know more
about at it. All. Right, Well, we're gonna go and
close the uh, the the crab trap on this one,
but but we'll be back in the future, who knows what.
We'll probably be back with more crab content at some point. Uh.
They're probably not for for Thursday. But in the meantime,
we'd love to we'd love to hear from everybody out there.
(43:18):
What are your thoughts on some of the myths and
legends we talked about here, some of the environmental issues,
and of course the behavior of crabs. Um oh, and
on an unrelated note, I also just want to signal out.
Another really fun thing to do in New Orleans that
I did not know about until this previous break. Music
Box Village UM really fun place. It's like a imagine
(43:39):
a like a kind of Junkyard playground environment where everything
is a musical instrument and um and uh and uh, adults, children,
you know whoever, everyone when there is invited to sort
of make sounds on it uh and creates this wonderful
communal experience. They're also performers there. I just had a
great time with I just felt like I should I
(44:01):
should share this. I should share this with the world.
If you're not if you're not familiar with it, I've
never heard of that. Yeah you can. You can look
at up at music Box Village dot com. In the meantime,
if you would like to listen to other episodes of
Stuff to Blow your Mind, you know where to find
us uh Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. It's
anywhere you get your podcasts. You get core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Monday's, artifacts on Wednesdays,
(44:24):
and on Friday's we do weird House Cinema. That's our
time to set aside most serious uh topics and just
talk about a strange film, big things. As always to
our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
just to say hello, you can email us at contact
(44:44):
at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com Stuff to
Blow your Mind. It's production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio with the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows,
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