The Strangest Things in the World: A Book About Extraordinary Manifestations of NatureHenry, Thomas R. (Thomas Robert)
History
The Strangest Things in the World: A Book About Extraordinary Manifestations of Nature
Henry, Thomas R. (Thomas Robert)
Animal behavior; Natural history
The most logical explanation of this behavior is that the anemones
serve as weapons, killing or paralyzing small sea animals which come
in contact with them. This species of anemone has stinging cells in
its disk. These curious weapons are carried by the crab continuously
and seem essential to its life. When one of them is taken away, the
crustacean moves automatically to grasp it again. When a crab is killed
slowly in alcohol it clings to its weapons even in its death struggles.
There are spider crabs which cut and wear clothes. They cut off pieces
of living sponges and place them on their backs. These sponges become
entangled in tiny hairs which protrude through the animal’s shell, and
continue to grow until they protrude several inches over the back. Thin
layers also cover the under part of the body and the legs. Every time
a crab sheds its shell, it must make itself a new suit The practice
probably is beneficial to both animals. The crab, living in a forest
of sponges, looks like a sponge itself and is thus concealed from its
enemies. The sponge benefits by being carried to new food sources.
When the shell is shed the sponge simply attaches itself to a rock and
continues to grow.
One of the most remarkable cases of commensalism in nature has been
found by Dr. Melbourne Ward, Australian zoologist in a degenerate type
of barnacle which makes its way through the thin shell of one of the
Barrier Reef crabs. It wanders through the blood stream of the crab and
finally comes to the surface where it forms a little sac for itself.
Here it metamorphoses into another form and sends long, thread-like
filaments into every part of its host’s body. In some respects it
is like a cancer among higher animals, except that in this case the
malignant growth is that of an individual animal of another species.
It lives off the food eaten by the crab but never kills nor apparently
seriously injures its host. The one notable effect, for which there is
no adequate explanation, is that it changes a male crab into a female.
The soldier crabs are beachdwellers, about two inches long. They march
across the hard sand in perfect order, as if they were under the
control of leaders. No “officers”, however, have been observed. When
approached, they burrow rapidly in waves, like a regiment of infantry.
First the front rank disappears in the sand, followed in order by those
behind. The regiment disappears completely in a very short time.
The soldier crabs can hardly be driven into the water. When Dr. Ward
succeeded in pushing a few of them off the shore they were set upon by
ferocious small fish which rapidly devoured them. Realization of this
danger apparently is instinctive in the animals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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