July 10, 2024 • 45 mins
Did you know our crabs get burped? Now you do! It's time to burp the crabs and also listen to Aquarist Melissa talk about the Aquarium's spider crabs.
Thank you for another fun season of Aquarium of the Podcific! Follow @podcific on Instagram for updates and more. We'll sea you soon!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Hi, I'm Erin Lundy.
And I'm Madeline Walden and this is Aquarium of the Podcific, a podcast brought to you by Aquarium of the Podcific, Southern California's largest aquarium. Join
us as we learn alongside the experts in animal care, conservation, and more. Welcome back. Welcome back
to the last episode of the season.
(00:26):
That's season two is over and do is complete. But first before season two is over. Let's learn probably
not over yet. Well get the end of this.
It'll be over, it'll be over. But
before it's over, we are going to learn about crabs because we actually had a listener request an episode specifically about crabs so that she could share it with one of our friends who loves crabs, and that was just the
(00:49):
sweetest thing we love. It made us so happy. We're like, Yeah, we're gonna do that immediately scrapped. Everything
else. We're recording a crab
Crab episode right now. And to be fair,
I think that's what we always wanted. Anyway, he doesn't want to learn about crabs.
I learned so much. We just finished recording. I learned so much about crowds. Yeah,
we just talked to Melissa Fisher, who's one of our Aquarius and our temper gallery. And she has spent quite a bit of time with our Japanese spider crabs. And so our episode is focused specifically on this one species. But we learn about crab raves about crabs potentially summoning something from the underworld. And what their checkups look like. Crab facelift like just the coolest episode and the really interesting one more dynamic animals than I ever imagined.
(01:31):
Crab. Yeah,
the personalities,
they're decorating things. They're getting jazzed up getting a facelift surgery. It's just it's a good time.
It's a really cool episode. But thank you guys so much for joining us for another season and pod cific. We had a blast making it for you. And we'll be back for season three, soon ish.
And in season three, hopefully we will have resolved some of our recording studio issues. So we will have more consistent episodes that sound more consistent as it sounds a little bit better. We're getting new equipment, we're sort of making sure everything is Samak top notch for you guys. So we really appreciate everyone hanging tight and listening to us talk about our animals. It's been the best time ever.
(02:10):
It's really has been a blast. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you Erin for
CO hosting with me. And no thanks to Madeline for zero thanks, literally does all the editing. And thanks to thanks to all thanks to me. Now it's been it's been wonderful. And thanks to everyone who has been supporting the podcast the whole way through. And for everyone who's been on this season, we've had some really great interviews too. And
(02:35):
if you have a suggestion or a request for a future episode, definitely reach out you can email the aquarium at aquarium of pacific@lbaop.org or you can always message us on either any social media account truly, it'll get to me that I'm the one I'm the one responding to you most of the time, but you can reach out there and we're at aquarium Pacific pretty much everywhere on the internet and we also have a podcast specific Instagram it's at pod cific so check it out. Give us a follow on Instagram and
(03:04):
Madeline we'll see if there's a message you sent and we may even record an entire episode just because you asked us about your favorite animal or species, which is what we're doing today.
So do that and learn about crabs and learn right now. All right, we'll see you next season
(03:25):
today we are joined by Melissa Fisher who's one of our Clarus in our template gallery Melissa How are you doing great
guys are you good? Pretty good. Let's
temperate gallery. Can you explain what that so our audience our
timber gallery is what we call any of our cold water exhibits. So that includes our northern Pacific Gallery, which is going to range a little bit colder to our local Southern California gallery which is a little bit warmer, but anything pretty much under 70 degrees is what we cover as
(03:51):
cold that is I think it's funny that SoCal I mean because it is considered a temporary water habitat. Our waters cold it's pretty cool. It's pretty misunderstood that I would think that you know, people think they go to the beach here and it's warm it's cold every beach
I go to SoCal Yeah, it's pretty cool. I was just diving the other day and it was like 50 degrees so I got
(04:11):
in the middle of summer. Yeah, July is 50 degrees. I could never I grew up in Hawaii and so I'm used to water being like 72 And if it's any lower than that freezing water please yeah, I'll you will go in the ocean of it is a bath and nothing else.
Amazing. Well, today we are going to talk about crabs, which we're really excited about because it's our first listener requested episode and Melissa has specifically worked with our spider crabs here at the Aquarium which is a very iconic species. I feel like
(04:41):
yeah, if you look at our Japanese spider crabs, they are enormous and they are always doing something sort of silly in there. And today even notice they have new furniture in there. So do they really do
what's new in there?
We added a old whale falls simulating We had in a previous gallery like six plus years ago. So I think
(05:03):
that was, like part of that habitat. A long time one to one times. Yes. They
kind of get set. Yeah, it's bad. Wow, this
is this is breaking news. Yes. This is huge news pods a big update. That's so cool. I'm excited to see I haven't seen it
yet. Yeah, it seems like they're enjoying it. So you know, crawling on it a lot.
What is what is a whale fall? Can you tell our audience about that? Sure. So
(05:25):
well, fall is kind of what it sounds like. It's usually when a deceased whale has fallen to the bottom of the ocean, which is sad, but it actually provides a very rich habitat for a lot of different animals. And so they use all of the whale for food for even hiding. And it brings about a lot of different kinds of animals bunch of different inverts, but also large sharks and other pelagic animals, and it creates a habitat in an area that usually would have nothing.
(05:56):
fascinate. It's pretty cool. I mean, like the bottom of the ocean, especially where lights not reaching, there's nothing growing down there. And it must be so hard for like new nutrients to be introduced that far down. And so it's cool if you ever look up videos of whale falls, which makes me sound like I'm a very weird person. But you'll just see like, a million crabs just coming and swarming this whale fall because they're like, hey, nutrients and food and they must sense it from like, miles away.
(06:23):
But you don't currently take care of the spider crab habitat. Is that right?
I do not. I stopped in here about a month ago. But right now I'm doing a lot of work with our white abalone knees. And then I have a couple of our filter feeding exhibits in our SoCal gallery.
Very cool. Our recently renovated a year ago. Yeah, sorry.
(06:44):
It's looking really nice. And you can see abalone is on exhibit.
You can
talk about abalone in a future episode. Yeah, we really, especially
the white abalone project that we have here. But as it relates to our spider crabs, why don't you tell us a little bit about what it was like, from that species? Silly habitat, right?
Yeah. Right. So I was a little bit nervous going in because they're kind of large, strange animals. And I really didn't have any experience. They're pretty big and ours are not even as big as they can get. So sometimes when you look at other aquariums, ours even look a little puny, but they do they get, they can get up to 12 feet. From like, leg to leg was like the largest recorded.
(07:27):
Oh, my good. Good. Well,
you'll fall. Yeah, so ours are not that big, but they are still pretty big. So I was a little nervous going into it. And I was like, what if they pinch me like, What do I
do such a valid fear.
Crops are very polarizing, even in our department. Like there are people that I work with, who just hate crabs, and they're terrified of them. And for like, you know, real reason, they can be a little bit of a jerk, but I really enjoyed working with them. They're very silly, and they require a lot of babying and special attention. But I enjoyed getting to know their personalities and kind of seeing like, how we can make their lives a little bit better. There's a lot that we don't know about crabs from even like a veterinary standpoint. So there's a lot of issues we can have. And it's kind of fun to experiment to see how we can make them better do
(08:26):
people who have beef with crabs? Do they also have it with other crustaceans? Or is it crabs specific?
Who I don't know? I feel like it might be crustaceans as a whole but I feel like crabs at least for us because the crustaceans that we usually work with here are spiny lobsters that don't have like the claws so I don't know if that makes a difference and if we had are like the other lobsters that have claws Yeah. So I don't know if it's like the claws themselves or just the way that they're kind of just like sea bugs. I don't know do
(08:58):
what do they do when you are diving in their exhibit when
they usually run away and they kind of usually hide in a corner. But we when we get in there we like to give their shells little scrubs because it kind of helps prevent any like Shell rot or it kind of extends their your life also we you know we're an aquarium so we do want to present the best kind of animal that we can in the wild the Scots are not going to look as pretty as they do here. But so usually after we're done with our like other maintenance, we'll go and we'll kind of sneak up on them and you can kind of just hold their butt a little bit and then you take a little toothbrush and you give them a nice little scrub. I wouldn't say they necessarily love it. But it is good for them.
(09:47):
So I have a video of Aquarius Sara scrubbing the crabs and tick tock had this thing where you just type a word and it makes it into a song. So there's a tick tock that did really well on it was it's time to Scrub the ground, something like that. It's
Music (10:03):
It's time to scrub the crabs
I forget how I love that. I would definitely sing that in my head. I were scrubbing them every time you're scrubbing the crab every time. I mean, you're just sitting there in the water with yourself. So you might as well saying to yourself that's grabbing the crab song. So crabs like being sung to great. I think so. Now we know I sing and talk to a lot of my animals. I don't know if they appreciate it, but it makes me feel better. Yeah,
(10:34):
I mean, every time I walk into the mountain frog room like Hello, babies, I really don't care.
But I feel better for you. It's singing is really Yeah, that's amazing. Okay, so I know we're specifically going to talk about spider crabs today. But can you tell us a little bit about what makes a crab different from other crustaceans? What makes a crab a crab? Yeah,
(10:54):
so crabs are part of the arthropod. Family and our bugs? Yeah, right. And they are specifically part of the order DECA poda, which means that they have 10 legs. So two crabs will have four walking legs and then two legs that have evolved to be kind of like claws. So not all crabs have that and they tend not to be true crabs. So for example, a horseshoe crab is not a true crab. And somebody king crabs are fake crabs as well. Yeah, they only have six legs, I believe. But yeah, they have an exoskeleton. And so that is a big thing about being a crustacean, but yeah, it's definitely the 10 legs that are going to kind of put them apart.
(11:43):
King Crabs aren't crab apparently not all of them. You heard it here. First of all, those aren't crabs. Don't eat others. We don't know what they are crabs, letter 10 legged crabs. How closely related are they to lobster? Like are they more closely related to lobsters or like another 10 legged insect or I think
lobsters because they're still part of like the crustaceans and they'll just like kinda like, goes down from there.
(12:08):
What about the life cycles? I feel like with crustaceans, they seemed very, they seem very long lived. Is that true? Do they live pretty long?
Yeah, it depends on the species. And it can be anywhere from, you know, a short lifespan of like a year or two. But actually spider crabs, they think that they can live up to 100 years 100
How old are ours?
(12:31):
We've our longest one that we've had in collection. We've had for I think six plus years. But they also came to us this size. So they're already full grown quite quick.
quite old. Possibly, yeah. Older than Yes,
possibly 100. And possibly.
I don't know about 100. But they say that they can live 50 to 100 years. It's still since they live so deep. Our knowledge of them is still limited, but that's what they think,
(12:59):
if you like grow indefinitely.
Their characters, which is their main body has a limit of what they can grow. And so apparently for spider crabs, it's about 12 inches Max, but then their legs continue to grow. Oh, yeah. So that's how you're gonna get to the 12
feet. Really? Okay, so pretty much their bodies are all the same size relative sizes, their legs. Yes, yes.
(13:24):
I kind of wish that was me. Like, my legs are so long, right? Because I'm 100 That is so weird. extremely
tall. That's amazing. Wow, that's really fascinating.
It really maybe they're trying to reach the light. You know, they're like, I got a
point maybe?
I think there's a limit of like, how heavy it's true.
(13:46):
They're just like on stilts. Yeah. That's fair.
That's fascinating. That's so cool. This
is the best crab knowledge.
Really?
That's really
okay. What about their reproduction? How do they make more of them.
So usually the females will hold on to the eggs on the underside of their abdomen. And then they'll actually like hatch and become a plate, tawny larvae, and then they live in the water column for a while before they start growing up into actually looking like crabs. That
(14:19):
seems like the case for like a lot of ocean animals in general. Like non mammal ocean animals seem like they always have like, this is my plankton phase. And like, right yeah, what I miss Middle School photos.
It's really hard.
Everyone starts as a plankton for some reason that when seems
kind of brutal to just, you know, float around. Yeah, I ever could just help it help them make it.
(14:39):
Yeah. And I think females can have like, hundreds if not 1000s of eggs, but only a few are going to survive like most animals that have a planktonic stage.
And then they hold them in that like apron looking. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's very if you ever look at the underside of a crab, which is the craziest. It looks like you're looking at under a car, it's very strange. There's so many parts and bits and things. But the females have like an apron that kind of opens. And they exactly. Water open it and apron.
(15:09):
Yeah,
I think it actually is technically called Well, yeah. And you can actually so it's nice because you can actually tell male and female, like crabs and crustacean Jannatul. In general apart, the male's the females are gonna have like a wider abdomen just because then they have more room for the eggs. And then the males are going to have like a slightly more narrow one because they don't have to do that. Do we have males and females here? We currently in our population is pedicabs only have males, we have in our history had both, but it's kind of noted that if you have multiple, or both sexes, that there's gonna be a lot more fighting. And so we have found that if we keep to one sex, that it's a little bit easier to control and a little bit less aggression. That's fair, but there are places that have both. And you can totally do it just a little bit more have.
(15:59):
Is there ever any, like breeding under human care of the species? Or is it pretty difficult?
To my knowledge, I don't know if there has been I know there has been like eggs seen. But I don't think there has been a successful placing
of the like lifecycle go from microscopic to 12 feet tall. That's a big jump.
(16:21):
So in our habitat here, we have only males, do you see kind of different times of year an increase in more aggressive behavior towards each other? Or is it just kind of depending on the day, because I've seen sometimes I'm sparring with each other a little bit? Yeah,
I have personally not seen like specific time of year. There might be but I feel like right now because we keep our habitat pretty stable like our at the moment, we don't really change our temperature and our lightcycle is about the same. So I don't see it as much. It's really I feel like individual dependent to there have been ones that we've had that are a little bit more of a bully than other ones. And so that's kind of, yeah, so that's kind of dependent right now, the four that we have are pretty docile, I feel like I see them most active like in the morning, or where you're gonna see that the most is like when you start introducing food in the water. Depending on how you feed them, we sometimes we target them, which means we literally take a poll and then we offer a piece to each one, which is great, because it means we know that they're each eating. But if you are not fast enough, sometimes the other ones will come running. And then they'll start like locking legs and trying to get to the they're pretty fast. And they're pretty fast.
(17:33):
They kind of clumsy, do Yeah, it's just so that
happens. Sometimes we'll scatter feed for enrichment purposes and for like foraging purposes. And then you'll see it a little bit less because then they can all kind of spread out. So but I haven't noticed a specific pattern. What do we feed them. So we feed them a variety of things. So crabs in general tend to be scavengers. They live on the bottom and they kind of go for like dead or decaying fish. They'll go for different inverts that are on the bottom, they've been known to like open up like shells and less. And then they actually also eat algae. So we kind of do a mixture of things will offer them different kinds of fish. Even like Caitlin herring, they love shrimp right now, shrimp is their favorite food. But we'll also offer them things that are in hard shelled items. So like hardshell clams, or mussels. That's kind of good for them too, because sometimes they'll get like the calcium from the shells. And then we also have a gel that is specifically created for crustaceans that will have some of the like algae nutrients that we would want them to eat. Yeah, they don't love it. So you usually have to like sneak it in. So we usually take like half shell muscle and we like shove gel behind it so that they're like already just shoving food in there. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. They've also been known to eat like Nori, which is seaweed. It's not their favorite and but it is good for them.
(19:07):
Just picture one holding a piece of nori. It's cute.
It just yeah, they like usually like hold it and then the Let It Go. And then it just floats away. And you're like, Well, that was not helpful.
Watch
that happen, though. When we have animals, like all of our animals here received some sort of vitamin supplementation, and I guess I never really considered B to give a crap. Where's the sea lions? They eat fish Hold on. So you put a vitamin in a fish and they'll never know the difference? Are there other animals that you've worked with that are hard to get their vitamin? Yes,
(19:37):
well, it depends like the smaller the animal. If you're trying to do like a pill or something, it's harder because your pieces are smaller. I've worked with a lot of animals that have gotten smart with the vitamins and they will chew round it and then spit the vitamins out my dog. Yeah, a lot of our like larger elasmobranchs have figured this out. Oh yeah, you can if you go to Sharkoon you'll see like vitamins just like, on the bottom, everywhere everywhere. They'll be like rays that will like if you give them like a medicine or something that's not necessarily vitamin they'll like, chew around everything and you just see it like float up. It's amazing. Yeah. So it's usually easiest if you're just doing we have, we use what's called the Vida fish for a lot of our smaller animals that's just like a liquid that we can pour over and it can soak in. That's easy, because it's already in the food if you have to put pills and things. If they have to chew a lot, they tend to pop them out. They know. They know. Sure
(20:35):
there's some parents and pet parents do out there. They like it. Yeah, totally my
dog. Yeah, same every time I tried to give him his flea medication. He manages to eat all the cheese and appears on his bed later.
How do you Yeah, it's a magic trick.
But turns out are sharks also are tricky, but there they are. Are crabs, so? Yeah. Well, I've never really considered how to give a vitamin.
(20:56):
Yeah, it's hard, especially if things don't eat it. Like our seals and sea lions, they'll just swallow things. If when things pick up things, then they can like, throw it to the ground and you just see it like littered everywhere. And you're like cool, I guess I want to clean that up now.
Do crabs have mouths like proper melts? Or ice those little this is not going to translate to an audio format. But those little like the feathery thing?
(21:19):
Yeah. So they they're used and they use those to put it into their actual amounts.
Are they chewing at that point? Are they just kind of like?
I don't know. Doing it. They usually like I've seen them break things off into like tear and smaller pieces. And then they can like, put it down? Yeah, yes, but it's usually like you'll see them like picking. And they'll use the ones by their face the smaller ones to like hold it to and then they can like eat from there. Sometimes they use their larger claws. Depending on the animal. Sometimes I target closer to their face or not attached to the food or sometimes I try to get them to like hold it far away from them.
(21:59):
What do you think is the biggest piece of food one of the spider crabs can eat in one bite
One bite small, like it's pretty small. Like even when I feed them like small shrimp. They still tear it up? Yeah,
they lose tiny.
They want to digest? Well,
they do. That's
fair. If there's like a clam or a muscle or something that's closed, do you offer them those things? And how do they open them?
(22:20):
Yes, I personally tend to open them slightly to cheat it a little bit and then they but they can if it is closed. They can like stick their their claws in and kind of like wedge it and open it. Ours live a life of luxury and therefore a little lazy like most animals we have here. And so I kind of cheated a little bit so that they can just like pop that little left so
(22:46):
you can clean up after correctly. Yes for you. Yes,
we got it started.
Yeah, we especially with crustaceans, we track how much each individual is eating or when they're eating a lot because them stopping their feeds. If it's not normal is usually a big indicator that they're going to molt. And when they molt, we want to make sure that they're separated from the other animals. And so we kind of try to make sure to watch and tag that every individual is eating tell
(23:14):
it's coming. Yeah, speaking of malt. Yeah, I was going to ask you about how you partition off the habitat to because they become soft, right?
Yes. So for our spider crabs in general, we have like this makeshift barrier that we can just put on a corner of the exhibit. And if we think anything's going to happen any molting, or recently, we had a crab that underwent some surgery, so we put them back there, hops are actually really cool. And so we can put the that in the exhibit. And so they're still like in the same environment and the crabs around them, but none of the crabs can like climb over it, we make it so that it's like flat, and there's no like holes because they can climb things with the little holes in them. And they'll just hang out there until they're nice and harden wood crabs or crustaceans in general molt it's a pretty violent process for them. And when they come out, they're very vulnerable and they're very soft. And if you do not get it in time, you will probably not have that individual anymore. It's a pretty violent process between everyone.
(24:20):
And does it kind of spur the other crabs to attack each other or I
don't know if it spurs but it's almost always like they can sense of relief. Yeah.
your guards down.
Yeah, exactly. It's
secure, like, literally,
and it's also so not only when your shell is completely off, are you vulnerable, but like while they're undergoing the molting process, it can be as quick as like 2530 minutes but it can also last like overnight, and basically like they shove their body out of a hole of their old shell and if anything happens if they get stuck if they get torn there. pretty much done. And so if anyone is around and bothering them, there's a good chance that the animals not going to survive. That's
(25:07):
it's so it's really cool to see, we have been able to get some videos of it. And that's interesting. Sometimes it just depends on the the animal how long it takes maybe how big they are? Well,
yeah, but I think it's like, it's not even species specific per se. It's even just like animal specific.
Do they look different when they've just freshly melted?
(25:30):
They're beautiful. Yes, they have like they're perfect. There's not like. So what's really cool about molting is like, we would love our animals to molt regularly, because it's means that they're healthy, and they're growing, but also it, they can regrow their legs when they're molting. So, spider crabs, especially their legs are very long and spindly, and they'll fall off sometimes, in the wild, that will happen if the like a predator is attacking them. Sometimes they get caught on something. But when they do a molt, that leg grows back. And then if they've had any, like, holes in their care, EPIs or if there's what's called like black spot disease, it's usually either gone or a lot smaller in that next Mall. It's basically like a brand new shiny car like they are perfect. And beautiful. Yeah,
(26:25):
I have a question. But I'm not 100% sure how to ask it. So after your leg fell off, like a predator ate their leg, and they were molting again, does do they have like, is there something there? Or does it regrow with the shell coming in? Like, do they not have like meat there anymore?
Like what happens to regrow there, from my understanding the like, soft part of the crab underneath, like starts to grow more, even right before it molds, so they're already kind of getting ready. So I think that muscle, or that flesh is sort of exists, it exists and it's starting to grow again. And then when they come out, then it's like,
(27:06):
does it take a couple of months to fully regrow it? Or is it pretty much? quitters? mulig?
I think it depends on the animal, but I think you can get like almost a full regrowth.
Yes. Very impressive. That is how often are they molting typically
depends on the animal. So for our spider crabs, because of how cold they are, and how big they are, they tend to mold the least. It can be yours here at the Aquarium we tend to see like one molds from them while we have them. Other smaller crabs that we have, we can see molds. Like once a year, twice a year, we have some lobsters on exhibit that are a little they're pretty young. So they're pretty small. And they're still growing. But we would like one of them malted like every two months. So beautiful. Yeah, they're just Yeah. So it really varies, but a very beautiful lobster. Right, exactly. But as they get older, they tend to molt less, because that's how they're going to regrow. And because it takes so much effort, and it's such a stressful process. Yeah, we would love for them to melt a little bit more. But is
(28:16):
there anything that can spur them all to like, like a change in the water temperature or some sort of fit to hypothetically
things have been tried, where you can increase or decrease but usually increase the water temperature to kind of spur that on? Sometimes if you add like something else to the water to change it up. It can do it. But honestly, it's not a foolproof plan. Usually, like there's no hard concrete way to make a crown mold when they're ready. It's when they're ready. on their own time.
(28:47):
Yeah.
It would be nice if we could induce it though, because we have a few that were like you're getting a little dirty.
You need a mannequin? Yeah.
Do our individual crabs have names they
don't have names. At the moment at least, naming an animal at least in our department is kind of specific to the person who has it there are some people who are very into naming some people who are not into naming I'm kind of an in between I name some things and I don't name others. What we do have is we do have them tagged. So originally, we had them tagged with zip ties and colors and so they were kind of known by their color. And then right now we have them actually removed the zip ties and we basically added this like.of It's not paint but essentially like looks like paint on the back of them to tell them apart. And so we use like a mixture of like a coral glue and what's called mica powder. To kind of ID them jazz them up a little bit jazz them up. Yeah, it's pretty nice. We discovered this a little bit ago. Originally from learn from tagging some outplanting for abalone I believe and But it's nice because if ties can fall off, and then if you have a bunch of animals in there, and you don't know which one it is, it's a little bit difficult. But this, it stays on their shell. And so it kind of stays with them. And
(30:11):
that helps you keep track of leading Yes. Who's acting up? Yes.
So they don't technically have names, but they
have colors. They have colors. Beautiful. Which one's your favorite?
Oh, my favorite. There's one that's yellow, pink. And he likes to say on the top of the structure in like the sea of white anatomies of white maternity, anemones, anemones. And so I kind of like to think he's like sitting in the clouds. So he's a little funny. And then, blue, white is our oldest one who's the one who just underwent surgery. And he's, he's a little he's the like, least dominant. So he's like, he's chill. So I like him to?
(30:55):
Well, I'd love to hear about this surgery and kind of what vetcare are crabs receive in just a little bit more about that?
Sure. Yeah. So like I said, blue, white is our oldest crab that we currently have. And because of that, he has some pretty severe shell rot, unfortunately. And a lot of invertebrate medicine is still very experimental, or we know nothing about it. And it's kind of just trial and error. And so we worked with our vet team to be like, what should we do about this, he was still he's still eating, still acting normally. But it was looking pretty bad. And we were starting to get some questions from guests and from our staff. And so what we actually came up with is we made a mold of his therapists from this really cool new product, whose name I'm forgetting. It's basically like kind of like, a little bit soft moldable silicone, for lack of a better word. And we painted it orange, and we basically sanded down the area and cleaned it up. And we glued it on and it literally looks like part of a regular shell. And while this helps, obviously, cosmetic lengthwise, it's also thought that it's going to help stop the spread of this rot, because we're basically smothering all the bacteria or anything else that's stuck in there. And it should extend his life by quite a bid. But yeah, it was never done before. And it's pretty cool. We tried different ways to see how it was going to attach. And we like to make the mold, we basically put playdough around the area to like stop it to stop the little gel that we put in there to harden around it. So I just played with Play Doh on a crab and then let that sit. And then we filled that mold up. And then we tried a couple different ways because we kind of had to make it soft enough that it was gonna bend but not so soft. It was gonna break. And so far, so good. It looks pretty cool.
(32:58):
Very cool. That's fascinating. We
had a little crab facelift. Yeah,
a little facelift, and he looks 10 years younger.
It could be 110.
But we don't know, we don't know. That's fast. Is
there any concern that with his next malt that might impact sort of how he molds or is it they molt so infrequently? And he's so old, come off
with the mold? Yeah. So
(33:19):
in theory, if he molds again, which would be awesome, but it shouldn't impact it, because it's like, kind of in the top portion. And they usually will like come up. They're like, but area. And so in theory, it shouldn't impact and if they he does, and that molting, that area should be reduced in size. If anything. That's
really cool. Yeah, I'm gonna go look for facelift grab.
(33:40):
Yes. Yeah.
That's awesome. What about just in general, do they get annual checkups or just kind of something you're you're diving with them, you can notice the things are going on? Yeah,
so when we dive with them, we obviously are taking a closer look and scrubbing at them. But they do get twice a year we do what's called a welfare exam on them, and they get an extra special one. So we will lift each crab up individually to the top of the water. It's usually like a three person process, we usually have someone in the water diving, who goes and scoops up the crab and we bring them up. And then the people on top, we take pictures, both on the top and the bottom, and of any problems that we see. And then we have a special form that basically is a drawing of a crab on it. And we mark anything that we've noticed and we give like overall remarks, we look over all of their legs, all their claws, and look for any new spots on them if they have anything broken. And then we get some measurements on them and then we put them back and then we swapped to the next crabs, so they get that twice a year. We try not to handle our crabs, any extra than we have to it's a little bit stressful on them. But it's a good way to like get good eyes on them and to watch the progression of any spots that we're noticing or anything concerning.
(34:58):
Can they support their weight of their therapists on their legs out of water.
No, not really. Yeah,
I was gonna ask yeah, there's mental to them for to be out of water for extended. So it's
not necessarily detrimental. Actually, people have been known to ship these guys dry, meaning that they literally just put like wet paper towels around them when they ship them. It's not the preferred way. But they can survive like that. And so they can be out of water. So for like, for example, when we were doing the surgery, we had them out of water, we had water running over their gills, like we would have fish. But if the outside of them, as long as they're sitting and kind of like on a supported surface, they're fine. But yeah, when we take a crap out of water, and we put them back, we have to do what's called burping a crop tells you basically, air gets trapped inside their therapists. And if you leave it in there, it'll create air bubbles around their gills, which will dry out and then eventually kill them. So what we do is we basically put them in the water and we hold them, and we tilt them like face down, and we just kind of rock them back and forth. And you'll see like, air bubbles just coming out. And you keep doing that until the air bubbles are gone. And then they're good to go. And he dropped them in time
(36:12):
to burp the next video. I love coming
our technical term for it. That's amazing. But yeah, we do that with pretty much all of our crustaceans, if we take them out of the water just because they have like that air that can get trapped inside that. That's adorable. Yeah,
that's really cool. Oh, cool. What about we talked a little bit about it already, too, but maybe their personality. So kind of the social dynamic. Inside of the exhibit. You said yellow pink kind of has a more spunky personality. It's like clouds. Clouds.
(36:44):
Yeah. Yeah, they each kind of have their own personalities, some are a little bit more dominant, some are a little bit more shy and reserved. They are always doing I think like Aaron said earlier, weird things. Every time you walk by the tank, you never know sometimes you'll just see them sitting on their butt chilling, and you're like, Okay, I guess it's just like a quiet day. But then other days you find them like, all huddled in a circle facing each other with their arms up. And I don't know whether they're summoning something from the nether world, or if they're plotting our revenge, like I don't know, but they're doing something. And other times asking for more burping, maybe birth me. And then sometimes we have this side wall that they can kind of climb. And so you'll see them sometimes climb up, and they're very silly, they will climb up it. And then there's a pipe that runs right above the top of the window that helps to bring in water. And they'll like attach to it. And you'll just like see them crawling on that one thing like hanging from the window. But I've seen them like one up there. And then the other three are on the bottom with their arms up like they're trying to catch him or cheer him on. I'm not sure. But there's like always something going on in there. Hopefully, you yes, there. And there. I've worked with another spider crab that if she didn't like the food that you gave her, she would like push it away and kind of like shove her head to the side and like they're very sassy divas by their divas but also not not the smartest for them. Yeah,
(38:22):
honestly, respect for us. Yeah.
That's amazing. I love that. Um, what about the other animals? Do we still have those fish with them.
We don't currently have any fish with them we have in the past, they can live with fish, you have to be a little bit specific on what's in there. Because it has to be a balance between it's not small enough for them to get but also not so big that it's going to bother them. We used to have what's called a cow caught in there. We moved him out just because he was getting a little aggressive with feeding. He was stealing food directly from the spider crabs like cans and they just didn't defend themselves. So we would like to add some more fish in there. That's our goal eventually. But we would love to make it a little bit more Japanese specific since they are but we do have what's called a treaty mon enemies and they're, they're kind of all over the rock worth or Plumose anemones. Yeah, it's pretty funny because I learned recently there's a group of crabs called decorator crabs, and they usually will put things on their shells to kind of blend in. And I didn't know that spider crabs are actually kind of considered one. Which makes sense because every once in a while you'll find these giant anatomies stuck to the back of the crabs and you're like how are you so slow that an anatomy got on you? But I think that's just a thing they do. So every once in a while you just see crabs with like one or two giant white anatomies just on their backs just to make themselves look a little prettier. You know,
(39:49):
gorgeous. Yeah, really pretty.
Probably yellow pink.
Yes, probably yellow.
I know one thing about yellow that he loves. He does love the anatomy. So that's really cool. Yeah, I wonder if they put them on or if they like, line up and let the anatomy like,
you know, sometimes so every once in a while the anatomies will like, detach. And that's how they move around. And so you'll find them on the floor of the exhibit. And so I don't know if it just like they happen to be in the right place the right time, or if they're specifically, I haven't specifically seen them, like pick it up and put it on there. But it does happen.
(40:24):
Maybe they prank each other by putting it on
me for that to be true.
More beautiful.
Yes, they're like, I look prettier than you. Angel
Wings. Yeah, it
wouldn't be really nice, especially when you see those enemies you will understand. Absolutely. Cool. A lot of good crap.
(40:45):
That's amazing. Well, we have some questions from social media. The first one is how do they blink? Or if they blink?
So I don't feel like I don't have a specific answer. I know that they their eye stalks, like they move them so like they're moving all the time. If you are get too close, they'll like pull them in. And they're very like expressive, like they will like you can see like, Oh no, they're mad. But I don't know, the actual mechanism of how I'm going to be honest. I don't know how humans blink me. So they just do it. They just do it. Yeah.
(41:15):
Do they do it at a frequency if they're not being disturbed? Like, will they pull their eyes in? Not that I've seen so maybe it's not blinking. Maybe it's like
protect? Yeah, I feel like it's more protection.
Like, that's a soft part of me. I gotta
yeah, like I feel like it's usually like when you come towards them with like a little brush and then they're like, No,
(41:36):
do not scrub it and be fair if you put it to do that. Yeah. Cool. Why do well do Japanese spider crabs? Ours are pretty bright red here are kind of like a red to orange ombre, a to white, yellow, kind of? Do they kind of vary in color? Or is that typical for the species?
(41:59):
That's pretty typical. They might vary slightly in shape. But I've never seen one that's like, a different color. But it might be out there. Maybe
an albino Japanese spider
blue one
a blue? I see a good question. Someone wants to know, why do crabs walk sideways?
(42:20):
So I'm pretty sure it's because it's just the easiest way. They have like a lot of legs. And they're usually especially like spider crabs pretty long. And so if you go forward, there's like more chance of entanglement and like tripping. And I think it's just the fastest way that they can get away from the animals. It's
fair, do lobsters walk forward?
(42:42):
They they walk forward, but when they're like jetting away with their tail, then they go like,
Oh, okay, that's right. I have seen that. Lobster swimming is super,
it's really weird. And so when you're trying to catch them out, like you have to be like prepared for both sides, because they're going to like back away from you.
And the spider crab species is the largest. Correct right, sir. What's What about on the other end of the spectrum, tiny crabs
(43:06):
smallest crab is called a pea crab. Oh, and it is apparently about seven to eight millimeters in width. So compare that to 12 feet. It's a little bit different.
A little too tiny little guy.
I know he. But there's like 1000s of species of Christ. There's like over 4000 species. So they have evolved tear everywhere. They're everywhere. There used to
(43:31):
be these little tiny sand crabs that I would always run into when I was in Hawaii and list on the beach. And some of them were just minuscule. There must have been baby crabs, I'm guessing but you just see them everywhere. And they would range from like, maybe three inches across to like, the tiniest like a centimeter. And I remember always really liking those crabs. And then there were some scary really big like sort of dark brown crabs and I was like, zealots
(43:51):
are gonna pinch me are polarizing even as Yes, we were talking about it earlier. Like you hear people turn the corner and look at the spider crabs and they're like, oh, and then you have fear people be like, Oh, those look delicious.
Those are beautiful. No, it's never beautiful. It's either scary, delicious, or ill. Those are like the three I always hear for cool
(44:12):
are the ones that people eat their legs sometimes.
I think that's usually king crabs. No,
yeah, King is trying
to eat our crab didn't even eat them.
Yeah, go here. I think for crab Yeah, the spider crabs. I'm not sure about their market like things since they're only found in Japan. And I believe there is like some restrictions on when you can get them. They also live like very deep down so it's a little bit harder to get
(44:38):
all the spider crabs eat is dead whale. So
yeah, basically. Yeah.
Well, I feel like spider crabs too. They don't seem like they have a lot of meat on them. They're
pretty. Like they're all like they're Yeah, they're they're not like yeah, they're not like they're not
beefy. Yeah. Don't have
beef legs. Legs. True
crab like that's already so
(45:00):
many questions answered about crabs truly
and some new questions formed that I didn't even know that I had in your crustacean conversations. The last question Would you like to take is the most serious question out of all of them.
Someone wants to know, do crabs rave?
I mean, I, you know, I can't give a definitive answer on this because I'm telling you, they make weird powwows true. And so I don't know what's going on. That could be their form of a rave. It's possible like, they always got their arms up and then they already they might be partying. I wouldn't doubt it. If someone was going to. It would be our spider. They seem like party and the end of the day, who knows what they do at night.
(45:41):
How many do we have for before currently for bachelors? Raven. I love that for them.
I love it. That's amazing. Oh, cool. Thank you, Melissa for coming on. That was so cool. Yeah, thank
you guys. It's awesome.
Hi, I'm Erin Lundy.
And I'm Madeline Walden and this is Aquarium of the Podcific, a podcast brought to you by Aquarium of the Podcific, Southern California's largest aquarium. Join
us as we learn alongside the experts in animal care, conservation, and more. Welcome back. Welcome back
to the last episode of the season.
(00:26):
That's season two is over and do is complete. But first before season two is over. Let's learn probably
not over yet. Well get the end of this.
It'll be over, it'll be over. But
before it's over, we are going to learn about crabs because we actually had a listener request an episode specifically about crabs so that she could share it with one of our friends who loves crabs, and that was just the
(00:49):
sweetest thing we love. It made us so happy. We're like, Yeah, we're gonna do that immediately scrapped. Everything
else. We're recording a crab
Crab episode right now. And to be fair,
I think that's what we always wanted. Anyway, he doesn't want to learn about crabs.
I learned so much. We just finished recording. I learned so much about crowds. Yeah,
we just talked to Melissa Fisher, who's one of our Aquarius and our temper gallery. And she has spent quite a bit of time with our Japanese spider crabs. And so our episode is focused specifically on this one species. But we learn about crab raves about crabs potentially summoning something from the underworld. And what their checkups look like. Crab facelift like just the coolest episode and the really interesting one more dynamic animals than I ever imagined.
(01:31):
Crab. Yeah,
the personalities,
they're decorating things. They're getting jazzed up getting a facelift surgery. It's just it's a good time.
It's a really cool episode. But thank you guys so much for joining us for another season and pod cific. We had a blast making it for you. And we'll be back for season three, soon ish.
And in season three, hopefully we will have resolved some of our recording studio issues. So we will have more consistent episodes that sound more consistent as it sounds a little bit better. We're getting new equipment, we're sort of making sure everything is Samak top notch for you guys. So we really appreciate everyone hanging tight and listening to us talk about our animals. It's been the best time ever.
(02:10):
It's really has been a blast. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you Erin for
CO hosting with me. And no thanks to Madeline for zero thanks, literally does all the editing. And thanks to thanks to all thanks to me. Now it's been it's been wonderful. And thanks to everyone who has been supporting the podcast the whole way through. And for everyone who's been on this season, we've had some really great interviews too. And
(02:35):
if you have a suggestion or a request for a future episode, definitely reach out you can email the aquarium at aquarium of pacific@lbaop.org or you can always message us on either any social media account truly, it'll get to me that I'm the one I'm the one responding to you most of the time, but you can reach out there and we're at aquarium Pacific pretty much everywhere on the internet and we also have a podcast specific Instagram it's at pod cific so check it out. Give us a follow on Instagram and
(03:04):
Madeline we'll see if there's a message you sent and we may even record an entire episode just because you asked us about your favorite animal or species, which is what we're doing today.
So do that and learn about crabs and learn right now. All right, we'll see you next season
(03:25):
today we are joined by Melissa Fisher who's one of our Clarus in our template gallery Melissa How are you doing great
guys are you good? Pretty good. Let's
temperate gallery. Can you explain what that so our audience our
timber gallery is what we call any of our cold water exhibits. So that includes our northern Pacific Gallery, which is going to range a little bit colder to our local Southern California gallery which is a little bit warmer, but anything pretty much under 70 degrees is what we cover as
(03:51):
cold that is I think it's funny that SoCal I mean because it is considered a temporary water habitat. Our waters cold it's pretty cool. It's pretty misunderstood that I would think that you know, people think they go to the beach here and it's warm it's cold every beach
I go to SoCal Yeah, it's pretty cool. I was just diving the other day and it was like 50 degrees so I got
(04:11):
in the middle of summer. Yeah, July is 50 degrees. I could never I grew up in Hawaii and so I'm used to water being like 72 And if it's any lower than that freezing water please yeah, I'll you will go in the ocean of it is a bath and nothing else.
Amazing. Well, today we are going to talk about crabs, which we're really excited about because it's our first listener requested episode and Melissa has specifically worked with our spider crabs here at the Aquarium which is a very iconic species. I feel like
(04:41):
yeah, if you look at our Japanese spider crabs, they are enormous and they are always doing something sort of silly in there. And today even notice they have new furniture in there. So do they really do
what's new in there?
We added a old whale falls simulating We had in a previous gallery like six plus years ago. So I think
(05:03):
that was, like part of that habitat. A long time one to one times. Yes. They
kind of get set. Yeah, it's bad. Wow, this
is this is breaking news. Yes. This is huge news pods a big update. That's so cool. I'm excited to see I haven't seen it
yet. Yeah, it seems like they're enjoying it. So you know, crawling on it a lot.
What is what is a whale fall? Can you tell our audience about that? Sure. So
(05:25):
well, fall is kind of what it sounds like. It's usually when a deceased whale has fallen to the bottom of the ocean, which is sad, but it actually provides a very rich habitat for a lot of different animals. And so they use all of the whale for food for even hiding. And it brings about a lot of different kinds of animals bunch of different inverts, but also large sharks and other pelagic animals, and it creates a habitat in an area that usually would have nothing.
(05:56):
fascinate. It's pretty cool. I mean, like the bottom of the ocean, especially where lights not reaching, there's nothing growing down there. And it must be so hard for like new nutrients to be introduced that far down. And so it's cool if you ever look up videos of whale falls, which makes me sound like I'm a very weird person. But you'll just see like, a million crabs just coming and swarming this whale fall because they're like, hey, nutrients and food and they must sense it from like, miles away.
(06:23):
But you don't currently take care of the spider crab habitat. Is that right?
I do not. I stopped in here about a month ago. But right now I'm doing a lot of work with our white abalone knees. And then I have a couple of our filter feeding exhibits in our SoCal gallery.
Very cool. Our recently renovated a year ago. Yeah, sorry.
(06:44):
It's looking really nice. And you can see abalone is on exhibit.
You can
talk about abalone in a future episode. Yeah, we really, especially
the white abalone project that we have here. But as it relates to our spider crabs, why don't you tell us a little bit about what it was like, from that species? Silly habitat, right?
Yeah. Right. So I was a little bit nervous going in because they're kind of large, strange animals. And I really didn't have any experience. They're pretty big and ours are not even as big as they can get. So sometimes when you look at other aquariums, ours even look a little puny, but they do they get, they can get up to 12 feet. From like, leg to leg was like the largest recorded.
(07:27):
Oh, my good. Good. Well,
you'll fall. Yeah, so ours are not that big, but they are still pretty big. So I was a little nervous going into it. And I was like, what if they pinch me like, What do I
do such a valid fear.
Crops are very polarizing, even in our department. Like there are people that I work with, who just hate crabs, and they're terrified of them. And for like, you know, real reason, they can be a little bit of a jerk, but I really enjoyed working with them. They're very silly, and they require a lot of babying and special attention. But I enjoyed getting to know their personalities and kind of seeing like, how we can make their lives a little bit better. There's a lot that we don't know about crabs from even like a veterinary standpoint. So there's a lot of issues we can have. And it's kind of fun to experiment to see how we can make them better do
(08:26):
people who have beef with crabs? Do they also have it with other crustaceans? Or is it crabs specific?
Who I don't know? I feel like it might be crustaceans as a whole but I feel like crabs at least for us because the crustaceans that we usually work with here are spiny lobsters that don't have like the claws so I don't know if that makes a difference and if we had are like the other lobsters that have claws Yeah. So I don't know if it's like the claws themselves or just the way that they're kind of just like sea bugs. I don't know do
(08:58):
what do they do when you are diving in their exhibit when
they usually run away and they kind of usually hide in a corner. But we when we get in there we like to give their shells little scrubs because it kind of helps prevent any like Shell rot or it kind of extends their your life also we you know we're an aquarium so we do want to present the best kind of animal that we can in the wild the Scots are not going to look as pretty as they do here. But so usually after we're done with our like other maintenance, we'll go and we'll kind of sneak up on them and you can kind of just hold their butt a little bit and then you take a little toothbrush and you give them a nice little scrub. I wouldn't say they necessarily love it. But it is good for them.
(09:47):
So I have a video of Aquarius Sara scrubbing the crabs and tick tock had this thing where you just type a word and it makes it into a song. So there's a tick tock that did really well on it was it's time to Scrub the ground, something like that. It's
Music (10:03):
It's time to scrub the crabs
I forget how I love that. I would definitely sing that in my head. I were scrubbing them every time you're scrubbing the crab every time. I mean, you're just sitting there in the water with yourself. So you might as well saying to yourself that's grabbing the crab song. So crabs like being sung to great. I think so. Now we know I sing and talk to a lot of my animals. I don't know if they appreciate it, but it makes me feel better. Yeah,
(10:34):
I mean, every time I walk into the mountain frog room like Hello, babies, I really don't care.
But I feel better for you. It's singing is really Yeah, that's amazing. Okay, so I know we're specifically going to talk about spider crabs today. But can you tell us a little bit about what makes a crab different from other crustaceans? What makes a crab a crab? Yeah,
(10:54):
so crabs are part of the arthropod. Family and our bugs? Yeah, right. And they are specifically part of the order DECA poda, which means that they have 10 legs. So two crabs will have four walking legs and then two legs that have evolved to be kind of like claws. So not all crabs have that and they tend not to be true crabs. So for example, a horseshoe crab is not a true crab. And somebody king crabs are fake crabs as well. Yeah, they only have six legs, I believe. But yeah, they have an exoskeleton. And so that is a big thing about being a crustacean, but yeah, it's definitely the 10 legs that are going to kind of put them apart.
(11:43):
King Crabs aren't crab apparently not all of them. You heard it here. First of all, those aren't crabs. Don't eat others. We don't know what they are crabs, letter 10 legged crabs. How closely related are they to lobster? Like are they more closely related to lobsters or like another 10 legged insect or I think
lobsters because they're still part of like the crustaceans and they'll just like kinda like, goes down from there.
(12:08):
What about the life cycles? I feel like with crustaceans, they seemed very, they seem very long lived. Is that true? Do they live pretty long?
Yeah, it depends on the species. And it can be anywhere from, you know, a short lifespan of like a year or two. But actually spider crabs, they think that they can live up to 100 years 100
How old are ours?
(12:31):
We've our longest one that we've had in collection. We've had for I think six plus years. But they also came to us this size. So they're already full grown quite quick.
quite old. Possibly, yeah. Older than Yes,
possibly 100. And possibly.
I don't know about 100. But they say that they can live 50 to 100 years. It's still since they live so deep. Our knowledge of them is still limited, but that's what they think,
(12:59):
if you like grow indefinitely.
Their characters, which is their main body has a limit of what they can grow. And so apparently for spider crabs, it's about 12 inches Max, but then their legs continue to grow. Oh, yeah. So that's how you're gonna get to the 12
feet. Really? Okay, so pretty much their bodies are all the same size relative sizes, their legs. Yes, yes.
(13:24):
I kind of wish that was me. Like, my legs are so long, right? Because I'm 100 That is so weird. extremely
tall. That's amazing. Wow, that's really fascinating.
It really maybe they're trying to reach the light. You know, they're like, I got a
point maybe?
I think there's a limit of like, how heavy it's true.
(13:46):
They're just like on stilts. Yeah. That's fair.
That's fascinating. That's so cool. This
is the best crab knowledge.
Really?
That's really
okay. What about their reproduction? How do they make more of them.
So usually the females will hold on to the eggs on the underside of their abdomen. And then they'll actually like hatch and become a plate, tawny larvae, and then they live in the water column for a while before they start growing up into actually looking like crabs. That
(14:19):
seems like the case for like a lot of ocean animals in general. Like non mammal ocean animals seem like they always have like, this is my plankton phase. And like, right yeah, what I miss Middle School photos.
It's really hard.
Everyone starts as a plankton for some reason that when seems
kind of brutal to just, you know, float around. Yeah, I ever could just help it help them make it.
(14:39):
Yeah. And I think females can have like, hundreds if not 1000s of eggs, but only a few are going to survive like most animals that have a planktonic stage.
And then they hold them in that like apron looking. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's very if you ever look at the underside of a crab, which is the craziest. It looks like you're looking at under a car, it's very strange. There's so many parts and bits and things. But the females have like an apron that kind of opens. And they exactly. Water open it and apron.
(15:09):
Yeah,
I think it actually is technically called Well, yeah. And you can actually so it's nice because you can actually tell male and female, like crabs and crustacean Jannatul. In general apart, the male's the females are gonna have like a wider abdomen just because then they have more room for the eggs. And then the males are going to have like a slightly more narrow one because they don't have to do that. Do we have males and females here? We currently in our population is pedicabs only have males, we have in our history had both, but it's kind of noted that if you have multiple, or both sexes, that there's gonna be a lot more fighting. And so we have found that if we keep to one sex, that it's a little bit easier to control and a little bit less aggression. That's fair, but there are places that have both. And you can totally do it just a little bit more have.
(15:59):
Is there ever any, like breeding under human care of the species? Or is it pretty difficult?
To my knowledge, I don't know if there has been I know there has been like eggs seen. But I don't think there has been a successful placing
of the like lifecycle go from microscopic to 12 feet tall. That's a big jump.
(16:21):
So in our habitat here, we have only males, do you see kind of different times of year an increase in more aggressive behavior towards each other? Or is it just kind of depending on the day, because I've seen sometimes I'm sparring with each other a little bit? Yeah,
I have personally not seen like specific time of year. There might be but I feel like right now because we keep our habitat pretty stable like our at the moment, we don't really change our temperature and our lightcycle is about the same. So I don't see it as much. It's really I feel like individual dependent to there have been ones that we've had that are a little bit more of a bully than other ones. And so that's kind of, yeah, so that's kind of dependent right now, the four that we have are pretty docile, I feel like I see them most active like in the morning, or where you're gonna see that the most is like when you start introducing food in the water. Depending on how you feed them, we sometimes we target them, which means we literally take a poll and then we offer a piece to each one, which is great, because it means we know that they're each eating. But if you are not fast enough, sometimes the other ones will come running. And then they'll start like locking legs and trying to get to the they're pretty fast. And they're pretty fast.
(17:33):
They kind of clumsy, do Yeah, it's just so that
happens. Sometimes we'll scatter feed for enrichment purposes and for like foraging purposes. And then you'll see it a little bit less because then they can all kind of spread out. So but I haven't noticed a specific pattern. What do we feed them. So we feed them a variety of things. So crabs in general tend to be scavengers. They live on the bottom and they kind of go for like dead or decaying fish. They'll go for different inverts that are on the bottom, they've been known to like open up like shells and less. And then they actually also eat algae. So we kind of do a mixture of things will offer them different kinds of fish. Even like Caitlin herring, they love shrimp right now, shrimp is their favorite food. But we'll also offer them things that are in hard shelled items. So like hardshell clams, or mussels. That's kind of good for them too, because sometimes they'll get like the calcium from the shells. And then we also have a gel that is specifically created for crustaceans that will have some of the like algae nutrients that we would want them to eat. Yeah, they don't love it. So you usually have to like sneak it in. So we usually take like half shell muscle and we like shove gel behind it so that they're like already just shoving food in there. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. They've also been known to eat like Nori, which is seaweed. It's not their favorite and but it is good for them.
(19:07):
Just picture one holding a piece of nori. It's cute.
It just yeah, they like usually like hold it and then the Let It Go. And then it just floats away. And you're like, Well, that was not helpful.
Watch
that happen, though. When we have animals, like all of our animals here received some sort of vitamin supplementation, and I guess I never really considered B to give a crap. Where's the sea lions? They eat fish Hold on. So you put a vitamin in a fish and they'll never know the difference? Are there other animals that you've worked with that are hard to get their vitamin? Yes,
(19:37):
well, it depends like the smaller the animal. If you're trying to do like a pill or something, it's harder because your pieces are smaller. I've worked with a lot of animals that have gotten smart with the vitamins and they will chew round it and then spit the vitamins out my dog. Yeah, a lot of our like larger elasmobranchs have figured this out. Oh yeah, you can if you go to Sharkoon you'll see like vitamins just like, on the bottom, everywhere everywhere. They'll be like rays that will like if you give them like a medicine or something that's not necessarily vitamin they'll like, chew around everything and you just see it like float up. It's amazing. Yeah. So it's usually easiest if you're just doing we have, we use what's called the Vida fish for a lot of our smaller animals that's just like a liquid that we can pour over and it can soak in. That's easy, because it's already in the food if you have to put pills and things. If they have to chew a lot, they tend to pop them out. They know. They know. Sure
(20:35):
there's some parents and pet parents do out there. They like it. Yeah, totally my
dog. Yeah, same every time I tried to give him his flea medication. He manages to eat all the cheese and appears on his bed later.
How do you Yeah, it's a magic trick.
But turns out are sharks also are tricky, but there they are. Are crabs, so? Yeah. Well, I've never really considered how to give a vitamin.
(20:56):
Yeah, it's hard, especially if things don't eat it. Like our seals and sea lions, they'll just swallow things. If when things pick up things, then they can like, throw it to the ground and you just see it like littered everywhere. And you're like cool, I guess I want to clean that up now.
Do crabs have mouths like proper melts? Or ice those little this is not going to translate to an audio format. But those little like the feathery thing?
(21:19):
Yeah. So they they're used and they use those to put it into their actual amounts.
Are they chewing at that point? Are they just kind of like?
I don't know. Doing it. They usually like I've seen them break things off into like tear and smaller pieces. And then they can like, put it down? Yeah, yes, but it's usually like you'll see them like picking. And they'll use the ones by their face the smaller ones to like hold it to and then they can like eat from there. Sometimes they use their larger claws. Depending on the animal. Sometimes I target closer to their face or not attached to the food or sometimes I try to get them to like hold it far away from them.
(21:59):
What do you think is the biggest piece of food one of the spider crabs can eat in one bite
One bite small, like it's pretty small. Like even when I feed them like small shrimp. They still tear it up? Yeah,
they lose tiny.
They want to digest? Well,
they do. That's
fair. If there's like a clam or a muscle or something that's closed, do you offer them those things? And how do they open them?
(22:20):
Yes, I personally tend to open them slightly to cheat it a little bit and then they but they can if it is closed. They can like stick their their claws in and kind of like wedge it and open it. Ours live a life of luxury and therefore a little lazy like most animals we have here. And so I kind of cheated a little bit so that they can just like pop that little left so
(22:46):
you can clean up after correctly. Yes for you. Yes,
we got it started.
Yeah, we especially with crustaceans, we track how much each individual is eating or when they're eating a lot because them stopping their feeds. If it's not normal is usually a big indicator that they're going to molt. And when they molt, we want to make sure that they're separated from the other animals. And so we kind of try to make sure to watch and tag that every individual is eating tell
(23:14):
it's coming. Yeah, speaking of malt. Yeah, I was going to ask you about how you partition off the habitat to because they become soft, right?
Yes. So for our spider crabs in general, we have like this makeshift barrier that we can just put on a corner of the exhibit. And if we think anything's going to happen any molting, or recently, we had a crab that underwent some surgery, so we put them back there, hops are actually really cool. And so we can put the that in the exhibit. And so they're still like in the same environment and the crabs around them, but none of the crabs can like climb over it, we make it so that it's like flat, and there's no like holes because they can climb things with the little holes in them. And they'll just hang out there until they're nice and harden wood crabs or crustaceans in general molt it's a pretty violent process for them. And when they come out, they're very vulnerable and they're very soft. And if you do not get it in time, you will probably not have that individual anymore. It's a pretty violent process between everyone.
(24:20):
And does it kind of spur the other crabs to attack each other or I
don't know if it spurs but it's almost always like they can sense of relief. Yeah.
your guards down.
Yeah, exactly. It's
secure, like, literally,
and it's also so not only when your shell is completely off, are you vulnerable, but like while they're undergoing the molting process, it can be as quick as like 2530 minutes but it can also last like overnight, and basically like they shove their body out of a hole of their old shell and if anything happens if they get stuck if they get torn there. pretty much done. And so if anyone is around and bothering them, there's a good chance that the animals not going to survive. That's
(25:07):
it's so it's really cool to see, we have been able to get some videos of it. And that's interesting. Sometimes it just depends on the the animal how long it takes maybe how big they are? Well,
yeah, but I think it's like, it's not even species specific per se. It's even just like animal specific.
Do they look different when they've just freshly melted?
(25:30):
They're beautiful. Yes, they have like they're perfect. There's not like. So what's really cool about molting is like, we would love our animals to molt regularly, because it's means that they're healthy, and they're growing, but also it, they can regrow their legs when they're molting. So, spider crabs, especially their legs are very long and spindly, and they'll fall off sometimes, in the wild, that will happen if the like a predator is attacking them. Sometimes they get caught on something. But when they do a molt, that leg grows back. And then if they've had any, like, holes in their care, EPIs or if there's what's called like black spot disease, it's usually either gone or a lot smaller in that next Mall. It's basically like a brand new shiny car like they are perfect. And beautiful. Yeah,
(26:25):
I have a question. But I'm not 100% sure how to ask it. So after your leg fell off, like a predator ate their leg, and they were molting again, does do they have like, is there something there? Or does it regrow with the shell coming in? Like, do they not have like meat there anymore?
Like what happens to regrow there, from my understanding the like, soft part of the crab underneath, like starts to grow more, even right before it molds, so they're already kind of getting ready. So I think that muscle, or that flesh is sort of exists, it exists and it's starting to grow again. And then when they come out, then it's like,
(27:06):
does it take a couple of months to fully regrow it? Or is it pretty much? quitters? mulig?
I think it depends on the animal, but I think you can get like almost a full regrowth.
Yes. Very impressive. That is how often are they molting typically
depends on the animal. So for our spider crabs, because of how cold they are, and how big they are, they tend to mold the least. It can be yours here at the Aquarium we tend to see like one molds from them while we have them. Other smaller crabs that we have, we can see molds. Like once a year, twice a year, we have some lobsters on exhibit that are a little they're pretty young. So they're pretty small. And they're still growing. But we would like one of them malted like every two months. So beautiful. Yeah, they're just Yeah. So it really varies, but a very beautiful lobster. Right, exactly. But as they get older, they tend to molt less, because that's how they're going to regrow. And because it takes so much effort, and it's such a stressful process. Yeah, we would love for them to melt a little bit more. But is
(28:16):
there anything that can spur them all to like, like a change in the water temperature or some sort of fit to hypothetically
things have been tried, where you can increase or decrease but usually increase the water temperature to kind of spur that on? Sometimes if you add like something else to the water to change it up. It can do it. But honestly, it's not a foolproof plan. Usually, like there's no hard concrete way to make a crown mold when they're ready. It's when they're ready. on their own time.
(28:47):
Yeah.
It would be nice if we could induce it though, because we have a few that were like you're getting a little dirty.
You need a mannequin? Yeah.
Do our individual crabs have names they
don't have names. At the moment at least, naming an animal at least in our department is kind of specific to the person who has it there are some people who are very into naming some people who are not into naming I'm kind of an in between I name some things and I don't name others. What we do have is we do have them tagged. So originally, we had them tagged with zip ties and colors and so they were kind of known by their color. And then right now we have them actually removed the zip ties and we basically added this like.of It's not paint but essentially like looks like paint on the back of them to tell them apart. And so we use like a mixture of like a coral glue and what's called mica powder. To kind of ID them jazz them up a little bit jazz them up. Yeah, it's pretty nice. We discovered this a little bit ago. Originally from learn from tagging some outplanting for abalone I believe and But it's nice because if ties can fall off, and then if you have a bunch of animals in there, and you don't know which one it is, it's a little bit difficult. But this, it stays on their shell. And so it kind of stays with them. And
(30:11):
that helps you keep track of leading Yes. Who's acting up? Yes.
So they don't technically have names, but they
have colors. They have colors. Beautiful. Which one's your favorite?
Oh, my favorite. There's one that's yellow, pink. And he likes to say on the top of the structure in like the sea of white anatomies of white maternity, anemones, anemones. And so I kind of like to think he's like sitting in the clouds. So he's a little funny. And then, blue, white is our oldest one who's the one who just underwent surgery. And he's, he's a little he's the like, least dominant. So he's like, he's chill. So I like him to?
(30:55):
Well, I'd love to hear about this surgery and kind of what vetcare are crabs receive in just a little bit more about that?
Sure. Yeah. So like I said, blue, white is our oldest crab that we currently have. And because of that, he has some pretty severe shell rot, unfortunately. And a lot of invertebrate medicine is still very experimental, or we know nothing about it. And it's kind of just trial and error. And so we worked with our vet team to be like, what should we do about this, he was still he's still eating, still acting normally. But it was looking pretty bad. And we were starting to get some questions from guests and from our staff. And so what we actually came up with is we made a mold of his therapists from this really cool new product, whose name I'm forgetting. It's basically like kind of like, a little bit soft moldable silicone, for lack of a better word. And we painted it orange, and we basically sanded down the area and cleaned it up. And we glued it on and it literally looks like part of a regular shell. And while this helps, obviously, cosmetic lengthwise, it's also thought that it's going to help stop the spread of this rot, because we're basically smothering all the bacteria or anything else that's stuck in there. And it should extend his life by quite a bid. But yeah, it was never done before. And it's pretty cool. We tried different ways to see how it was going to attach. And we like to make the mold, we basically put playdough around the area to like stop it to stop the little gel that we put in there to harden around it. So I just played with Play Doh on a crab and then let that sit. And then we filled that mold up. And then we tried a couple different ways because we kind of had to make it soft enough that it was gonna bend but not so soft. It was gonna break. And so far, so good. It looks pretty cool.
(32:58):
Very cool. That's fascinating. We
had a little crab facelift. Yeah,
a little facelift, and he looks 10 years younger.
It could be 110.
But we don't know, we don't know. That's fast. Is
there any concern that with his next malt that might impact sort of how he molds or is it they molt so infrequently? And he's so old, come off
with the mold? Yeah. So
(33:19):
in theory, if he molds again, which would be awesome, but it shouldn't impact it, because it's like, kind of in the top portion. And they usually will like come up. They're like, but area. And so in theory, it shouldn't impact and if they he does, and that molting, that area should be reduced in size. If anything. That's
really cool. Yeah, I'm gonna go look for facelift grab.
(33:40):
Yes. Yeah.
That's awesome. What about just in general, do they get annual checkups or just kind of something you're you're diving with them, you can notice the things are going on? Yeah,
so when we dive with them, we obviously are taking a closer look and scrubbing at them. But they do get twice a year we do what's called a welfare exam on them, and they get an extra special one. So we will lift each crab up individually to the top of the water. It's usually like a three person process, we usually have someone in the water diving, who goes and scoops up the crab and we bring them up. And then the people on top, we take pictures, both on the top and the bottom, and of any problems that we see. And then we have a special form that basically is a drawing of a crab on it. And we mark anything that we've noticed and we give like overall remarks, we look over all of their legs, all their claws, and look for any new spots on them if they have anything broken. And then we get some measurements on them and then we put them back and then we swapped to the next crabs, so they get that twice a year. We try not to handle our crabs, any extra than we have to it's a little bit stressful on them. But it's a good way to like get good eyes on them and to watch the progression of any spots that we're noticing or anything concerning.
(34:58):
Can they support their weight of their therapists on their legs out of water.
No, not really. Yeah,
I was gonna ask yeah, there's mental to them for to be out of water for extended. So it's
not necessarily detrimental. Actually, people have been known to ship these guys dry, meaning that they literally just put like wet paper towels around them when they ship them. It's not the preferred way. But they can survive like that. And so they can be out of water. So for like, for example, when we were doing the surgery, we had them out of water, we had water running over their gills, like we would have fish. But if the outside of them, as long as they're sitting and kind of like on a supported surface, they're fine. But yeah, when we take a crap out of water, and we put them back, we have to do what's called burping a crop tells you basically, air gets trapped inside their therapists. And if you leave it in there, it'll create air bubbles around their gills, which will dry out and then eventually kill them. So what we do is we basically put them in the water and we hold them, and we tilt them like face down, and we just kind of rock them back and forth. And you'll see like, air bubbles just coming out. And you keep doing that until the air bubbles are gone. And then they're good to go. And he dropped them in time
(36:12):
to burp the next video. I love coming
our technical term for it. That's amazing. But yeah, we do that with pretty much all of our crustaceans, if we take them out of the water just because they have like that air that can get trapped inside that. That's adorable. Yeah,
that's really cool. Oh, cool. What about we talked a little bit about it already, too, but maybe their personality. So kind of the social dynamic. Inside of the exhibit. You said yellow pink kind of has a more spunky personality. It's like clouds. Clouds.
(36:44):
Yeah. Yeah, they each kind of have their own personalities, some are a little bit more dominant, some are a little bit more shy and reserved. They are always doing I think like Aaron said earlier, weird things. Every time you walk by the tank, you never know sometimes you'll just see them sitting on their butt chilling, and you're like, Okay, I guess it's just like a quiet day. But then other days you find them like, all huddled in a circle facing each other with their arms up. And I don't know whether they're summoning something from the nether world, or if they're plotting our revenge, like I don't know, but they're doing something. And other times asking for more burping, maybe birth me. And then sometimes we have this side wall that they can kind of climb. And so you'll see them sometimes climb up, and they're very silly, they will climb up it. And then there's a pipe that runs right above the top of the window that helps to bring in water. And they'll like attach to it. And you'll just like see them crawling on that one thing like hanging from the window. But I've seen them like one up there. And then the other three are on the bottom with their arms up like they're trying to catch him or cheer him on. I'm not sure. But there's like always something going on in there. Hopefully, you yes, there. And there. I've worked with another spider crab that if she didn't like the food that you gave her, she would like push it away and kind of like shove her head to the side and like they're very sassy divas by their divas but also not not the smartest for them. Yeah,
(38:22):
honestly, respect for us. Yeah.
That's amazing. I love that. Um, what about the other animals? Do we still have those fish with them.
We don't currently have any fish with them we have in the past, they can live with fish, you have to be a little bit specific on what's in there. Because it has to be a balance between it's not small enough for them to get but also not so big that it's going to bother them. We used to have what's called a cow caught in there. We moved him out just because he was getting a little aggressive with feeding. He was stealing food directly from the spider crabs like cans and they just didn't defend themselves. So we would like to add some more fish in there. That's our goal eventually. But we would love to make it a little bit more Japanese specific since they are but we do have what's called a treaty mon enemies and they're, they're kind of all over the rock worth or Plumose anemones. Yeah, it's pretty funny because I learned recently there's a group of crabs called decorator crabs, and they usually will put things on their shells to kind of blend in. And I didn't know that spider crabs are actually kind of considered one. Which makes sense because every once in a while you'll find these giant anatomies stuck to the back of the crabs and you're like how are you so slow that an anatomy got on you? But I think that's just a thing they do. So every once in a while you just see crabs with like one or two giant white anatomies just on their backs just to make themselves look a little prettier. You know,
(39:49):
gorgeous. Yeah, really pretty.
Probably yellow pink.
Yes, probably yellow.
I know one thing about yellow that he loves. He does love the anatomy. So that's really cool. Yeah, I wonder if they put them on or if they like, line up and let the anatomy like,
you know, sometimes so every once in a while the anatomies will like, detach. And that's how they move around. And so you'll find them on the floor of the exhibit. And so I don't know if it just like they happen to be in the right place the right time, or if they're specifically, I haven't specifically seen them, like pick it up and put it on there. But it does happen.
(40:24):
Maybe they prank each other by putting it on
me for that to be true.
More beautiful.
Yes, they're like, I look prettier than you. Angel
Wings. Yeah, it
wouldn't be really nice, especially when you see those enemies you will understand. Absolutely. Cool. A lot of good crap.
(40:45):
That's amazing. Well, we have some questions from social media. The first one is how do they blink? Or if they blink?
So I don't feel like I don't have a specific answer. I know that they their eye stalks, like they move them so like they're moving all the time. If you are get too close, they'll like pull them in. And they're very like expressive, like they will like you can see like, Oh no, they're mad. But I don't know, the actual mechanism of how I'm going to be honest. I don't know how humans blink me. So they just do it. They just do it. Yeah.
(41:15):
Do they do it at a frequency if they're not being disturbed? Like, will they pull their eyes in? Not that I've seen so maybe it's not blinking. Maybe it's like
protect? Yeah, I feel like it's more protection.
Like, that's a soft part of me. I gotta
yeah, like I feel like it's usually like when you come towards them with like a little brush and then they're like, No,
(41:36):
do not scrub it and be fair if you put it to do that. Yeah. Cool. Why do well do Japanese spider crabs? Ours are pretty bright red here are kind of like a red to orange ombre, a to white, yellow, kind of? Do they kind of vary in color? Or is that typical for the species?
(41:59):
That's pretty typical. They might vary slightly in shape. But I've never seen one that's like, a different color. But it might be out there. Maybe
an albino Japanese spider
blue one
a blue? I see a good question. Someone wants to know, why do crabs walk sideways?
(42:20):
So I'm pretty sure it's because it's just the easiest way. They have like a lot of legs. And they're usually especially like spider crabs pretty long. And so if you go forward, there's like more chance of entanglement and like tripping. And I think it's just the fastest way that they can get away from the animals. It's
fair, do lobsters walk forward?
(42:42):
They they walk forward, but when they're like jetting away with their tail, then they go like,
Oh, okay, that's right. I have seen that. Lobster swimming is super,
it's really weird. And so when you're trying to catch them out, like you have to be like prepared for both sides, because they're going to like back away from you.
And the spider crab species is the largest. Correct right, sir. What's What about on the other end of the spectrum, tiny crabs
(43:06):
smallest crab is called a pea crab. Oh, and it is apparently about seven to eight millimeters in width. So compare that to 12 feet. It's a little bit different.
A little too tiny little guy.
I know he. But there's like 1000s of species of Christ. There's like over 4000 species. So they have evolved tear everywhere. They're everywhere. There used to
(43:31):
be these little tiny sand crabs that I would always run into when I was in Hawaii and list on the beach. And some of them were just minuscule. There must have been baby crabs, I'm guessing but you just see them everywhere. And they would range from like, maybe three inches across to like, the tiniest like a centimeter. And I remember always really liking those crabs. And then there were some scary really big like sort of dark brown crabs and I was like, zealots
(43:51):
are gonna pinch me are polarizing even as Yes, we were talking about it earlier. Like you hear people turn the corner and look at the spider crabs and they're like, oh, and then you have fear people be like, Oh, those look delicious.
Those are beautiful. No, it's never beautiful. It's either scary, delicious, or ill. Those are like the three I always hear for cool
(44:12):
are the ones that people eat their legs sometimes.
I think that's usually king crabs. No,
yeah, King is trying
to eat our crab didn't even eat them.
Yeah, go here. I think for crab Yeah, the spider crabs. I'm not sure about their market like things since they're only found in Japan. And I believe there is like some restrictions on when you can get them. They also live like very deep down so it's a little bit harder to get
(44:38):
all the spider crabs eat is dead whale. So
yeah, basically. Yeah.
Well, I feel like spider crabs too. They don't seem like they have a lot of meat on them. They're
pretty. Like they're all like they're Yeah, they're they're not like yeah, they're not like they're not
beefy. Yeah. Don't have
beef legs. Legs. True
crab like that's already so
(45:00):
many questions answered about crabs truly
and some new questions formed that I didn't even know that I had in your crustacean conversations. The last question Would you like to take is the most serious question out of all of them.
Someone wants to know, do crabs rave?
I mean, I, you know, I can't give a definitive answer on this because I'm telling you, they make weird powwows true. And so I don't know what's going on. That could be their form of a rave. It's possible like, they always got their arms up and then they already they might be partying. I wouldn't doubt it. If someone was going to. It would be our spider. They seem like party and the end of the day, who knows what they do at night.
(45:41):
How many do we have for before currently for bachelors? Raven. I love that for them.
I love it. That's amazing. Oh, cool. Thank you, Melissa for coming on. That was so cool. Yeah, thank
you guys. It's awesome.
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