Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/07/crab-quickly-constructs-new-home-from-sand-in-sea-tide.html
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I think that little critter has done that a few times before. Not much wasted effort
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Self making crab pies
What a time to be alive
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Being that I’m WFH, I spend a lot of time looking out the window at my neighbor’s activities. One of them hired a company to put up a shed in her backyard.
3 hours. They drove up in a flat-bed, had three dudes haul the stuff to the back, bang bang, and done. Holy heck I didn’t realize you could create a viable structure that rapidly. And this little crab-dude puts them to shame!
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Thank you. I really needed a smile and this song did it.
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Under the crab dome, one crab enter, two crab leave!
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If you haven’t seen the following, take the 3minutes. It is the most astounding creation by an animal I have seen anywhere.
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3D Printing Crab
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Can’t help but feel like he’s painting himself into a corner.
How on earth is that wet sand not collapsing? I dig holes in beaches specifically to watch the inflowing water erode the edges. And that roof? That’s basically magic.
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That crab is all of us right now, or at least it should be.
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You never made sand-drip castles?
You can actually see some of the little balls of sand drying out as she rolls each one into position.
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More usually bucket castles. Even still, I’m not convinced a roof of dry sand is better. You lose the weight of the water but - and I’m guessing here - water probably holds the grains together? And then there’s the pool at the bottom, which from my experience is flooding with water and causing the walls to fall in until you have a shallow dish.
My guess is that this is spectacularly sharp sand? Tiny coral fragments maybe?
That is incredible on next level. Real intended artistry, from a fish. I’m kinda stunned!
Nowhere else in nature does an animal construct something as complex and perfect as this.
By my count, 23 radial ridges. Anything significant in that number? Do they all make them with that odd number of ridges? I expect we’ll never know. We can just marvel at it.
Crabs just move wrong.
It’s a prime number.
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I’m not a crabologist, but I guess she does this every falling tide.
I expect when the tide is in she does crab stuff only to lay low while the tide is out.
I’m not a sandologist either, but I guess the sand isn’t collapsing cos it’s draining - doing the opposite of liquefaction.
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Doh! Of course. But what does this mean? It all smells a bit fishy to me.
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