October 5, 2010

Evolution takes on a pop-culture vibe.

Check out this new crab, inspired by "Sesame Street":

19 comments:

traditionalguy said...

Nice crab. But it looks more like a close up of a bed bug. Please tell me that Christine O'Donnell is not connected to this story in some way.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

Can they be trained to clean Venetian blinds?

Fred4Pres said...

Is it a Mummer crab?

Fred4Pres said...

Bringing up Christine O'Donnell's dad = Coulrophobia.

MadisonMan said...

Probably tastes like chicken.

Irene said...

Lady Gaga takes a nap.

sonicfrog said...

While she was dabbling in her witchcraft, O'Donnell cast a spell that created these... these... "crabtrocities"!!!!

Big Mike said...

"Crabtrocities" my butt! It's beautiful.

Nonapod said...

That's a Yeti crab. They're one of the weird critters found around hydrothermal vents in the Pacific.

Calypso Facto said...

Ah, the rare Liberace crab.

Wince said...

I meant to post this comment a week or two ago, after I took some grief for my comment on Christine O’Donnell’s 1998 Politically Incorrect appearance where she asked “why aren’t apes still evolving?”

EDH Said… Actually, I think O'Donnell posits an interesting scientific question. In the last few million years, since humans have branched off from other primates, why haven't those other primates developed more intelligence?

Well, as luck would have it, after posting that comment, later that day I was flipping cable channels and stumbled across a broadcast of PBS’s Evolution series on Nova.

Turns out, evolutionary scientists have deemed that exact scientific question worthy of study, and have recently arrived at a theory quite serendipitously –- more than a decade after O’Donnell’s 1998 Politically Incorrect appearance.

Evolution: Jaw Muscle and Brain Cavity Size (5min video totally on topic and well worth the time).

It seems we may owe our great intelligence to weak jaw muscles. By shrinking the anchors needed to support strong jaw muscles, our brain cavities may have been freed to grow into its modern shape.

Dr. Hansell Stedman at the University of Pennsylvania has discovered by chance the differences in the jaw muscle cells between great apes and humans, and combined this information with fossil shapes and dating to isolate a divergence point, where a single mutation may have led us down the road of increasing intelligence.


It’s evolution, baby.

lemondog said...

Hairy bastard would be a good choice as spokescrab for a Schick Hydro razor ad campaign.

Kiwa hirsuta

The "hairy" pincers contain filamentous bacteria, which the creature may use to detoxify poisonous minerals from the water emitted by the hydrothermal vents where it lives.

Unknown said...

Looks like something you use in conjunction with a white silk scarf during a night of fun and frolic.

Schorsch said...

Oh man, I've been waiting for this Sesame Street X Darwin collabo to drop. Those claws are sick.

(If you have any interest in clothing, this is the Newspeak you encounter. Shudder.)

Bruce said...

It's not easy being yellow.

Clyde said...

Why am I hearing a Grover voice when I look at that crab?

Alex said...

They're one of the weird critters found around hydrothermal vents in the Pacific.

Scientists speculate that other planets that have hydrothermal vents could harbor the same sort of life, mostly microbial. F.e., Io is a possibility.

AST said...

I'd have named it the woolly chaps crab.

jimspice said...

Evolution! Ha! Everyone knows that this crab and Elmo were created in their current forms 5,500 years ago!