Darwin versus the Hermit Crab
Perhaps due in part to my sleep deprived state that I posted about this morning, it seems that I have been having some rather obscure thoughts drift through my gray matter that I then have to spend quality brain cycles trying to sort out.
Earlier today I was watching Good Morning America while working from home and waiting for a worker to show up. After the show was over, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (frankly I think Meredith Vieira is pretty hot) came on and worked as background noise for me. Every once in a while, I would key in on a question and one of them had to do with what kind of shell do hermit crabs live in with the answers being clam, lobster, snail and something else. The contestant didn’t know the answer to the $100 question she had to ask the audience.I knew the answer was snail, of course, but over the next few hours, this theme resurfaced over and over and it actually brought up something that I have been pondering for a big chunk of the day. (Yeah, I know, I need to sleep.)
So, how would Darwin have explained hermit crabs? I mean, I’m thinking that one day some species of crab was scuttling along the sea bed when he suddenly comes across the remnants of a former snail. He gazes longingly at the shell and thinks, “Wow, that sure is nicer than my shell. Much roomier–heck, I might even have room for a wet bar in back!” Then I guess he somehow pried himself out of his shell and quickly scurried into the discarded shell. He probably went in head first and tried to explore a little ways before realizing that really, he would need to back in and hang his head and legs out of the opening. I’ll bet he swelled up with pride the first time he gazed out across the kelp bed with his new acquisition.
I’m sure it took him a little while to adjust to it. (I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a hermit crab completely outside of a shell, but if you haven’t, let me just say–it ain’t a purdy sight!) However, since this was the first hermit crab, I doubt he had that weird little body thing yet. I wonder how he held on?
So, now Henry, our little hermit crab, learns how to walk while dragging this rather cumbersome new mobile home apparatus around behind him. Don’t you think all of the other crabs laughed at him? I’ll bet they called him every ugly name they could think of. Poor little Henry. I can just see the little downtrodden crustacean, all pumped up with his new crib to show off and then the resulting ridicule when he got around his buds.
So, that would have been the end of it, but somehow, Henry managed to convince another crab that he, or even better for Henry, she should give it a try. I bet all the other hermit crabs laughed and called them names. But, ol’ Henry got the last laugh, eh? Once Henrietta showed up dragging all of Henry’s kids behind, I’ll bet the other boy crabs had to think twice about Harebrained Henry’s idea, I mean it did work for Henry, after all.
And all of this means that snails obviously predated hermit crabs by sometime, you know, the whole chicken and the egg thing, but with seafood.
So, Mr. Darwin, did Henry really start this whole thing, all five hundred known species of hermit crabs? That, my friends, is one seriously persuasive, and prolific, crab there. I think I’m more inclined to think that one day God was looking down and thought, “you know, it seems like such a shame to waste those nice shells that the snails leave behind. Hey, this might be kinda fun…”
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