Ologies with Alie Ward - Carcinology (CRABS) Part 2 with Adam Wall

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Hairy crabs! Shell swaps! Carcinization! Will we all evolve to be crabs? What’s with having one giant claw? Why would a crab stab you? Adam Wall, a carcinologist at the Natural History Museum of LA covers all of this and more in this thrilling conclusion of our two-part episode on crabs. Also: did the Little Mermaid get it right, and does Adam enjoy being interviewed? Listen to the end to find out.And if you missed Part 1, listen here. Part 1 covers:  Claw hands! Beady eyes! Pinching forces that could crack your skull! The tiniest to the most hauntingly giant crabs, discovering new species, crabs that are NOT crabs, sea monkeys, hairy crabs, hermit crabs, crab dongs, crab butts, crab butters, the secret history of secret Maryland spices, Amelia Earhart rumors, giant invasive crabs in Norway, behind the scenes Hollywood crabs, and so much more. View Adam’s papers on ResearchGateFind him barely ever posting on TwitterA donation went to NHM.org’s Marine Biodiversity Center’s fairy shrimp researchConsider a $5 or $10 birthday donation to SkypeAScientist.comMore episode sources and linksSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesOther episodes you may enjoy: Teuthology (SQUIDS), Teuthological Ludology (ACTUAL SQUID GAMES), Phallology (PENISES), Scorpiology (SCORPIONS), Pectinidology (SCALLOPS),  Echinology (SEA URCHINS & SAND DOLLARS), Scatology (POOP), Biomineralogy (SHELLS), Oceanology (OCEANS), Lutrinology (OTTERS), Conotoxinology (CONE SNAIL VENOM), Cheloniology (SEA TURTLES), Cnidariology (CORAL)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, stickers, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio ProductionsTranscripts by Aveline MalekWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oh hey, it's your favorite thermos, rusting in an airport lost and found again. Alleyward. And welcome, you've made it to part two of Crabs. You're here. If you skipped part one, what the fuck are you doing here? Go to part one. Part one.

Go to part one. This is part two. Okay. There's a reason we put these in order. And in part one, you're going to learn how a Brachyron true crab differs from an animurian non-true crab, how some crabs hang out in pods, speculations about Amelia Earhart's fate, the weird history behind old bay seasoning, if you should eat the guts

of a crab, huge land-dwelling hermit crabs that could crush a skull and what cancers and cancers have in common and so much more. So we're now back with part two to address questions from listeners who signed up at patreon.com slash It costs one American dollar a month to belong and you can submit questions before we record and I might say your name. So thanks patrons as well as everyone strutting around in your oligies t-shirts and such from oligiesmerch.com. And of course, thank you to everyone who leaves reviews and subscribes and rates the show.

That helps genuinely so much and it's free to do. Plus, I read every single review so I can read one. And here's one from JG0349 who wrote that whether driving or dozing off before bed. This podcast has saved my last fighting brain cells from spontaneous combustion. If you read this, understand that all of your blood, sweat, and tears do not go unnoticed. I feel very noticed and thank you for that review this week, JG0349. My two brain cells salute yours. Okay, on to carcinology part two. So let's crack into all of your questions with a very dedicated, dry, wise, and wonderful crab expert.

Does he hate me? Does he like being interviewed? Listen to the end for his honest assessment of hanging out with me on a Sunday morning at his workplace. The beloved Natural History Museum of Alley County's dungeon of dungeness and other crabs with researcher, taxonomist, crustacean enthusiast, and carcinologist Adam Wall. Okay, let's creep out of our shells with this first one from patron Halle Brown and Halle Myers. Do they have dicks?

Crabs? Yeah. Did you pluralize it on purpose because they have... Yeah. Yeah. Do they have more than one dick? Yeah. So this is like a thing.

Crustaceans in general tend to have paired reproductive structures. So their male crabs have guiano pods, and these are a thing that you could think of as fulfilling the same purpose as a penis. They are actually modified pleopods, two of them, and they transfer sperm from the male into the female's guiana pores. The female has these two pores where she can receive sperm. And yeah, if you want to imagine, yes. Just for the record, Adam did not say that crabs have dicks because they don't have dicks. But he said, if we want to imagine gona pods as a pair of penises, you're incorrect, but you may do so for the sake of simplicity or just for your own amusement. Also, if you wish that we just had a whole episode about dicks,

we do. And phylogy is linked in the show notes. It's a real study. Okay, onward, upward. Let's move on to some more serious questions. Earl of Gremelkin wants to know, do they have a butthole as long as we're in that region of the crab? I mean, what does crab poo look like? Crab poo can be pretty liquidy. That's what I would say. A lot of that, it depends on the crab's diet. Okay. All replaced. Olivia, are all your patreons going to be asking?

No. Okay. This is just up top. Okay. Sorry, you know, we just, we need to know. Olivia Alassin wants to know, why is there tooth in their stomach? Is that flimflam? Is there a tooth in their stomach? This is a question I never would have thought to ask because stomach and teeth is

just a pair of nightmare words. But patron, Alia Meyer's boyfriend, paper wasp enthusiast, and Earl of Grammle can have questions about crabs and their salty pie holes and then what lies beyond. I have a gastric mill. It's not because they need to chew things up. Okay. They need to break things down mechanically. Yeah. Does their mouth collect things? It gets shoved in there,

and then is it kind of like a crop and a bird? Similar type of function, but yeah, very different structures, but yeah. Okay, if you need to just know more about this ASAP, you can see the 2011 paper, Characterization of Cellulose and Hemicellulose Digestion in Land Crabs with special reference to Cheek Carsoidia natalis, which explains that the ossicles that form in the gastric mill extend into the lumen of the stomach and are formed into three calcified, chitin-covered teeth.

And I know you're hungry for more on crab, stomach teeth, and gastric mills. So according to the 2019 paper, Growling from the Gut, Co-option of the Gastric Mill for Acoustic Communication in Ghost Crabs. So ghost crabs clatter their little stomach teeth in this growling sound to scare things away.

Ghost crabs, I'm sorry, but that is haunting. But now on the upside, the words, Decapod gastric mill have meaning to you. And now you can begin dates with crabs kind of have stomach teeth. How about that? Genetosaur, how soft are soft shell crabs? Are they leathery like a leatherback turtle? So soft shell crabs are, I would say softer than a leatherback turtle because those have, lever is pretty tough, right? A molted crab is pretty fragile. Please don't touch me. It's very fragile. No more near as tough as leather.

But maybe a similar type of texture kind of thing going on. Is the soft shell crab just a recently molted one, or is it a completely, it's a soft shell all the time? Oh yeah. So this is fun. How, yeah, not species. Soft-shelled crabs are just crabs that they are serving to you right after it's molted. Now, you're going to ask the question, how do you have soft-shelled crabs because things only molt periodically and it's really difficult to catch a crab because we essentially, all the crabs that we eat are caught, right? Yeah. So they do this thing where they catch crabs.

And they put them into cages, and they keep them until it's time for them to molt. Then they molt, and then they get turned into shuffle crabs. What kind of species are they? There's several species. I think one of the more popular ones is actually a swimming crab, so something like the blue crab. I had no idea. I had no idea.

So yes, if like me, you've often enjoyed like a spider roll with that crunch and chew of kind of like a bug-like texture, you now are burdened with the knowledge that that crab was harvested at its most vulnerable within hours of molting. Are they like the veal of the crab world? That's for you to grapple with philosophically. I get it. I'm right there with you. But what about crabs with steamy kind of shells? Patrons, Mary Long's two-year-old and first-time question-askers Lizzie R. and Gian wanted to know about crustacean color schemes. Why do their shells change color when they come in contact with very hot water? Dnature in a protein as I imagine. Okay. So a lot of the coloration of crustaceans are these pigments that are probably getting denatured as broken apart and may stop being the thing that they are at these higher temperatures and their colors will change.

So yeah, when a pigment is exposed to heat, the pigment gets separated from a membrane and a bright color can shine through. And for more on the shellfish particulars, you can see the 2022 paper in the journal Physics Today titled, Why do lobsters Color When Cooked? Innovative crystallographic techniques help solve an intriguing scientific and culinary puzzle. Also speaking of visual feasts, patrons Olivia Eliason, Kate Munker, Naomi Jane, Matt Herschel,

Fee Cameron and Emily P want to know what they can see through their cute, beady little peepers, in their words. A lot of people want wanna know about eyes. What's going on? What do they see with those stock eyes? Kate Timbs wants to know, why do they look so cute when they're cleaning their little eye stocks?

Real question, are they cleaning or are they just eating the stuff growing on them? Just nomin' on it. Why can't one thing be two things? It can, I'm sure, can be both. Yeah, I think it can be both. There are definitely situations where I think they're eating it and there's probably definitely situations where they're much more just concerned with getting it off of their eyes.

Digital systems in animals in general are absolutely amazing. This is Adam excited and I love it. They're complex for these multifaceted eyes. They don't resolve things the same way that human eyes do for sure. Yeah, what are they looking at? How do they see it? I don't think they resolve images as well as we do. So it's gonna be like a lot of light not light. Let's take a sideways stroll through a 1986 Journal of Comparative Physiology article titled Eyes, Eye Stocks, and the Visual World of Semi-Terrestrial Crabs, which wants you to know that narrow fronted species have their eyes close together on these elongated vertically

oriented eye stocks. And they see in a narrow vertical band, but broad-fronted species have their eyes far apart on short eye stocks and they don't have this better band of vertical resolution. So the narrow-fronted crab folks with the taller eye stocks are known to live in relatively flat terrains and it may help the critters get better info as to depth with just a single eye at a time. And I also figured I'd just take a trip through the 2019 study, parallel processing of polarization

and intensity information in Fiddler Crab vision from the Journal of Scientific Advances. Okay, in this set, so yeah, Fiddler crabs process polarization and intensity information independently and in parallel. And this uses what's called a diapolitic system with two channels of photoreceptors, like some insects and cephalopods have. And this works really well for fiddler crabs because of their mud flat environment where things are like pretty goopy and brown, but polarization information can tell them a lot about the sky and reflections on the mud flat, much more than just contrast.

Also in looking this up, Google kept correcting over and over, dipolatic vision and taking these straight to pages about diplomatic missions. And I'm like, yo, I am not here to learn about Molotov cocktails, firebombing an embassy. Thank you. That's for another day. But right now I need to understand crab eye stocks. Let's, can we move on? Is it appropriate to ask, in Nova's words,

is eating crabs sustainable? Alexander wanted to know if invasive king crabs were a thing. Could they find invasive king crabs and make it ethically better for eating them? I've had a lovely one in it. Is it sustainable to eat crabs? So Monterey Bay Aquarium has a really nice list for sustainable fish options.

So that would be a good resource, I think. So many people obviously are like, how do I eat them? So I asked the Monterey Bay Aquarium via just a search bar on their website. And currently the best buys for sustainability are Blue Crab from Chesapeake Bay, Blue King Crab from the Bering Sea, Golden King Crab from the Bering Sea,

and Dungeonous from the Pacific is a good alternative buy, but just be aware of seasonal concerns and these harmful algal blooms that can happen. But of course, I don't know, if you're headed to Russia or Norway or I guess even the UK now, help eat all those invasive spider walking king crabs that were introduced in the 1960s that we talked about in part one.

Also send me a G.K.L. invite. I just, I want to help out. Or maybe, maybe you could not eat the crabs, you could adopt one of them, kind of like a feral chihuahua. Name it Roger, fall in love with it. Red Cedar and Ten Bowens want to know thoughts on keeping crabs as pets. Hermit crabs are often kept in bad conditions, but the idea of a pet crab is whimsical. They say, you mentioned coconut crabs being kept as pets.

Mm-hmm. So the coconut crabs that I'm aware of that are being kept as pets are like, they're like just running around the island and- Oh, they're free range. They're like outdoor coconut crabs. Kind of basically, yeah. They're being fed and they seem to be happy type of thing. My research focuses on crabs in the wild. We do very minimal work with live specimens to do our research. And it's when we do something with them, they're in a nice habitat. And they're just there for a little bit.

Like, we're not keeping specimens and crabs in captivity for a very long time. You're not putting little hats on them and celebrating their birthdays? Me personally, no. How do you know those people? You know crab parents? Yeah, I know people who have done similar things like that. Yeah. And you're like to each their own kind of...

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And patrons Olivia Eliason, Johnna McHugh, Lovely Bone, Sarah King, Isabel Newman, 23, Skiddoe, and Jude Scout Campbell wanted to know about hermit crab instincts. And if you've ever seen the David Attenborough BBC clip of hermit crabs, you will think about it at least once a week for the rest of your life. And in it, Sir Attenborough narrates footage of hermit crabs lining up by size and waiting

for just the right grouping and moment for a simultaneous shell swap. They arrange themselves into an orderly queue. The biggest at the front, smallest at the back. They're lining up with one aim to exchange properties. And that leaves each one with a bigger shell to grow into. And though for a moment it leaves their soft little butt vulnerable to the roasting sun and hungry birds, it's better than 9% interest rates over 30 years in a precarious job market. But how are they better at finding a home without a landlord or a mortgage than we are? So according to the 1990 study, Shell Exchange in Hawaiian Hermit Cbs. Prior to a shell exchange, one hermit

crab will approach and then wrap on the shell of another like, you know, knock, knock. And then the crabs size each other up to see if their shells are a better fit for the other one. And this is called the negotiations model of behavior as opposed to the aggressor model in which one crab is forcibly shell jacked.. Now you may be at ease though, I know I was, to learn that the negotiations model is more successful than the aggressor model. And it all just takes place because one brave initiator approaches and drums on another shell. And speaking of just music to your ears.

So listener Caitlin Morrison shares that their mom taught them that wild hermit crabs will emerge when you hum to them. So I guess use that hot tip. But in terms of having hermit crabs as pets, it's pretty specific. Their enclosure should be between 72 and 82 degrees with a relative humidity between 60 and 80%. And hermit crabs in the wild, they have lifespans to over a decade, but on average they survive in captivity just a few months. Like my childhood hermit crab, RIP. And I'm sorry. But where do they come from in case you meet one and you want to strike up a conversation? So most hermit crabs are sourced from the Caribbean or the Florida Keys or South America.

And bad news, they are not farmed. They're usually just captured. They're forced into not happy crabby conditions. And if they don't get sent to pet stores across the world, their shells might just be spray painted, very tacky colors, and then hawked like souvenirs to some local tourists with sunburns and beach braids. So if you really want a hermit crab, you can rescue one from Craigslist, from people who are like, I'm so over this,

why did I get this hermit crab? I have so many regrets in life, like this hermit crab. And you can also find groups like the hermitcrabassociation.com, they're crab swappers and rescuers. So they match people looking for crabs with people who are looking to get rid of crabs. But what if you encounter any kind of crab and it tries to shank you?

What does one do? So patron Jay Romsbald wants to know about the epically relatable crab with a knife jiff, which originated with this 2014 YouTube clip titled Gangster Crab with Knife, starring a real life medium sized crab, which is backing away from the camera and it's clutching a steak knife. And it sparked this meme called, you mess with Crabbo, you get a stabbo. And I wish I could tell you,

I wish I could tell you that knife wielding crabs are rare, but kind of not. They're kind of around. There was this June 2022 New York Post headline that warned, camper awakes to knife carrying killer crab a tent, lucky to be alive, he says. And the guy said that, not the crab. But this article detailed how this man was staying on the uninhabited Kamaka Island in Okinawa, Japan, and was woken at 2 a.m. by a scratching sound outside his tent, and he investigated to discover that his adversary was, yes, a

giant crab and, yes, with a knife. Something out there. Hey, bro. Hey, bro. Hey, bro. I need that knife. I'm really curious what you think you're going to do with that. So it's got to be the shininess, right?

The metal knives. I'm thinking, no, I looked it up and crabs have pretty good snooters or rather these chemo sensory abilities and their weapons that they picked up likely had residue of meat or other crappy favorites. So if you're on an uninhabited island, you gotta wash your knives, watch out for crabostabos. But what if you are the crab? This next question was asked by so many people, over 50 people, so I'm just gonna shout out

the first time question askers like Sam Gretz, Hannah Bale, Mariah Shemmel, Biro Tavares, and in Jeanette Moss, McCurdy's words, "'Will Earth one day just be a big crab party "'with human crabs and all the other life forms as crabs waving our big claws around? And in first-time question-asker, Kaelin, Iglesias words, crabification? Question mark?

Let's talk about carcinization. Okay. Adam Weaver wants to know, will I too one day become a crab? So many people want to know evolutionarily if it's flimflam that everything evolves toward crabs. So that's an appropriate question. It's just a really difficult question. Okay. So I intellectually have a really hard time engaging on this.

Okay. As someone who studies crustaceans overall, on this as someone who studies crustaceans overall that crabs are towards the end of the evolutionary tree of crustacea. So they are the form that has required the most number of changes to get there, a lot of changes to become more crab-like. There are a lot of species that have branched into different ecological niches and do really cool things where they just eat completely different things. So there's a lot of separation of resources that there can be a lot of species in the same area. So I know this is probably the question that the internet wants to know the most about

because I have people ask this question to me in my personal life and I'm just like, ugh, problematic. So we're not necessarily all turning into crabs. It's just a later form of evolution because it's very specialized. It's or rather it's no. Your listeners really need to be able to see my face right now. I know. You look horrified.

Um, yeah. No one should worry about our, our evolutionary trajectory. It would require a lot of really difficult changes for us to become crab-like. Okay. Man, that's a bummer. One of the reasons why crabs are so special is that it is really easy for crustaceans in general, arthropods in general, and crustaceans have done a really amazing job of it, is very small evolutionary tweaks can result in very different morphologies and sizes and functionalities in crabs. Very subtle mutations will make a claw much bigger and have a slightly

better shape for eating a particular type of animal, right? And that's a good evolutionary accident that makes an advantage and that's great. And that makes for a new species very quickly. So other things evolving into crabs that aren't like arphapods totally doesn't seem like it's going to happen. Could other arthropods converge on a crab form? Yeah, that could make sense. So, for more on this, you can see the 1997 article, Carcinization in the Animera, Factor Fiction, Evidence from Adult Morphology, and that was published in Contributions to Zoology. And this paper looks at the idea put forward by early 1900s carcinologist Lancelot

Alexander Borodale, who coined the term carcinization to describe what is essentially convergent evolution. So that's when a strategy for survival is so fitting to an environment that many species just mutations persist into these similar forms. They're like, that works. Every animal that has that mutation seems to do pretty well. And this includes the king crabs evolution to appear more like a brachioran than its anamurin wonky tailed relatives or the coconut crab losing that hermity need to live inside a snail shell and just coming on land. And Lancelot Alexander Bordale described this as, quote, the many attempts of nature to evolve a crab. I have more terrible news though. In order to become crabs as humans, we'd first have to move our skeleton to the

outside and then we'd have to grow 150% more appendages than what we got. We got to redevelop tails and then we got to gradually lose them. Our belly would have to nest touching our sternum, which is honestly a feat only attainable by like a few Cirque du Soleil performers and maybe some daredevil's who have survived motocross accidents. Also, you'd have to pee out of your face. So, it's a lot of evolutionary work to become a crab. You could split the diff though and you could just crab your legs into a big paper mache snail shell. And even, but even then you'd just be an Anna Miran rather than a true crab. So, you know, I'm not going to judge you, but do what you want. Oh, you need, you need claws, which a lot of patrons are really curious about, such as Lauren

Siebert, Genetosaur, Emily Hebert, Lovely Bites, Hope, Paper Wasp Enthusiast, about to change their whole self-image, and Clark Bennett, who asked, why do some of them have one really beefy giant claw and then one really tiny claw? And we will address that right after the break. But first, we're going to donate to a charity of Adams Choosing, which is the Natural History Museum of LA County, and Adams Research specifically on Fairy Shrimp, which are also sea monkeys,

which you can hear all about in part one. But that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show. All right, claws. What's going on? On the topic of those big claws, what is the evolutionary advantage of a fiddler crab or not necessarily evolving toward bilateral symmetry? Is it advantageous to put more resources into one big claw instead of two medium-sized claws? Hmm, interesting question.

Thank you. So you said evolutionary advantage. Can you define that for me? Maybe they only really need one claw to defend themselves so why spend more time making more muscle maybe evolutionarily wise? They're like, well, I'm making less. I'm an exoskeleton and I really just need one. So let's have this other one kind of hang out smaller. So you can actually like rip claws off of a crab and as it molts it will regenerate that missing appendage very quickly.

Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. And there's lots of crabs that survive just fine with like one claw until like it grows back. Crabs that are in fights, they really want to have two claws. The second they're in a fight where one crab only has one claw and the other crab has a second claw, they're done. Yeah, so I actually off the top of my head, one claw and the other crab has a second claw, they're done. Oh. Yeah.

So I actually off the top of my head couldn't tell you what the purpose of a federal crab's massive asymmetrical claws are where one's very small and one's like really big. If you made me guess it's probably a mating display and in this particular group of animals, apparently maybe bigger is better. They're very cute. They are cute. Okay, but are they cute or are they like hot cute? So you can see the 2018 New York Times piece titled, For Fiddler Crabs, Size Does Matter, which I'm sorry grosses me out because I'm not

sexually attracted to fiddler crabs. But more than half of male fiddler crabs' body weight is that one giant claw. Up to 65% of their body weight is just that one claw. Huh? The fiddler crab females, they dig that. They love it. And in these studies conducted by a Ruskin University team, they found that the faster the, they used robot crabs for this, but they found that the faster the, they used robot crabs for this, but they found that the faster the males wave that little sex hammer around the hotter they appear to the

females. And this New York Times article explains that, quote, the wave means, come hither, I will dig a burrow for us and our eggs, and we will populate the mudflats with fiddler crabs uncountable. Nice. Oh, the bigger the crab to, the longer it survived, which bodes well for your uncountable babies. But how do you break the ice? What do you do? Well, like bumble or parties with a lot of engineers, the lady usually makes the first move. She sees something she likes,

she approaches, and then she tickles the crab on one side of its body, and then things just heat up from there. Speaking of which, Curly Fright and Anna Frazier wanna know if climate change is affecting crabs, temperature-wise. I have to believe that climate change is affecting everything. I have not seen a ton of data where people are tracking like rain shifts, for instance,

which would be a kind of very plausible thing that would happen with crab populations, for instance. Like, ocean's getting warmer here. I'm going to move in a direction where the water is a better temperature for me, right? That is totally a thing that I would expect to happen. Adam says that likely dissolved oxygen levels decrease with higher temperatures, and that drop in dissolved oxygen can also result from better conditions for these huge

algal blooms that eat up a lot of the oxygen and affect other marine life. And one crab that's been threatened by habitat loss and fishing is the horseshoe crab. But Amanda Keegan Newman, Rick T., Jane and Ryan, Mary the Great Fruit, Tamaris, Mish the Fish, Jen McGillivray, Jane Nelson, First-Time Question Asker, Keeley Chavez, and Isabel Newman in Isabel's Word says,

I need to know more about horseshoe crabs. Are they even crabs? They're so wacky looking. Keegan Newman asks, I know horseshoe crabs aren't true crabs. Why aren't they? And also, do all crabs have blue blood like a horseshoe crab? I'm going to guess no. Do crabs have blood? No. They don't really have what we consider blood. They have other fluids that are sort of a similar purpose. It's not blue. Those fluids can have several colors in true crabs. In horseshoe crabs, which your patron correctly points out,

it's not a true crab. That blue color is from the copper-based blood that they have, which I think also isn't really blood, if you technically rate. So no, now crams it off. In fact, they're more closely related to scorpions. And yeah, we do have a Scorpiology episode, we're going to link in the show notes. But this Horseshoe blue blood is called hemolymph and it contains hemosyanin and it's dazzling. It looks like a melted blue raspberry slurpee or a Gatorade frost glacier freeze,

which is kind of apt because not only have these 450 million year old creatures survive dinosaur killing asteroids and stuff and several ice ages, but they might also survive the glaciers that are melting. Might not phase them. And I'd say we'll see, but honestly we're probably not gonna be around for that. But maybe neither will they.

So many populations around the world of horseshoe crabs are stable, but some are listed as vulnerable because these slow moving horseshoe crabs make pretty good fishing bait. And they're harvested for medical research, excuse me. Okay, so horseshoe crab blood has bonkers antibacterial abilities and it contains

something called limelus amoebicite lysate or LAL and it helps biomedical researchers test if vaccine batches are tainted by bacteria. It's one of the only substances that can do that and they're even trying to synthesize it with some success but mostly they're still just using horseshoe crab blood. They're blood, they're thrown back in the ocean, but they don't always survive the bloodletting though, which is another threat to their survival. So how do you repay horseshoe crabs for all of their vaccination help?

Well, if you see any alive horseshoe crabs and they're flipped upside down, that is a cause of death for up to 10% of them. So you can gently approach one and you can pick up a side of the shell and flip them back. And if you can, you can put them back safely into the water. Don't grab them by the tails though, or because they don't like that, they're going to shit talk you forever. Like another 450 million years.

So yeah, totally different systems. Does it piss you off that they're called horseshoe crabs? No. Be honest. It doesn't piss you off? No. Okay. You're like all at that one slip because they're so old. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure why. We'll let it go. Yeah. Connie Connie Bobani wants to know if there's ever been a species of giant crabs like horse-sized crabs. Well, like right now, outside of my office is like a 12-foot wide crab, so, yeah. What's that? That's that Japanese giant spider crab.

Oh my God. Yeah. Let's pop back to the tour of the museum's crab basement to see a spider crab, shall we? Oh my gosh. A spider crab. Yeah, so that's definitely the biggest, the Japanese giant spider crab. The smallest will be a peanut fared, which is a common name for that, is spider crab. Yeah, so that's definitely the biggest, the Japanese giant spider crab. The smallest will be a peanut fared, which is a common name for that, is pea crab.

If you guys like oysters, a great game that you can play is you can, every time you get a fresh oyster served to you, you can look for a small crab that's inside of it. If you see a, what you think is a small crab, there's almost certainly even smaller crab which is the male which has to live inside of the same animal as the female and then they reproduce and then they disperse for young but I actually know an amazing carcinologist Daryl Felder who discovered a new species of pea crab at dinner was about to enjoy an oyster. It was in his mouth. He felt something, spit it out, saw that it was... And he's one of the handful of people in the world who can just look at it and be like, that's a new species.

Oh my God. I guess I have to go talk to the chef now and find out where he sourced his oysters from because I need that for my paper. Also, I need to find the mail that's somewhere in this thing that I just spit out of my mouth. So are they crunchy? I've never so I actually found some for the first time. I found them in oysters from a very upscale well-known local brochure. Okay. And I had been looking for more than a decade for these

things inside of oysters and I finally found a bunch inside of a couple dozen I had bought for a party. Oh my god. But because I saw them I preserved them for science and I did not eat them. Of course. Yeah. Also the species that I found was a super common species. The species I found is almost the size of a nickel. Oh my god. Yeah. And the smallest one is smaller than a grain of rice. Holy smokes.

Yeah. I love that there are some people hoping to get a pearl, and you're like, hope there's a crab in here. Hope there's a pair of crabs in here, honeymoony. I would be much richer if I was wishing for pearls, but no, I'm wishing for crabs. So yeah, smallest crab, biggest crab. Um, a few people want to know how you feel about Yeti crabs,

which are not true crabs. They are anamirans with that different tail, and they look like big hermit crabs. They look a little lobster-y. They're in fact squat lobsters. And two things about them are remarkable. So they have this cream-colored shell, and they're covered with this silky, seemingly sun-kissed, hair-like bristles called seddie, which makes them look kind of like hard-shelled golden retriever puppies with claws.

And they were just discovered in 2005, meaning that as they made their grand debut into the frenzy of public consciousness, it was to the tune of the Garden State soundtrack. Also, their scientific name means Harry Goddess, Kiwa Hirsuta. Naturally, Elaine Wong, First-Same Question Asker, and Gemma needed Adam's thoughts on them. I think they're a poor man's Hasselhoff crab, which was another close related crab that was named, I think, after the Yeti crab that they decided to name the Hasselhoff crab.

After the Hasselhoff that they all loved? Yeah, after David Hasselhoff because it had a hairy chest. Nice. Are those hairs actual hairs? They're seti? What are they? They are seedi. Yeah.

Seedi, thank you. Sorry. Yeah. C-Day. Thank you. Sorry. Yeah. One of the last forms of elitism is anyone trying to pronounce or correct anyone else's pronunciation when they know what they're talking about. I'm like, yeah, I know what you're talking about. I'm not going to make you say it the same way I say it.

How do you feel about GIF and GIF? Do you want to get upset? You're going to say GIF. No, I'm going to say GIF. I and Giff. Do you want to get upset? You're going to say Giff. No, I'm going to say Giff. I say Giff. Do you know why do you say Giff? Because he says it's pronounced Giff. Exactly.

So that's the reason why. Yes. Like, are you going to tell someone how to pronounce their name? Exactly. Yeah. I mean, do you want to like look at them and say, you know, you did a really bad job of spelling your own name, but this is, you want to pronounce it that way? Okay. Yes.

If I feel like you have to respect how people want themselves to be represented. So yes, thank you. I say Jeff and I get shit for it. Yeah, me too. Because we get shit for everything. This next question about hitchhikers of the crotch was asked by Jenna Orshiro, Storm, and Mish the Fish. Does the STI even look like a crab? Body lice named crabs.

Does that piss you off? It does not piss me off. It's the source of a lot of really fun jokes, which I think are adorable. This is where I'm going to say, mercifully, I have no idea what they look like. And if you made me guess, you should probably talk to, I don't know, vermites? Vermites? I think they're mites. Yeah. So yeah, though they have these front little pinchers like crabs, these underpants roommates are actually insects. And despite everyone's assumption, including mine, they're not even mites. They're

technically in the class insecta, not arachnida. And I don't know, as long as we're learning things, I'd also like you to know that despite being called thyrus pubis, they can infect your eyelashes if you get too close to other areas. I also want you to know that my computer's search history is an absolute shisho. A few people wanted to know about their walk. Do all crabs skitter sideways? Scuttle?

Scuttle, skitter. Alyssa Gregory said skitter. Is it scuttle, skittle? Scuttling or crab walking? Mm-hmm. Yeah, do they all? Some of them do it more than others. I think it's a very easy

walking gate for something that has legs of that particular orientation and structure. So a lot of them do it, but I don't think all of them do it now. I think they can all do it. I don't know if all of them use it as their primary mode of locomotion. I mean some of them swim, that was new to me. The swimming ones also crawl around. God, they're so cute. Kay Gatenby wants to know, what is your personal favorite crab and why?

Personal favorite crab and why? Why, personal favorite crab and why? Why does it have to be crabs? I know you've got others. Fairy shrimp are up there. Oh, I have so many things. I honestly really love these peanut fairy crabs because they're just like adorable, small, microscopic crabs living inside of oysters and other animals and like

inside of burrows and they're just really fun and they do a cute thing where they're always in pairs. So like they're like, they're always mated and you find one, you'll find it's made. Got a little buddy. Yeah. That's very good. That's very cute. Okay. So some folks need to know about mass media crab representation, such as Sarah Piet and Stephanie Schmid Falcon.

And they both asked about this internet famous Howie the Crab, which is this Omaha-based rainbow crab. It was purchased from a pet store and it has lived to the elderly age of six. And Howie wears tiny hats. Howie's owner says the crab can use sign language when she's hungry. I think it all sounds great, but Howie's lifestyle does have its critics. Others say, you know what, if a rainbow crab is going to end up at a pet store and then is lovingly cared for past its optimal lifespan and not being eaten, but becoming rich and famous.

That's as good as it gets for this crab. But given that Adam is, as we've discussed, not an extremely online person, I lobbed some general media questions at him from Amanda and Average Pie. Have you ever been watching a movie and there's a crab in it and you're like, they got that right or wrong?

Are there ever crabs in movies? I don't watch enough movies, unfortunately. What about Sebastian the crab in The Little Mermaid? That's what I was thinking. I was trying to remember back. I haven't seen any of the recent ones and the last time I saw The Little Mermaid it was before I was a carcinologist so I had far fewer opinions on what Sebastian should be doing. I wonder how many legs he's even got. I really hope he has the right number. Okay, so Sebastian from The Little Mermaid,

full name Horatio Thelonius Ignatius Christatius Sebastian, is supposed to be a tropical ghost grab. I read this in an article in the publication Screen Rant. But sit down, friends, I got news. Sebastian only has eight legs. And I even found some original character sketches that were sold at auction in December of 2023. Yeah, eight legs on that. But you know what? Let's let it go. Water under the bridge, under the sea. Oh, speaking of rants though.

What sucks about your job the most? Something's gotta suck other than getting interviewed on a Sunday morning by some crackpot with questions that are not related to crabs? It's really hard. There are so many new species that oftentimes you'll be looking at something and it's just really hard to know if it's a new species

or one of the many thousands, tens of thousands that we already know about. We were talking about the smelly crab smell. I'm just a little crazy and I'll shove my hands in crab jars all the time. And I get very self-conscious afterwards because I did it out of the necessity desperation situation. And I feel like I smell like crabs.

But I think I exclusively hang out with kind people who have never said a thing about it. So... You don't smell like crabs to me. Okay, that's good. Yeah, the fear of smelling like crabs, that's like the worst part of my job. It's not even that I'm sure that I smell like crabs, but it's the fear that I smell like crabs.

Has your partner ever told you to not smell a little crabby? No. Smell like crabs. Has your partner ever told you to smell a little crabby? No, which this is why I'm like, I'm only involved with the kindest, sweetest people in my life. So I'm really lucky. Would it be a kindness for them to tell you that you do smell like crabs or is it better to not know? Oh, I do believe that it would be a kindness to tell me so I could do something about it. Okay.

Yeah. What's the best part about your job? The best part about my job is the absolutely amazing amount of diversity that happens with crustaceans in general. Just they have solved so many different problems, so many different ways. They live in such extreme environments. I have studied roly-pollies in my actual backyard that are like terrestrial species. I have studied crabs that are walking around Costa Rica on land crabs.

I have studied marine species. I've studied that hydrophermal vent or gas vent shrimp, which is really cool. And you don't eat a lot of crab? I have probably eaten part of five crabs in my life. Oh, wow. How do you feel about imitation crab being called crab with a K? I grew up a vegetarian as well. I was vegetarian and kosher, like cereal only.

So I eat a lot of crab with a K meat. I'm okay with it, actually. PS, just so you know, crab with a K is actually this string cheese like stick of Alaskan Pollock wheat protein egg binder and this magical substance called transglutaminase, which is an enzyme that has been called meat glue. Crab with a K. Okay. Any other flimflam about crabs that you want to get on a soapbox about? Any other scientific flimflam?

This is your chance. You got a megaphone. Mm. So basically, I would say my soapbox is right now. There are so many marine species that need to be studied. We're in this climate crisis, right? And I'm part of an institution that wants to study them and to preserve a record of the biological history of Earth. I'm just really all about using new molecular tools,

so DNA, kind of like we were talking about with the cinnamon toast shrimp guy. Like these new tools that will allow us to study biodiversity in animals using genetics instead of the morphology of crabs and getting as much representation of all the biodiversity in the world captured right now. We're using technology that's called environmental DNA where we will sample whole environments by taking a scoop of water and filtering out all the free-floating DNA, essentially, that's in that sample. And then that will tell you the biodiversity that has been within, I don't know, a mile of that one spot. Like we need big data to answer these questions about climate change and range extensions.

And right now we don't have that. And we're doing that for California, but we don't have money to do all the things that live on land. And we don't have all the money to do all the things that live in the deep ocean that we barely know anything about. So that's my soapbox. Do you think the world needs more carcinologists to help with this? We definitely do right now in this transition stage.

The biodiversity research I'm talking about that uses these different tools is going to discover the 90% of biodiversity that is so cryptic to us that we don't even know what is this. But yeah, we need more people studying crabs. So if someone has a love of crabs, think about it. Think about coming a crab scientist maybe. Yeah, if you want to be poor, that'd be a great way to be poor. But have all the crab you want to eat, I guess. Oh, do you get crabby person? You should interview my coworkers. I think that I react to the energy that is presented to me.

I can be a little crabby, I think. I'm sorry, I'm so annoying. No, you're not. I'm just all sugar and spice all the time. That's okay. You're a multi-dimensional human being. Yes, we're not. I'm just like all sugar and spice all the time. That's OK. You're a multi-dimensional human being. Yes, we all are. Thanks for doing this. Thank you for having me.

But it's been actually really fun answering your questions. Really? Yeah. I thought you hated me. I was like, oh, no, this guy's so cool. So I both was sighing and all that stuff. This is. It's just who I am. I give off his energy. But

yeah, no, this is all right. Literally, this is out of enjoyable conversations. This is like a like an eight. That's amazing. Yeah, I know. So that. Very enjoyable. Okay. I was like, oh no. No, no, no, no. I'm never gonna have a crab friend. No. No, this is great. It's very enjoyable. You're a patient, patient human being. So ask crab questions to crab people

because even if they seem like they'd rather plunge themselves into arctic waters, they might actually just be shy and having a good time. So Adam Wall, you're wonderful. I loved this and I'd invite you to Game Night if I ever had one. You're a good one. And Adam's Twitter is linked in the show notes where he just sometimes peeks from his shell to share some carcinological research, but will also link the lovely Natural History Museum of LA County. And we're at Allie Ward with 1L across the board. Smologies are shorter kid-friendly versions of classic episodes, and you can

download them all for free at alleyward.com slash smologies, which will be linked in the show notes. We have so much Allie's merch at alliejesmerch.com. And if you hashtag your pictures, Allie's merch, then we'll repost you on our Instagram. I love seeing it out in the wild. Aaron Talbert admins the ology's podcast Facebook group. Susan Hale is our overlord managing director. Thank God. Kelly R. Dwyer makes the website and can make yours as well. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Happy belated birthday to the truly astounding Dr. Sarah McEnulty, who founded Skype a Scientist. You can listen to her toothology episode to learn all about squid, as well as her return for

toothological lethargy about squid games, but absolutely not the TV show. We talk about actual games that Sevla Pods play. And if you're feeling up to it, send a donation to skypascientist.com to help get more experts in classrooms for free. We will link them in the show notes. Even if it's just five or 10 bucks, you can help change a kid's life. And our life-changing lead editor is Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. And if you stick around until the end of the episode, I tell you a secret.

And this week, as long as we're talking crabs, when I was a kid, my family would sometimes drive like two and a half hours to the beach all loaded up in a station wagon, listening to cassette tapes of Prince and Madonna. You know who had come with us is Aaron Talbert, admin of theologies podcast Facebook group, because I've known her since we were four.

But anyway, once we went to Ocean Beach, I think at San Francisco, and my sister Janelle and I marveled at these dome-backed sand crabs that were hopping around the shore. And so we put a few in an empty sandwich bag that still smelled like salami. And we took a few in an empty sandwich bag that still smelled like salami. And we took a few of them home as pets and found out pretty quickly the hard way that

that's not feasible or good for the crabs or something that anyone wanted to smell in a hot car in the summer. So while it's on vacation, just leave the crabs to do their crabby business unless it's a horseshoe non-crab and then you can go ahead and help them when they're flipping out. Okay, everyone be good toereology, Cereology. Can I walk home? Yeah.